A Trip in a Submarine.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 15, 19 January 1904, Page 4

A Trip in a Submarine.

+ A QCFRU KXPKRIENCK. When the boat is tirst closed,writes 11. C. (»auss, in Harper's Weekly, there is a shight sensation of pressure in the ears, and voices sound fqr away. Occasionally a slight declension in a forward direction hints that the boat is goin^ - down. Otherwise we sit in the living-space, chat laug'V move about at will, wonder where we are, and what the people above the surfuce think about it. If you have ever mwle a trip in a closed I'aunch on u rainy day and in smooth water, you have had about the equivalent. — l Thirty Feet Under Water.— It is rather more interesting in the conning-'tower, especially as there isa bit of di,rt, under the valve seat and tiie steersman is sitting under a slower bath. From the force with which the slender steam spurts in, you realise for the lirst time that you are under a column of 25ft. of water. The steersman swears softly, and the water runs off h«is b.U'k into a huctoet. You begin to lose old illusions and understand new things. You do not see the wonders of submarine lif-e. 'There is an oblong pa.Hh of opafjuc green : that is your submarine view. Then the boat rises, and you see broken water, then Ihe surfiace.- A plunge, and there is the wall of inpenetrable green. Captain Lake says 30ft is the limit, of sight under the most favourable conditions. Here yon are ruuiniag, and the dilTused and broken light gives you only this patch of green. —The <)mnis.cope.— Now the boat is running submergoA and on a compass course. There is nothing to be seeti by t!*e watchers above but the steel flag cutting the surface. Now we rise, and the watchfew> o J'ijpple sMcbi as might, follow the fin of a sha<*k. The omnisrope is out of waiter. Simply Ihe idea of the lindev of a camera, at the end of u tube three feet above the conning towvr, but it gives the tiue image on a central glass. Captain Lake turns the omnisco|>e until Ihe object of ai,m in the c<snti'«tfl gluss and holds it steady on the crowed lines in the centre. A line across the compass follows the movement of the omniscope ; the steersman has only to make his course identical with the direction of this line, it is a matter of so many minutes' running with the electrical and the submarine has arrived beside the vessel which ha<k been mirrored in the omniscope.