Customer Reviews

The Submarine Pioneers

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I believe that many british naval historians think that the history of the Royal Navy and its ships is the only chapter of the world's naval history which deserves to be analyzed and written. This book is an excellent example.It deals with some of the first submersible ships. The submarines described are mainly british or those built by other countries considered potential challengers of the British Empire. The rest are dismissed with little more than a few words or simply ignored. Even then, the best descriptions are mostly anecdotical, so you can find in this book descriptions of the bedroom behavior of members of the british royal family or George Washington's dental prostheses. If you are really interested in serious books about submarines you will find several of them in this excellent website. This is definitely not one of them.

I read between 2 and 6 books a month. In the last ten years I have read four or five history books by English authors that have been bombastic propaganda and utter fiction. This seams to be a curse that many English authors are afflicted with. They portray England as the only place which has ever done anything right, falsify historical facts, and endlessly degrade all other people and nationalities. This book is by far and away the worst of that lot.
The book starts out with the launching of HM Torpedo Boat No. 1 in 1901. The acceptance of Submarines by the Royal Navy, clearly is the only logical start to the history of Submarines. Sketches of other possible ENGLISH submarine ideas prior to this, (that were never built or tired) are referred to as the only RELEVENT predecessors to this event. Chapters after chapter is then spent on denigrating all non British submarine pioneers. Numerous submarine pioneers are simply ignored as if they simply didn't exist. The American Revolutionary War Submarine Turtle is dismissed as a propaganda ploy by the Colonials. The only argument for this appears to be that the Bushnell brothers were not experienced ship carpenters, and thus couldnt have built a wooden submarine. In another chapter Robert Fulton and the Nautilus are dismissed as a failed Scottish-Irish farmer turned con man, who tried to sell useless, submarines and torpedoes to the English and French. It is clearly implied that any Englishman must know that someone who is Scottish-Irish couldnt succeed, only English Aristocrats could do anything correctly.
I havent read anything quite like this book since I read a publication from the Flat Earth society on how the earth really was flat, and the entire space program was a faked in a Hollywood studio.
The problem with the book is the occasional kernel of valid information contained in the vast outpouring of misinformation. Reading the book reminds me of a crow searching through hog dung to find the occasional kernel of corn that managed to pass the pigs digestion (authors mind) and emerge intact in the vast pile of excrement.There is an occasional bit of information from his extensive research that escaped his mental composting. Otherwise this book rates no stars at all.
I bought this book used for 5% of their list price through Amazon. It was in New condition, and still stiff in the back hald. The last buyer apparently hadnt even opened the book past the first couple of chapters. I plan to sell it as used in the same condition. Maybe you can be the third person to read only the first couple of chapters of this copy of the book and discard it.
The only English History authors who I have found to consistently avoid this British bias and denigration of all other nationalities are B.H. Liddel Hart and J.F.C. Fuller. I have found virtually ALL of the British naval authors addicted to glorifying the British Navy, degenerating everyone else, and omitting any mention of less than perfect British performance.

This book is not perfect, though I have yet to read one that is. It either misses out, or mentions all too briefly, some interesting developments, such as Bourgois and Brun's Le Plongeur, or the Spanish Ictineo and Peral boats, and should be read in conjunction with other books, with a view to being used as a jumping off point should one wish to conduct further research. However, it is eminently readable, is written with an enjoyable sureness of touch, and is a useful guide to early pioneering efforts.

What I do not understand is the hysterical denunciation masquerading as a review by the Huggins MO resident, Kent Clotfelter. It is a piece of writing that drips a corrosive, and absurdly exaggerated, Anglophobia. The few sensible comments he makes are drowned in his bile. He claims, for example, that before Submarine No 1, nothing is said other than (in his mind) an attack on the Bushnell story. Conveniently, he omits to mention the 13 chapters between those dealing with Bushnell and Submarine No 1 that discuss various Dutch, French, German and American experiments.

He claims that Bushnell is dismissed briefly, but that chapter is 13 pages long, and quotes numerous conflicting accounts of the Turtle which can be seen as implying that there is no definitive information about the craft, something in itself which should make the historian wary of the accepted story. Now, I'm not saying Compton Hall is necessarily right, but in criticising the accepted Turtle Myth, he seems to have provoked Mr Clotfelter's ire, presumably on patriotic grounds.

In falling over himself to denounce British writers, particularly Compton Hall, for nationalistic bias, he contradicts himself grievously, whilst leaving one to wonder who is the true nationalist. Here is a choice quote, which refers to Fulton: `It is clearly implied that any Englishman must know that someone who is Scottish-Irish couldn't succeed, only English Aristocrats could do anything correctly.' This blatantly ignores Compton Hall's lavish and generous treatment of John Philip Holland, the poor Irish-American immigrant, and anti-British Fenian to boot, whom Hall regards as the first great submariner.

Mr Clotfelter claims to read 2 to 6 books per month, and that in 10 years he has read 4 or 5 books by British writers (whom he fails to name) which were biased and nationalistic. Well, 4 or 5 books out of, by his own account, 240 to 720 during the same period, does not constitute much of a sample. I do not deny that there are many bad British writers. By the same token, there are many bad American writers, but I would not take, say, one egregious example and from it generalise to a whole nation's output, tempting as that may be. Interestingly, Mr Clotfelter extols the virtues of Liddell Hart and Fuller as the only worthwhile British writers, but given their controversial natures, one doubts Mr Clotfelter's ability to recognise objective writing anyway. And given how long ago they were writing, one also doubts whether Mr Clotfelter has keep abreast of more up to date history writing. Please, Mr Clotfelter, do tell us who are the writers who do measure up to your exacting standards.

Finally, the sheer hysteria of Mr Clotfelter's tone is encapsulated by the rather absurd statement that he has `...not read anything quite like this book since I read a publication from the Flat Earth society on how the earth really was flat, and the entire space program was a faked in a Hollywood studio.' All in all, I haven't read such selective and biased nonsense since, well, the last publication I read from the Flat Earth Society...