SUBMARINE LINERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 December 1938, Page 5

SUBMARINE LINERS

AMERICAN INVENTOR’S SCHEME.

An amazing scheme now being drawn up by a 72-year-old man may change the history of sea-borne trade. Simon Lake, inventor of the modern submarine, is sitting in his New York office, planning to gather harvests from the sea-bed and employ submarines instead of cargo boats. When he invented the submarine, he became richer than he had ever dreamed he would be. But he has never been happy about this success. For one thing, his submarine invention was developed along lines that were not in his mind at all when he gave it to the world. He sees no reason why there should not be regular sailings of submarine liners between American, European and even Far Eastern ports.

Each ship could be operated by a crew of not more than a dozen men — far fewer than those required to operate an ordinary surface boat. But Lake’s plans are far more startling than more regular trans-Atlantic crossings.

His submarine liners, instead of going through the Suez Canal on the way. say, to Yokohama from Liverpool, would travel right under the ice of Northern Russia and Siberia. Tn other directions, he considers the time has arrived when real productive use should be made of the submarines. He sees no reason, for instance, why the mineral wealth of the sea bed should not be mined from submarine craft.

What he would do is to drive vertical tunnels into the sea bed at points where oil, iron, silver, or copper have been located.