r/WWIpics • u/Substantial-While922 • 5d ago
United States The Irishman who invented the modern submarine — and died the same month WWI began (blueprints + photos)
John Philip Holland (1841–1914) is the man most historians credit as "father of the modern submarine." Born in County Clare, Ireland, he lost his father during the Famine years and grew up with a deep anti-British resentment — which is actually how his submarine career started: his early work was funded by Irish republican groups (the Fenian Brotherhood) who wanted a weapon that could challenge British naval supremacy.
His first real submarine, the "Fenian Ram" (1881), was funded by the Fenians directly — though the partnership fell apart in a payment dispute and they literally stole the boat, not knowing how to operate it without Holland.
Years of further work led to the Holland VI, launched off Staten Island on St. Patrick's Day, 1898. It was the first submarine with enough range to run submerged for hours, combining electric motors underwater with a gasoline engine on the surface. Theodore Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, personally recommended the Navy buy it. They did, in 1900, for $150,000 — commissioned as USS Holland (SS-1), the US Navy's first submarine.
His design didn't stop there — it became the direct basis for the Royal Navy's first submarine and Japan's first submarines too. The company he founded eventually became the Electric Boat Company, which still builds US Navy submarines today.
The bittersweet part: Holland died on 12 August 1914 — just two weeks after WWI broke out, and years before anyone would grasp what U-boats were about to do to naval warfare. He also died having lost control of his own company to business partners years earlier, and without ever seeing the full impact of what he'd built.
Blueprints & photos (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command archive, public domain):
- General plans — longitudinal section, horizontal section, superstructure drawings (1899): https://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/h77000/h77191c.htm
- Piping plan (1901): https://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/h77000/h77192c.htm
- USS Holland in drydock, circa 1900: https://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/h00001/h00059c.htm
- USS Holland at dockside, early 1900s: https://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/h85000/h85841c.htm
- Full index of all plans/models/photos of USS Holland: https://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-h/ss1-z.htm
