When
Jules Verne wrote his story of A Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, not one in
Hamilton who read that bit of fiction ever dreamed that there could be such a
thing as a boat sailing for miles underneath the sea and popping up at stated
times to give the crew a breath of fresh air. The unscientific world read the
story and pronounced it fishy. But Jules Verne had foundation for his story,
and he worked up the idea for all that it was worth. More than four centuries
ago, history tells us, a mechanical genius conceived the idea of the first
submarine boat. It was a rowboat propelled by twelve lusty oarsmen, but when
the crucial test came that the boat was to dive underneath a sailing vessel, it
was not equal to the task. Another attempt was made in the same century, but
it, too, proved a failure. However, once the ingenuity of man is challenged,
there is always some studious inventor to follow up the idea, and a later
genius perfects the dream of centuries. This surely has been the outcome of the
deadly submarine. The dream of the inventor of four centuries ago has had its
full development in the terrible war that has been raging for nearly seven
months. Burton J. Hendrik, a writer in McClure’s Magazine, has given much study
to tracing up the history of the submarine. The control of the sea has been the
pre-eminent fact in English history. Its navy protected its commerce, hence
there was but little necessity of a large standing army. The British nation has
never suffered defeat except in the little family quarrel that was the outcome
of the great waste of tea in the Boston Harbor. Many times in the last century,
Great Britain has faced the possibility of continental wars, but its fleet has
always been its safeguard against foreign invasion. Untold millions have been
spent in keeping up its navy, and the bravery of its blue jackets, and natural
skill in naval warfare, have made it pre-eminent. Great Britain might at one
time have had some control of the submarine to add to its naval strength, but
the idea was too chimerical for her war lords to discuss.
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The dream of four centuries ago was
worked out by a freshman in Yale college during the American revolution. All
through his college days, from 1771 to 1775, David Bushnell worked to make a
vessel that would sail under water. The first real test of the submarine was
during the American civil war, when a United States gunboat, the Housatanic,
was sunk by a Confederate submarine boat in Charleston harbor, but was herself
sunk with her crew. In principle, the submarine was the same as it is today. The
British frigates that were stationed outside of New York and other American
harbors during the revolution gave inspiration to David Bushnell’s invention of
the submarine, although it did not come into use at that time. The professors
in the Yale college ridiculed the idea that gunpowder could be exploded under
water, but Bushnell proved to the learned scholars that they might know all
about the ancient and modern languages while there were principles in science
that they could be taught lessons in, by taking them out into New Haven harbor
and producing an explosion of gunpowder under water. Bushnell had already
constructed a vessel that could sail under water. It was in shape like a
turtle, operated by a wooden propeller. This antedated the invention of the
steamboat by several years. Early in the last century, the Molsons built the
first steamboat in Montreal that plied on the St. Lawrence river down to
Quebec. Bushnell’s Turtle, for that was the name he gave his first submarine,
only made a maximum speed of about two miles an hour. It was illuminated by
foxfire wood, which gave a phosphorescent light. It had an air-chamber in which
the navigator could exist for a brief half hour. When the revolutionary war
began the British flagship, the Eagle, then lying off Staten Island, was
selected as the first victim of Bushnell’s submarine. Bushnell had not the
physical strength to navigate the Turtle himself, and a man named Lee was
chosen to destroy the Eagle. Not understanding the mechanism of the Turtle,
Lee’s attempt to navigate it proved a failure. He managed to reach the Eagle in
the submerged Turtle, but failed in his effort to attach the torpedo with the
time-clock to the hull of the Eagle. The torpedo floated a short distance from
the Eagle and exploded on time, but not close enough to do any damage to the
British vessel. This failure discouraged Bushnell, and in his disappointment,
he vanished from his home in Connecticut and died some years later in Georgia.
