It's 1918 and the convoy system has dashed any remaining hope of the German empire winning the war by U-boat.

Do take a look at the enormous U-118 U-boat washed ashore on the beach of Hastings, as mentioned in the pod: When U-118 got beached at Hastings, UK, 1919 (ahistoryofsubmarines.com)

It's 1917 and the German high command has realized that they can't go on like this. Great Britain must be brought to its knees before the United States will inevitably join the allies. And so the Kaiser bets all his money on the U-boat.

This is part 3 on the 4 part episode of submarines in World War I.

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It's 1915. With the Imperial Navy locked safely inside its harbours, the Germans decide to unleash their U-boats in the first bout of unrestricted submarine warfare. It does not go well.

German U-boats weren't the first to fire, but when they did, they shocked the world.

This episode is dedicated to Ron Leers. Rest in peace, dad.

Without the Whitehead torpedo, submarines would probably have been a blip in world history.

John P. Holland and Simon Lake were the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of submarines. They didn't know it then, but they changed the world. This episode is about these two giants who improved submarines, ironed out all the wrinkles, solved problems others couldn't - and exported the submarine to the world. 

Without Holland and Lake, it's questionable whether submarines could have taken their place as they did in world history. 

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We're in 1870 to 1900. The breakthrough of electric engines, the first time a battleship is torpedoed by a submerged submersible and true submarine frenzy in France. With the efficacy of submarine attack now proven by the CSS Hunley, French and Spanish inventors further improved submersibles. France especially was in the vanguard of submarine development, realizing it had found a possible weapon against the hegemony of the British navy. Still, some problems continued to elude engineers...

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The Isaac Peral submersible: https://bit.ly/3z08sDV

On the Ictinéo I & II: https://bit.ly/3hovVsB

The Gustave Zédé: https://bit.ly/3tutUQq

Any arguments against the procurement of submersibles ended on February 17, 1864, when lieutenant Dixon and his eight men in the submersible H.L. Hunley crashed their spar torpedo into the USS Housatonic outside Charleston, South-Carolina. 

Interestingly, though, the H.L. Hunley was by far not the only submersible that made waves at that time. In Europe, and in fact in the rebel lands of the Confederacy, inventors had engaged in a flurry of activity and innovation, profoundly speeding up the development stages of the modern submersible. 

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In this episode, cut into several parts for your convenience, we dive into what is the decisive period for submarine invention. During this period, from 1800 until 1914, inventors were able to learn from each other owing to the much easier proliferation of knowledge. 

From Robert Fulton's famous 'Nautilus' and his time working for Napoleon Bonaparte to Wilhelm Bauer and the German Confederation to Spain, this first part covers 1800 to approximately 1850. 

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Part two, up in two weeks, will also focus on submersibles in the American Civil War. Part three, up after that (after a little vacation break), will focus mostly on that major invention that gave submersibles the punch it needed: the torpedo. The end of part three will also see submersibles on the brink of World War One...

The history of submarines is one of men wanting to discover new frontiers through perseverance and grit, greed, luck - and tragedy. This first episode takes us all the way back to antiquity, to the days of Aristotle and Herodotus and the first groundbreakers, Cornelis Drebbel and David Bushnell. So get to that listening station, don those headphones and dive in.

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