Model of a Submarine

Entry

Copper model of a submarine on a wooden stand, with a separate wooden box containing tools.

The model has a drop-shaped hull, with a flat rim and a guard rail around it. The deck has a number of skylights, a watertight manhole and a cockpit. Inside is a compartment for the propulsion mechanism and crew. This compartment can be lifted out to show the flooding chamber in the bottom of the submarine. The propulsion is man-powered: a centrifugal pump with a paddle wheel is driven by means of a crank, gears and a flywheel on either side, the pump ejecting the water through a funnel at the back. The flooding chamber is flooded by a large valve in the middle. Two small valves, also serving as an overflow pipe, lead the air to the upper compartment. In the flooding chamber four floats (buoyancy bags) are indicated, and lead ballast in the nose. The flooding chamber is emptied by two pumps, worked by the same cranks used for propulsion: by pumping the air back into the flooding chamber, the water is forced out through the same valve by which it was admitted. The ballast keel filled with lead can be cast off. The submarine can then rise to the surface and later hoist the keel with two winches. A large rectangular rudder, operated by means of a horizontal steering wheel from the inside, controls the lateral movement. The separately operated centrifugal pumps provide auxiliary steering power. Vertical steering is done by shifting weights inside: these weights have rollers and run on rails along the sides, operated by winches and ropes. A small compass is installed for navigation. A four-armed grapnel is fitted to the bow and passes through the keel.

A couple of features remain unclear. The function of the funnel with controls hanging from the deckhead is debatable. It may have been part of the air supply or a retractable mast, or is related to the ‘terrible weapon’ that Lipkens designed together with the submarine and which he kept secret until his death. The original inventory mentions spars for a sailing rig, which has not been found.

Between 1836 and 1839, Anton Lipkens (1782-1847) and his friend Olke Uhlenbeck designed this 8-metre-long submarine for a crew of four plus a commander. The design was not accepted by the Department of the Navy and a prototype, at the estimated cost of 16,000 guilders, was never built.³ Lipkens took the model to the Koninklijke Academie van Ingenieurs (Royal Academy of Engineers) in Delft in 1842. It was transferred to the Navy Model Room in 1863.

Propulsion by means of centrifugal pumps was first patented by John Ruthven in the United Kingdom in 1839. The submarine model was equipped with this system in the same year at the latest. The system of vertical steering by shifting weights is usually attributed to Willem Bauer on his Brandtaucher of 1850, but this model proves that it was invented at least ten years earlier and, therefore, was probably invented by Lipkens instead.

Scale 1:10.