Submarine Trials in the Rouge River
by Kathy Warnes
George Collin Baker of Chicago came to Detroit in January of 1892 with a detailed agenda. He checked into the Cadillac Hotel and set to work perfecting his plans to try out his wooden submarine torpedo boat in the Rouge River. A tall, thin, spare man of about 50, he had a modest but cosmopolitan air and a commonsense knowledge of the world, according to a Detroit Free Press reporter who interviewed him about his submarine torpedo boat.
Although he was far away from the Illinois farm where he had been born on December 21, 1844, George Baker had confidence in himself and his ambitions. In 1861 at age 17 he enlisted in the Union Army on August 2, 1862. As a soldier in Company B, Twenty-Third Iowa Infantry, he participated in many crucial battles including the siege of Vicksburg, and the siege and capture of Ft. Blakely and Mobile.
After the Civil War ended, George went to Polk City, Iowa, and worked in the mercantile business until 1873. In 1873, he was elected county auditor and held that office for two terms. In 1867, he married Mary Robinson and they eventually had three sons: George Jr., Charles K., and Clyde E.
To support his growing family, George established a hardware business that he called George C. Baker & Company. By 1879, he had invented several barbed wire machines and built a small factory. He devoted his spare time to inventing and testing an experimental submarine torpedo boat. In 1887, he moved his factory from Des Moines, Iowa, to Lockport, Illinois, setting up offices in Chicago. In 1888, he submitted the blueprints for his Baker Boat to the United States Navy Department, one of several inventors who submitted plans for a new submarine.
George Baker heard rumors that his chief competitor John Holland, had won the competition, so he bravely decided to build his submarine no matter what the outcome of the competition. Since George had retired from the barbed wire business with a substantial fortune, he had the resources to build his submarine and he signed a contract with the Detroit Boat Company for building the submarine in December 1890,
After the launch of the Baker Boat in January 1891, George thought that his work as the submarine’s inventor was finished, but it was new and untested and still in a crude state. The hull worked well but the machinery did not function efficiently, so George came to Detroit to try out the submarine in the Rouge River. He conducted several experiments in the water and he felt confident that he could correct all of the submarine’s malfunctions and that it would run successfully in the end. He had partially patented the submarine, and intended to patent the entire vessel shortly.
The Baker Boat had a wooden hull, seven inches thick and a small steam engine propelled it on the surface of the water. The boiler smoke stack telescoped up when the boiler operated, but collapsed to a few inches tall when it submerged. An electric motor powered the Baker Boat when it was submerged and a standard rudder arrangement was used to steer the boat.
The Baker Boat weighed about seventy five tons, featured a conning tower, electric lights, and had room for at least six people. Baker said that he had read ridiculous claims about the submarine in many papers, including a Milwaukee paper that featured two illustrations that outshone those in Aesop’s fables. The illustrations showed a submerged boat totally topped off by a huge smokestack as long as the boat. Several feet of the stack stuck out of the water and smoke billowed out of its end. “Even if such a plan were possible, just see what a sure warning it would give an enemy of the approach of the boat. Scores of these things have appeared in print, and they will certainly do me more injury than good,” Baker told the reporter.
He also denied that he had built the submarine for the government “unless they want to buy the boat in the event of its being successful. It is purely a private enterprise, and should it fail, nobody but myself shall be at a loss.”
According to George Baker the submarine had a wooden hull, but it leaked only at the rate of two gallons in twenty-four hours. When the boat floated on the surface about sixteen inches of the top stuck out of the water, and the propeller wheel was driven by an engine with steam. When submerged a storage battery, one of the largest of its kind and possessing the power of fifty horses, furnished the power. The storage battery also furnished electric light under water, “a good strong light,” according to Baker. The submarine had reached a speed of eight miles per hour practically submerged.
George Baker had a visionary imagination as far as the utility of his submarine. He thought that it could be used to plant torpedoes beneath a war vessel. The Civil War navies had begun to explore this avenue of underwater warfare with the Hunley and Housatonic, but George Baker seemed to foretell the Navy Seals of the two twentieth century world wars. He thought his submarine could also be used to locate wrecks. It would assist the explorations of divers by using a powerful electric light that threw a bright light a distance of sixteen feet when the boat was under water. The light was manipulated from an iron projection from the top of the boat known as a conning tower. Baker described it further by saying, “The tower is much the size and shape of a stiff hat and is provided with peep-holes on all sides, the glass being heavy plate an inch thick.”
