On 12 October 1900, in Newport, Rhode Island, the US Navy commissioned a vessel barely sixteen metres long. On board the USS Holland, seven men had to learn how to manoeuvre, monitor their depth and find their bearings from a hull that was almost entirely submerged. The man who designed their vessel had begun his career in front of a blackboard, thousands of kilometres away. John Philip Holland, the son of an Irish coastguard, spent more than twenty years refining his prototypes before the Navy entrusted him with its first submarine.
John Philip Holland grew up in Liscannor, on the County Clare coast. His father, John, worked for the coastguard, while his mother, Mary Scanlon, raised the family in this Atlantic village. Sources differ on his date of birth. The Dictionary of Irish Biography gives 24 February 1841, while the US Navy’s history records 29 February 1840. Both place his birth in Liscannor.
After his father’s death, the family moved to Limerick in 1853. Holland joined the Christian Brothers in 1858 and trained as a teacher. He taught mathematics in several Irish towns, including Enniscorthy and Drogheda. It was in Drogheda that he began exploring the possibility of navigating a boat while submerged. Reading accounts of Civil War ironclads fuelled his interest in the subject. As hulls became armoured, a craft able to approach beneath the surface changed the nature of an attack.
In 1873, ill health led Holland to leave the order. He crossed the Atlantic and joined his brother Michael in Boston, before returning to teaching at a Catholic school in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1875, he submitted his plans to the US Navy. The proposal was rejected. Holland found his first supporters among Irish people settled in the United States, in circles where interest in his boat was as much political as mechanical.
Through his brother, Holland met figures from the Irish republican movement, including John Devoy and John J. Breslin. For Devoy, the superiority of the British fleet was an obstacle to Irish independence. A small craft capable of approaching a warship while submerged could offer an advantage to those without a comparable fleet. The Clan na Gael organisation funded the trials. Holland left teaching in 1876 and was able to devote his time to workshop development.
In 1878, his first prototype measured just over four metres and carried a single man. Three years later, the boat that the New York press dubbed the Fenian Ram was around nine metres long and could accommodate three people. Trials revealed the limitations of its construction. Riveting defects compromised prolonged dives. The next model remained underwater longer, but its engine caused problems and New York harbour regulations brought the trials to a halt.
Costs mounted and a dispute arose over ownership of the prototypes. Holland parted ways with his backers. The Fenian Ram remains a testament to an alliance of convenience between an engineer seeking the means to build and activists hoping to gain a naval advantage from his work.
After his split with Clan na Gael, Holland had to find new funding. In 1895, his company secured a US Navy contract for the Plunger, a project powered by steam on the surface. At the same time, he had a more compact boat built with private funds at the Crescent yard in Elizabeth, New Jersey. It was this second vessel, the Holland VI, that was launched on 17 May 1897 and eventually persuaded the Navy.
On the surface, a petrol engine powered the boat using the available air and recharged the batteries. When submerged, an electric motor took over. Ballast tanks controlled buoyancy, while diving planes allowed the boat’s angle to be adjusted while under way. The crew had to learn how to operate these systems together in a confined space, with endurance limited by the batteries.
The Navy bought the boat on 11 April 1900 for $150,000 and commissioned it in October. The USS Holland was used primarily to train crews and gather data for subsequent vessels. In January 1901, a surface journey from Annapolis to Norfolk made it possible to observe its performance over a distance far greater than that of routine manoeuvres. The Naval History and Heritage Command traces these early years through to its withdrawal from service in 1905.
In Britain, the Admiralty reached an agreement with the Electric Boat Company to build five Holland-designed vessels under licence. The Vickers yard launched the first, Holland 1, in October 1901. The model born from research originally funded by opponents of British rule thus provided the Royal Navy with its first submarine. The vessel was raised in 1982 and is preserved at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport.
Amid these years in the shipyard, Holland married Margaret Foley, the daughter of an Irish immigrant, in 1887. They had five children. Submarines occupied much of his working life, but he was also interested in vehicle engines and pursued astronomy as an amateur. He lost his daughter Julia in 1911. Three years later, on 12 August 1914, he died in Newark and was buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in New Jersey.
Holland’s prototypes had raised questions that navies would have to address on a larger scale: how long could a crew remain submerged, how should they train to navigate with reduced visibility, and what tasks could such a small vessel be assigned? In Liscannor, the John P. Holland Centre offers a way to trace the Irish starting point of this story.
