Wilhelm Bauer’s Brandtaucher helped to break a Danish blockade in 1850, but sank a month later. He went on to design a British submarine to fight in the Crimean War.

Submarine inventors appear to have gone very quiet during the long peace after the Napoleonic Wars, but in 1850, when war broke out between Denmark and Prussia, a Bavarian artillery sergeant called Wilhelm Bauer came up with an idea to break the Danish blockade of Kiel. His submarine, named Brandtaucher (’Fire Diver’), was a rectangular sheet metal tank propelled by a hand wheel. Water ballast was taken in to dive, but underwater manoeuvring was done by moving a heavy weight forwards and backwards.

The Brandtaucher’s first dive at the end of 1850 was successful, causing the Danish blockade to be lifted, but little more than a month later disaster struck. While diving in Kiel harbour at a depth of 60m (196.8ft) the plating at the stern collapsed, taking the little submarine to the bottom. Bauer had a cool head, however, and told the two sailors to allow the boat to flood, raising the air pressure sufficiently to blow the hatches open. He calmed their panic, and five hours later all three floated to the surface, the first submariners ever to escape from a sunken submarine.

Like all good inventors Bauer was not deterred by the setback, and during the Crimean War went to England to sell his ideas to the Royal Navy. The new Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, sanctioned the expenditure of £7000 to build a prototype. But there the trail grows cold, for although Admiral Sir Astley Cooper-Key recalled seeing it, and a contract was apparently placed with a Liverpool shipyard, no technical details have survived. Cooper-Key described it as a large diving bell which could be walked along the seabed by its operators – hardly a submarine and having nothing in common with Bauer’s earlier ideas.

The likeliest explanation is that the prototype existed, but the British Government exaggerated its capabilities to frighten the Russians. This infers that ‘Lord Palmerston’s Submarine’ never got beyond the drawing board, or was never completed, possibly because of technical or contractual problems. Bauer offered the Russians a design called the Seeteufel (’Sea Devil’) in 1855, and in 1856 she is reported to have embarked several musicians at Kronstadt to play the National Anthem during Tsar Alexander IFs coronation. In a 17.8m (58.4ft) hull the noise must have been deafening – and likely to use up oxygen even faster than usual.

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GERMANY

* 1850/51 Brandtaucher. (…das erste U-Boot (Brandtaucher) in Kiel gebaut ) by Wilhelm Bauer (born in Bayrischen Dillingen near Munich, 1822 -1875). After two successful dives, on February 1, 1851 in its third dive the boat took in to much water and sank to15 meters to the bottom of Kiel Harbor. After about 5 hours the Bauer and his two companions were able to escape from the sunk “Brandtaucher.” It was raised in 1887 and restored for posterity. 8.07 meters long, 3 meters wide, and 3.76 meters high (Drawing). It had a crew of three. The hull is built of steel and iron plates. It is propelled by two thread-wheels and energy is tranmitted to the shaft and propeller by a number of toothed gears. Explosive charges are attached to the outside of the hull to be applied manually under water to the hull of an enemy ship. It is the oldest preserved submarine in the world. Currently, can be seen at the Museum of military history in Dresden. Models can be seen in the Deutschen Museum, Munich , in the “Shiffahrtsmuseum” in Bremerhaven, or the Historical Military Museum in Kiel.

* 1902 U1. Das erste Kriegs U-Boot der Kaiserlichen Marine die “Forelle”. Deutsches Museum, München, Germany. (Later sold to Russia)

* 1906 U1 (Military)

RUSSIA

* 1855, Seeteufel (Sea Devil) also named “Chimäre” by the Russians, built in the Leuchtenberg`schen shipyard, St.Petersburg, by Wilhelm Bauer. It was designed to go to a depth of 150 feet. It was 16.32 meters long, 3.45 meters wide, 3.92 meters high, and made at least 134 test dives. It had a four men crew and a similar tread wheel system as on the Brandtaucher. On October 2, 1856 a valve was left open and the submarine sank.