Submarine Volta 1905

[Hood]

This is not an unbuilt project, but it is an enigmatic mystery that perhaps members here might be able to add more to.

The Volta was a 19-ton electric-powered submarine armed with two 12in torpedo tubes, built by Rennie Forrestt Shipbuilding, Engineering & Drydock Co. Ltd at Wivenhoe, Essex, for the British Submarine Co. in 1905. It was a 3-man submarine (commander, helmsman, torpedo man), 34ft long and 6ft 9in diameter. Power was provided by two electric motors geared to single propeller.
Apparently the British government tried to block its export but then seemed to disappear. It has been suggested the Volta was ordered by Japan. No subsequent trace of the submarine seems to remain in the historical record.

https://www.wivenhoehistory.org.uk/...-shipyards/rennie-forrestt/wivenhoe-submarine
The British Submarine Co. referred to above is probably The British Submarine Boat Company Ltd., formed in 1902 to acquire the patents and submarines of French inventor M. Claude Goubet who died in 1903. Goubet had built the electric-powered 2-man mini-submarine Goubet I in 1886 but despite trials it was not acquired by the French Navy. There was some controversy when the Goubet I was completed as the Russian engineer Stefan Drzewiecki, who had worked with Goubet, claimed some of his inventions had been stolen. The Volta would seem to be about twice the length of the Goubet I, presumably due to the torpedo armament.

 

[klem]

The British Submarine Co. referred to above is probably The British Submarine Boat Company Ltd., formed in 1902 to acquire the patents and submarines of French inventor M. Claude Goubet who died in 1903. Goubet had built the electric-powered 2-man mini-submarine Goubet I in 1886 but despite trials it was not acquired by the French Navy. There was some controversy when the Goubet I was completed as the Russian engineer Stefan Drzewiecki, who had worked with Goubet, claimed some of his inventions had been stolen. The Volta would seem to be about twice the length of the Goubet I, presumably due to the torpedo armament.

Data on Goubet submarines in: (The Submarine Pioneers-Richard Compton-Hall.1999) and in Taras Anatoli Efimovitch: History of Submarines 1624 1904.(2002) -https://arsenal-info.ru/ b/book/2303083435

 

[McTodd]

Weirdly, I came across a beautiful book with four pages on this odd little submarine in my local library recently. I say 'weirdly', because the book is about shipbuilders on the River Colne in the Home Counties, and my local library is in Coventry, about as un-maritime a locale as can be imagined and over a hundred miles away from the book's subject matter!

Anyway, I've done my best to scan the pages in question and I hope they answer your questions - it's a large format book and is slightly larger than my flatbed scanner, though the pages' margins and gutters meant I could just about scan the actual printed areas...

 

[McTodd]

As an aside, in the book it is stated that the Volta could be carried by a battleship, in its davits, and used to attack enemy ships in harbour.

In a curious case of life imitating art, back in 1887 the French satirist and illustrator Albert Robida wrote La Guerre au Vingtieme Siecle (War in the Twentieth Century). His illustrations are remarkable, featuring giant mortars firing typhus shells, other giant guns firing poison gas shells, troops (and horses) in gas masks, and all sorts of other remarkable predictions.

Of relevance here is his illustration of the bloated ironclads of the future, 'les donjons flottants', which carry suspended from their davits little submarines for attacking enemy ships in harbour!

Robida, as far as I know, was not translated or published outside France in his lifetime, so it is unlikely the designers of the Volta knew of his work from nearly twenty years earlier, but it's a curious little footnote.

 

[Hood]

Many thanks. Libraries can throw up happy circumstances like this. Oddly enough I used to live in Colchester and can't remember the library there ever having a copy of this book!