On Saturday, April 2, 1892, George Baker conducted an experimental run of his submarine in the River Rouge near the exposition grounds. He had counted on fifteen and a half feet of water, but heavy northeast winds had blown for at least a day before the trial and the wooden submarine scraped on the bottom when it submerged. Undaunted, Baker planned another trial for the following week. On April 29, 1892, he ran a successful trial with Goddard, his construction foreman. They submerged the Baker Boat for an hour and fifty minutes in the River Rouge.
The editor of Western Electric accompanied George Baker and Goddard, his foreman, on the second trial of the Baker Boat on May 20, 1892 in the River Rouge. After the trial, the editor wrote, “Some little difficulty was found in depth keeping, however, and this was perhaps the chief fault of the boat. The twin propellers with their every-way gearing are distinctly novel and the Baker is on the whole a great credit to her inventor.”
In June 1892, according to the New York Times, Commodore William Folger Chief of the Bureau or Ordnance at Washington has instructed W. Scott Simms inventor of the Simms-Edison torpedo boat to try out the submarine boat invented and built in Detroit by George Baker. Acting on the recommendation of Commodore Folger, Mr. Sims visited Detroit on June 25, 1892, to meet George Baker and inspect his torpedo boat. Mr. Sims said that Commodore Folger believed that the combination of his torpedo and George Baker’s boat would make a perfect destroyer for the American Navy.
Mr.Sims couldn’t inspect the Baker Boat because it was being repaired, but George Baker impressed Mr. Sims. Mr. Sims said that George Baker had “the first boat that has been made to ride on an even keel…It is navigable, easily controlled, and of a powerful structure.”
By late 1893, the Navy Department had opened a new competition for a submarine torpedo boat. George Baker already had produced an operational submarine, so he seemed to be a lap ahead in the contest with John P. Holland of the John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company to win a contract to furnish the first operational submarine to the U.S. Navy. John Holland was the better known inventor and in July 1893, the New York Times declared Holland the winner of the competition. The Navy was much slower to favor Holland, because although he was better known that George Baker, Baker had a circle of friends in Washington D.C.
George Baker had finished building and testing his Baker Boat the year before and he could easily put her through sea trials on Lake Michigan for the Navy. Iowa Senator William B. Allison and Baker’s lawyer General C.N. Shelley, persuaded the Secretary of the Navy that the Navy should put the Baker Boat through its sea trials. In fairness to John Holland the Navy invited John Holland to sponsor a boat of his own. Holland objected to these tactics because Navy officials had told him that the Board had approved his design. He said that vandals had stripped his vessel and the cost of refitting her would be prohibitive. He said his boat company already was financially embarrassed because of the design competition and that the contest circular advertised only for designs, not completed ships competing against each other. The New York Times report of July 28, 1893 had announced that Holland had won. Was the Board changing its mind?
The Board replied that no newspaper in the country was the official organ of the Navy Department and that when an inventor like Baker produced a ship, the Navy could properly test her.
By mid September 1893, the Navy had completed its tests and the newspapers again announced that the Naval Board had recommended John Holland’s design over that of George Baker. Again politics ruled and other Washington officials delayed approving Holland design. The Holland Torpedo Boat Company took the risk of offering George Baker $200,000 worth of Holland Company stock in exchange for Baker assigning his patents “free of all encumbrances to the Holland interests.”
George Baker kept politically maneuvering and insisting that the navy test his submarine before building one from John Holland’s design. Although Holland was still considered the winner of the competition, George Baker managed to delay construction of the Holland submarine. In March 1894, George Baker traveled to Washington D.C. to confer with Naval officials about securing the $250,000 that Congress had designated to build a submarine boat. He suffered an attack of appendicitis and died on March 23, 1894.
George’s family brought his body back to Des Moines, Iowa, on the train and an escort of Civil War veterans from The Crocker Post escorted him to the church and then to the Woodland Cemetery in Des Moines. His obituary said the Governor’s Guards fired a final volley for “a brave soldier, a good man, a tried & true friend, a man of courage, integrity and genius who lived as he died, honored, respected & loved by all who knew him.