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A quarter of a century later, Napoleon
was engaged in almost identically the same enterprise as the Kaiser is
attempting today. In the midst of his perplexities he received a letter which
read : “The sea which separates you from your enemy gives him an immense
advantage over you. I have it in my power to cause this obstacle which protects
him to disappear.” This letter was written by Robert Fulton, one of the early
inventors of the steamboat. Fulton had developed Bushnell’s invention of the
submarine, and his work to Napoleon to deprive Britain of her great naval
power. Napoleon appointed a commission to investigate Fulton’s plans, and the
result was the French admiralty placed a vessel at Fulton’s disposal to
experiment on, and he blew the vessel into a thousand pieces with his
submarine. By this time, Great Britain began to appreciate the work of Fulton,
and he was invited to England. “If your boat is introduced into practice,” said
Pitt, “it will annihilate all military marines.” AS an experiment, Fulton
entered Deal Harbor in his submarine and
blew up a Danish brig of two hundred tons. It was in this same harbor a few
weeks ago, that a German submarine destroyed a British torpedo boat. The
British government offered Fulton a large sum of money to pigeonhole his
invention, which he declined to accept. Both England and France had refused to
adopt Fulton’s invention, so he returned to his home in New York and spent all
his energies in perfecting his steam boat.
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The submarine is the most deadly
weapon ever introduced into naval warfare, because there is no defense against
it. “There is nothing you can send against, not even itself,” said John P.
Holland, another inventor in the line of submarines. “Submarine cannot fight
submarine,” said Holland. Germany cannot equal Great Britain in naval warfare,
so it has judiciously kept its warships out of the fight. Instead, it has
attacked the battleships and the merchant marine of Great Britain with the
terrible submarine. The man chiefly responsible for the modern development of
the submarine was John P. Holland, born in Ireland in 1841. He was a
conspicuous leader in the Fenian order and hated England with all the vigor of
his Irish ancestry. He built a submarine in New Haven, Connecticut, and
christened it the Fenian Ram. Fifty thousand dollars in pennies, dimes and
dollars were contributed by the Irish and with this fund, Holland built the
Fenian Ram so as to have it ready should the United States and Great Britain
get into war with each other. Holland died a few months ago, shortly after the
beginning of the present war. The story of the deadly work of the submarine is
being told in war news published from day to day. The naval armament of no
nation can overcome it.
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There is nothing new under the sun. The more on dips into the history of the
submarine boat the truth of the adage of nothing new under the sun becomes a
greater reality. Till the present war but little was heard of this great sea
diver, and few could realize that it was possible that such a thing could be.
Since writing the above, we have had access to an encyclopedia that takes us
before the Christian era. The first submarine was a diving bell, and its
construction dates back over two thousand years. The next record we have dates
in the year 1590, when William Brown, an Englishman, is said to have built a
submarine. In 1824, Cornelius Van Drabbel designed an improvement to the Englishman’s
boat and exhibited the plans to King James II. During the next hundred years
several attempts were made in the direction of undersea navigation, but none worthy of notice. It was
not till David Bushnell’s time, 1771 to 1775, during his college days that any
progress was made, and the submarine in use today, with all its destruction
power was the result of his genius. Robert Fulton, one of the early inventors
of the steamboat, improved somewhat on Bushnell’s plans, and he was followed by
John P. Holland, an Irishman. Coming down to modern times, during the civil war
in the United States, the Confederate government built several submarines, and
while they sank one Federal gunboat, the submarine and all its crew went to the
bottom of Charleston harbor. There are two classes, submarines and
submersibles.
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Now that Hamilton is to have a new
hospital, it may be interesting to go back to earlier days and look at the
crude provision made for the care of the sick. Back in the first half of the
last century – in the year 1847 – to care for the afflicted Irish emigrants,
who were forwarded from Quebec and Montreal to western towns along Lake
Ontario, Hamilton built a row of sheds down on the bay front, which were known
as the fever hospital. The emigrants came to Canada and the United States by
the thousands, being starved out of their native land by the failure of food
products, especially the potato. As a boy, the Muser remembers the long rows of
hospital sheds along the banks of the Lachine canal, in Montreal, with the
hundreds of patients stricken with the ship fever. Coffins were piled up
alongside the hospital sheds and every afternoon, the wail of the living over
the death of loved ones was heart-rending. The same condition existed all along
the lake front from east to west, and down at the bay was no exception.
