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I lurk here from time to time but I rarely post anything online, anywhere, these days -- so this is sort of a "first post, here" situation for me. (So ... "howdy, folks! Greetings!")
To biz. See if any of you ancient history buffs can ID this "almost a submarine; but not quite" that originated and fought in the earliest years of the American Civil War.
The problem ... this forum's software won't let me post links. Keeps rejecting what I'm trying to post, due to newbie-ism and the presence of a link, etc. ... so, if you edit out the extra spaces, and paste the link (info) into the address bar on your browser, and do some clicking (as instructed below), you'll see four pics of my mostly-historical, somewhat-imaginative, scratchbuilt model of that little-known ACW river monster:
www. scififantasymodeller. co.uk
The link goes to the (UK-based) web site for the folks that publish "Sci-Fi & Fantasy Modeller". Once you arrive at the site's home page, find the "Steampunk Modeller" preview section on that page, and select it; let their little preview program load up; and then flip through the preview pages on display, until the top of the display says you're at pages 8 and 9 of the 15 total pages they put on display.
And no, the real thing didn't have the goofy mean-looking fish face I painted on my model. Yes, it looks a bit like Professor Fate from the movie, "The Great Race" designed the paint job ... but hey, it's a "special" issue of a non-historical modelling series. I was sort of pushing it, author-wise, to have submitted a mostly-historical model (in terms of the thing's shape) for a Steampunk special ... so, I felt I had to "spice it up".
(Oh, and yes, it's supposed to have two propellers. Just didn't finish them before deadline; so the final "beauty shots" seen in the article only show the prop's hubs.)
Anyone scratching their heads, yet? (Heehee!) Technically, no, it was never a sub; but if the rivers it was operating in were deeper, and they'd worked out some bugs...
Your mileage may vary, but I'm convinced the real thing had a water ballast system to allow it to "dive" down, a bit. More like ducking down, or adjusting its freeboard, really, than going completely under the water's surface. I figure when it sat in port or wasn't in combat, it likely had about six foot of hull showing, above the surface -- but if my conjectures are correct (based on, as the article itself says, historical documents that quote a man who claimed to have designed the beastie) it could lower itself down another three foot or so ... with what was above water being nearly impossible for any cannonballs or shells of the time to have actually hit, solidly enough to do real damage; due to the crazy, laid-way-back angles up front; and the compound curves everywhere.
Did I mention that the forward 20 foot or so of this thing was solid wood; with an iron prow or tip on it, so that it could literally ram into wooden ships, and sink them? Try to imagine the kinetic energy being transferred. And this was in the early 1860s -- it being far too early for anyone to have worked out how to shoot torpedo's out of a boat, at the enemy, they basically did all they could to have a half-sub, half-torpedo weapon! Sort of like a huge version of the suicide subs that came about, much much later on; in another century entirely: except without the explosion part.
I'm convinced the real thing must have felt like a alien's spaceship, to the people it fought against, in terms of the lateral-thinking of the technology / design work. But due to it fighting for the side that didn't write history, it's pretty much unknown, today.
Last clue, folks ... it's the thing's 150th birthday, or very close to it, this year.
To biz. See if any of you ancient history buffs can ID this "almost a submarine; but not quite" that originated and fought in the earliest years of the American Civil War.
The problem ... this forum's software won't let me post links. Keeps rejecting what I'm trying to post, due to newbie-ism and the presence of a link, etc. ... so, if you edit out the extra spaces, and paste the link (info) into the address bar on your browser, and do some clicking (as instructed below), you'll see four pics of my mostly-historical, somewhat-imaginative, scratchbuilt model of that little-known ACW river monster:
www. scififantasymodeller. co.uk
The link goes to the (UK-based) web site for the folks that publish "Sci-Fi & Fantasy Modeller". Once you arrive at the site's home page, find the "Steampunk Modeller" preview section on that page, and select it; let their little preview program load up; and then flip through the preview pages on display, until the top of the display says you're at pages 8 and 9 of the 15 total pages they put on display.
And no, the real thing didn't have the goofy mean-looking fish face I painted on my model. Yes, it looks a bit like Professor Fate from the movie, "The Great Race" designed the paint job ... but hey, it's a "special" issue of a non-historical modelling series. I was sort of pushing it, author-wise, to have submitted a mostly-historical model (in terms of the thing's shape) for a Steampunk special ... so, I felt I had to "spice it up".
(Oh, and yes, it's supposed to have two propellers. Just didn't finish them before deadline; so the final "beauty shots" seen in the article only show the prop's hubs.)
Anyone scratching their heads, yet? (Heehee!) Technically, no, it was never a sub; but if the rivers it was operating in were deeper, and they'd worked out some bugs...
Your mileage may vary, but I'm convinced the real thing had a water ballast system to allow it to "dive" down, a bit. More like ducking down, or adjusting its freeboard, really, than going completely under the water's surface. I figure when it sat in port or wasn't in combat, it likely had about six foot of hull showing, above the surface -- but if my conjectures are correct (based on, as the article itself says, historical documents that quote a man who claimed to have designed the beastie) it could lower itself down another three foot or so ... with what was above water being nearly impossible for any cannonballs or shells of the time to have actually hit, solidly enough to do real damage; due to the crazy, laid-way-back angles up front; and the compound curves everywhere.
Did I mention that the forward 20 foot or so of this thing was solid wood; with an iron prow or tip on it, so that it could literally ram into wooden ships, and sink them? Try to imagine the kinetic energy being transferred. And this was in the early 1860s -- it being far too early for anyone to have worked out how to shoot torpedo's out of a boat, at the enemy, they basically did all they could to have a half-sub, half-torpedo weapon! Sort of like a huge version of the suicide subs that came about, much much later on; in another century entirely: except without the explosion part.
I'm convinced the real thing must have felt like a alien's spaceship, to the people it fought against, in terms of the lateral-thinking of the technology / design work. But due to it fighting for the side that didn't write history, it's pretty much unknown, today.
Last clue, folks ... it's the thing's 150th birthday, or very close to it, this year.
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