Reviews

Submarine Research Center, Bulletin 75, February, 2008

"Beneath the Surface" is a 325-page early history of submarines built in the Puget Sound area. This soft bound publication is superlative from several perspectives, but the pictures in themselves are enough to warrant the purchase of this amazingly detailed history.

Lightfoot takes us back to 1912, the year of the Titanic, an age of industrial America. He does so in the present tense which gives the reader a feel for immediacy. In several short paragraphs he describes the world, the United States and finally Seattle, on the east side of Puget Sound. Like a satellite's view of an era, Lightfoot takes us into the tangle of political intrigue that surrounds the development of early submarines. The dominance of Electric Boat in submarine design means east coast shipyards get the few Navy contracts for building submarines. San Francisco and Seattle scratch for a niche in this unique market.

Within the detail of names and events are pearls of insight into what it must have been like to build submarines when it was as much an art as science. From only 46 pages of Navy specifications Seattle shipbuilders went to work on F and K boats. Supervised by EB representatives the Moran Shipyard of the Seattle Construction and Dry-dock Company laid out the keels and started shaping frames for the hulls of the F boats. Spurred on by the First World War, foreign nations asked for submarines, but federal regulations forbade building submarines for foreign navies. A clandestine alliance with Canadian Pacific Railroad and British Pacific Engineering and Construction Company soon had shipyard personnel putting together boats in a tiny hamlet called Barnet, just east of Vancouver, B.C.

With pictures and description, the reader gains a knowledge of early shipyard methodology. For example, the over-head crane had yet to be realized. Overhead sling cables on poles served as hoists. Then side-swung derricks on rails served the heavy lifting needs. Scaffolding was made of wood, plentiful in the northwest. Labor unrest pressed management. Unions wanted closed shops, but management held out for open shops where workers didn't have to belong to a union before getting shipyard work.

The chapter on First World War era technology is thorough and excitingly described. Framing dimensions and spacing, hull shaping and riveting, tank arrangement, battery construction, and propulsion systems are interesting for veterans of diesel-electric boats. In contrast to nuclear powered turbines were unreliable diesels with clutches fore and aft of motor-generators. Both clutches engaged, the diesels drive the shafts. The forward clutch disengaged and the motors drive the shafts. The after clutch disengaged and the diesels drive the generators to charge batteries. The Vickers diesel ran only in one direction, thus a back bell could only be answered by disengaging a clutch and going onto the battery. Torpedo tubes forward had a rotating plate that served as muzzle doors. It had four holes which could be aligned with tube muzzles for firing. Rotate clockwise and tubes one and four were opened. Rotate counter-clockwise and tubes two and three were opened. Y tube sound detectors and Fessenden Oscillators were the ears and voice of the submarine.

The life of these boats are tracked through groundings, accidents and scrapping. Crew members add their perspectives through qualification drawings and first hand reports. Life on these early boats was strenuous and frustrating, not to mention, dangerous.

SRC congratulates Bill Lightfoot on a thoroughly professional description of early submarine technology as well as a history of submarine construction in the northwest.

S.C. Heal, maritime historian and publisher, Cordillera Books, Vancouver, B.C. writes:

In Beneath the Surface Bill Lightfoot has written the most comprehensive book it has ever been our privilege to publish. His research has been deep, diligent and thorough. His writing style is crisp and always to the point he addresses. His grasp of submarine history demonstrates that he is a maritime historian of the first rank whose work can be relied on for accuracy at all times. This book is the final word on this interesting and historic group of submarines.

The Sea Chest: Journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society. September, 2005:

This is a thorough study of the twenty-one submarines built on the North Pacific Coast. They came early in the history of undersea warfare and were somewhat experimental in design. Any submarine is a complex resolution between the forces of nature and the need for human survival under water. Hence, the author describes the entire process of development, construction, testing and deployment of these boats. Some were built at Seattle, some at Puget Sound Navy Yard, others were prefabricated and assembled at remote sites in British Columbia and St. Petersburg, Russia. It seems they were usually surrounded by international intrigue and political haggling. Operation of these early boats is so well-described that a reader can visualize himself turning the valve wheels and pulling the levers—but with the possibility of drowning himself and the rest of the crew.

Ric Hedman, Commander, Seattle Base, USSVI, and webmaster for Through the Looking Glass.

Beneath The Surface is labor of love for Mr. Bill Lightfoot. He spent nine years researching this very well written book. The detail he has taken in documenting the few submarines built in the Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. area is truely amazing. Each page is a revelation into the processes and technology that went into building these early vessels. It is a must read by anyone really interested in early submarines and looking for the straight dope on how it was done and by who.

from Marine Life, April 2006, pg. 16...