Hamilton then was in its young cityhood, for in that year, it became
incorporated. About the same time, a hospital was built at the head of Cherry
street, on the mountain side. It was a two-story frame building, with only
limited accommodations for patients. Only the homeless ones were provided for,
the sick being generally cared for in their own homes. It was a forlorn-looking
place, but for those days answered the purpose. A new home for the sick was
provided about 1853, when a large brick building at the foot of John street,
facing the bay front, was purchased for a hospital. It was originally built by
Nathaniel Hughson for a hotel, and was well-patronized till about the middle of
the ‘40’s when travelers visiting the city on business found it inconvenient,
and came uptown to the hotels. The building was then sold to the government,
and in turn was used as a barracks for the regiments of the regular army
stationed here, and then as a custom-house. Finally, it came into the ownership
of the city and was converted into a hospital; and an excellent location it was
, with its fine view of the bay, with its wharves lined with shipping. The
building was three stories in height, and a roomy gallery on each story facing
the bay front. In time, as the city grew, larger accommodations were necessary
and the Barton street hospital was built. Now that too is too small, and the
beautiful site on the mountain top has been selected for a two-million dollar
building. No finer selection could have been made, and in time there will be a
street railway along the mountain front.
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The city of Hamilton finds
it necessary to increase the hospital accommodation. There are two hospitals,
one the public hospital under the control of an independent board of governors
appointed by the city council, and the other under the management of the Roman
Catholic church. The public hospital has three departments – one called the
free wards, one the semi-private wards and one the private wards.
The hospital staff
numbers one medical superintendent, four lady supervisors, one hundred nurses.
The nurses’ salaries range : six dollars per week for the first year, seven
dollars for the second year, and ten dollars for the third year and thereafter.
The hospital is under bthe management of five governors, selected for a term of
five years each, one retiring annually, and the mayor and one member of the
board of control. The governors serve without salaries, and are appointed from
among the best businessmen in the city.
The expenses of the
hospital for the year 1914 were $158,500, provide for by a charge of from ten
to fifteen dollars for patients in the private wards, four dollars and ninety
cents in the semi-private wards, and a government grant of twenty cents per day
for the private and semi-private. This amount is paid by the government for a
period of four months. After that time, if the patient still continues in the
hospital, the grant is dropped to seven cents per day. The government grant for
the last half of the year 1914 was $12,500. From the government grant and the
fees paid by the private and semi-private patients, the income was $69,000.
Added to this, the amount appropriated from the general tax fund of the city
was $90,000, making a grant total of $158,500. The cost per diem for each
patient averages $1.57.
The present hospital
was built when the population of the city was about thirty thousand, and has
been added to from time to time to accommodate patients as the population
increased, which is now over one hundred thousand. Hamilton is a manufacturing
city, and accident patients from the factories and the increasing number of
poor families make heavy demands on hospital accommodation.
It has now been
determined by the city and the board of governors to begin at once the erection
of a new hospital for which two million dollars has been appropriated, to be
spent from time to time as the buildings progress. The site selected is about
seven acres on the top of the mountain for ornamental grounds and building purposes,
and it has been pronounced by two celebrated medical men in the United States,
who are experts in hospital construction, as the finest in America. The
buildings are to be erected on the brow of the mountain, overlooking the city,
with a perspective extending for miles up and down the valet, with the bay and
Lake Ontario in the foreground. The plans of the building have been passed on
by the two United States medical experts, and after repeated examination and
alteration in the details have been declared next to perfect.
Plans and specifications
are being prepared for the first section of the new hospital, to cost $150,000.
Tenders are to be advertised for, and the work of construction is to begin as
soon as possible. The building will be four stories, constructed of reinforced
concrete, and without basement, the New York medical experts having decided
against basements in hospital buildings. The building will provide
accommodation for sixty patients and the necessary staff. When the entire
building is completed, it will provide accommodations for over five hundred
patients.
T. H. Pratt is
chairman of the board of governors; Stewart and Witton are the local
architects.
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