[Illustration: Copyright by Munn & Co., Inc.
The _Holland No. 9_, as her very name indicates, was one of a long line of similar boats. As compared with other experimental submarine boats she was small. She was only fifty-three feet ten inches long, and ten feet seven inches deep. Although these proportions made her look rather thickset, they were the result of experimental work done by the builder during a period of twenty-five years. She was equipped both with a gasoline engine of fifty horse-power and an electric motor run by storage batteries. The latter was intended for use when the boat was submerged, the former when she was travelling on the surface of the water. She was capable of a maximum speed of seven knots an hour. Her cruising radius was 1500 miles and the combination of oil and electric motors proved so successful that from that time on every submarine built anywhere adopted this principle. Two horizontal rudders placed at the stern of the boat steered her downward whenever she wanted to dive and so accomplished a diver was this boat that a depth of twenty-eight feet could be reached by her in five seconds. Her conning tower was the only means of making observations. No periscopes had been provided because none of the instruments available at that time gave satisfaction. This meant that whenever she wished to aim at her target it was necessary for her to make a quick ascent to the surface. Her stability was one of her most satisfactory features. So carefully had her proportions been worked out that there was practically no pitching or rolling when the boat was submerged. Even the concussion caused by the discharge of a torpedo was hardly noticeable because arrangements had been made to take up the recoil caused by the firing and to maintain the balance of the boat by permitting a quantity of water equal to the weight of the discharged torpedo to enter special compartments at the very moment of the discharge.
The _Holland No. 9_ was built at Lewis Nixon's shipyards at Elizabethport, New Jersey, and was launched early in 1898, just previous to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Although numerous requests were made to the United States Government by her inventor and builder, John P. Holland, for permission to take her into Santiago harbour in an attempt to torpedo Cervera's fleet, the navy authorities at Washington refused this permission. Why? Presumably through navy hostility to the submarine idea. When the _Monitor_ whipped the _Merrimac_ in 1862 the former ship belonged to her inventor, not to the United States Government. It would have been interesting had Holland at his own expense destroyed the Spanish ships.