f
the number of improvements represented by her she was not
particularly successful. Her double hull, it is true, provided space
for carrying water ballast. But the leaks from this ballast tank
continuously threatened to drown the navigator sitting inside of the
second hull. A small oil engine of four horse-power was soon
discarded on account of its inefficiency.

The experience gathered by Holland in building and navigating these
two boats strengthened his determination to build a thoroughly
successful submarine and increased his faith in his ability to do
so. He opened negotiations with the Fenian Brotherhood. This was a
secret society founded for the purpose of freeing Ireland from
British rule and creating an Irish Republic. Holland finally
succeeded in persuading his Fenian friends to order from him two
submarine boats and to supply him with the necessary means to build
them. Both of these boats were built. The lack of success of the
first one was due primarily to the inefficiency of her engine. The
second boat which was really the _Holland No. 4_ was built in 1881.
It is usually known as the _Fenian Ram_, and is still in existence
at New Haven, Connecticut, where a series of financial and political
complications finally landed her.

These two boats added vastly to Holland's knowledge concerning
submarine navigation. A few others which he built with his own means
increased this fund of knowledge and step by step he came nearer to
his goal. By 1888 his reputation as a submarine engineer and
navigator had grown to such an extent that Holland was asked by the
famous Philadelphia shipbuilders, the Cramps, to submit to them
designs for a submarine boat to be built by the United States
Government. Only one other design was submitted and this was by the
Scandinavian, Nordenfeldt.

William C. Whitney, then Secretary of the United States Navy,
accepted Holland's design. Month after month passed by wasted by the
usual governmental red tape, and when all preliminary arrangements
had been made and the contract for the actual building of an
experimental boat was to be drawn up, a sudden change in the
administration resulted in the dropping of the entire plan.

Holland's faith in the future submarine and in his own ability was
still unshaken, but this was not the case with his financial
condition. None of the boats he had built so far had brought him any
profits and on some he had lost everything that he had put into
them