guns ready for action and her
gunners scanning the sea in every direction for this deadly enemy,
suddenly felt the shock of a torpedo and, her magazines having been
set off, followed her sister ships to the ocean's bed.

In little more than half an hour thirty-six thousand tons of
up-to-date British fighting machinery, and more than 1200 gallant
blue jackets had been sent to the depths of the North Sea by a
little boat of 450 tons carrying a crew of twenty-six men.

The world stood aghast. With the feeling of horror at the swift
death of so many caused by so few, there was mingled a feeling of
amazement at the scientific perfection of the submarine, its power,
and its deadly work. Men said it was the end of dreadnoughts,
battleships, and cruisers, but the history of the war has shown
singularly few of these destroyed by submarines since the first
novelty of the attack wore off. The world at the moment seemed to
think that the submarine was an entirely new idea and invention.
But like almost everything else it was merely the ultimate reduction
to practical use of an idea that had been germinating in the mind of
man from the earliest days of history.

We need not trouble ourselves with the speculations of Alexander the
Great, Aristotle, and Pliny concerning "underwater" activities.
Their active minds gave consideration to the problem, but mainly as
to the employment of divers. Not until the first part of the
sixteenth century do we find any very specific reference to actual
underwater boats. That appears in a book of travels by Olaus Magnus,
Archbishop of Upsala in Sweden. Notwithstanding the gentleman's
reverend quality, one must question somewhat the veracity of the
chapter which he heads:

"Of the Leather Ships Made of Hides Used by the Pyrats of
Greenland."

He professed to have seen two of these "ships," more probably boats,
hanging in a cathedral church in Greenland. With these singular
vessels, according to his veracious reports the people of that
country could navigate under water and attack stranger ships from
beneath. "For the Inhabitants of that Countrey are wont to get small
profits by the spoils of others," he wrote, "by these and the like
treacherous Arts, who by their thieving wit, and by boring a hole
privately in the sides of the ships beneath (as I said) have let in
the water and presently caused them to sink."

Leaving the tale of the Archbishop where we think it must belong in
the realm of fic