In March 1895, the government awarded the contact to the Holland Torpedo Boat Company. But George Baker, his submarine dream, and his trials in the River Rouge made the Holland Torpedo Boat Company’s success possible.
References
Burgoyne, Alan. Submarine Navigation: Past and Present. E.P, Dutton & Company, New York, 1903.
Morris, Richard Knowles. John P. Holland; Inventor of the Modern Submarine. University of South Carolina Press, 1998.
Detroit Free Press, January 6, 1892
Detroit Free Press, July 6, 1892
Des Moines Leader, April 16, 1892. “Baker’s War Boat.”
George Collin Baker of Chicago came to Detroit in January of 1892 with a detailed agenda. He checked into the Cadillac Hotel and set to work perfecting his plans to try out his wooden submarine torpedo boat in the Rouge River. A tall, thin, spare man of about 50, he had a modest but cosmopolitan air and a commonsense knowledge of the world, according to a Detroit Free Press reporter who interviewed him about his submarine torpedo boat.
Although he was far away from the Illinois farm where he had been born on December 21, 1844, George Baker had confidence in himself and his ambitions. In 1861 at age 17 he enlisted in the Union Army on August 2, 1862. As a soldier in Company B, Twenty-Third Iowa Infantry, he participated in many crucial battles including the siege of Vicksburg, and the siege and capture of Ft. Blakely and Mobile.
After the Civil War ended, George went to Polk City, Iowa, and worked in the mercantile business until 1873. In 1873, he was elected county auditor and held that office for two terms. In 1867, he married Mary Robinson and they eventually had three sons: George Jr., Charles K., and Clyde E.
To support his growing family, George established a hardware business that he called George C. Baker & Company. By 1879, he had invented several barbed wire machines and built a small factory. He devoted his spare time to inventing and testing an experimental submarine torpedo boat. In 1887, he moved his factory from Des Moines, Iowa, to Lockport, Illinois, setting up offices in Chicago. In 1888, he submitted the blueprints for his Baker Boat to the United States Navy Department, one of several inventors who submitted plans for a new submarine.
George Baker heard rumors that his chief competitor John Holland, had won the competition, so he bravely decided to build his submarine no matter what the outcome of the competition. Since George had retired from the barbed wire business with a substantial fortune, he had the resources to build his submarine and he signed a contract with the Detroit Boat Company for building the submarine in December 1890,
After the launch of the Baker Boat in January 1891, George thought that his work as the submarine’s inventor was finished, but it was new and untested and still in a crude state. The hull worked well but the machinery did not function efficiently, so George came to Detroit to try out the submarine in the Rouge River. He conducted several experiments in the water and he felt confident that he could correct all of the submarine’s malfunctions and that it would run successfully in the end. He had partially patented the submarine, and intended to patent the entire vessel shortly.
The Baker Boat had a wooden hull, seven inches thick and a small steam engine propelled it on the surface of the water. The boiler smoke stack telescoped up when the boiler operated, but collapsed to a few inches tall when it submerged. An electric motor powered the Baker Boat when it was submerged and a standard rudder arrangement was used to steer the boat.
The Baker Boat weighed about seventy five tons, featured a conning tower, electric lights, and had room for at least six people. Baker said that he had read ridiculous claims about the submarine in many papers, including a Milwaukee paper that featured two illustrations that outshone those in Aesop’s fables. The illustrations showed a submerged boat totally topped off by a huge smokestack as long as the boat. Several feet of the stack stuck out of the water and smoke billowed out of its end. “Even if such a plan were possible, just see what a sure warning it would give an enemy of the approach of the boat. Scores of these things have appeared in print, and they will certainly do me more injury than good,” Baker told the reporter.
He also denied that he had built the submarine for the government “unless they want to buy the boat in the event of its being successful. It is purely a private enterprise, and should it fail, nobody but myself shall be at a loss.”
According to George Baker the submarine had a wooden hull, but it leaked only at the rate of two gallons in twenty-four hours. When the boat floated on the surface about sixteen inches of the top stuck out of the water, and the propeller wheel was driven by an engine with steam. When submerged a storage battery, one of the largest of its kind and possessing the power of fifty horses, furnished the power. The storage battery also furnished electric light under water, “a good strong light,” according to Baker. The submarine had reached a speed of eight miles per hour practically submerged.
George Baker had a visionary imagination as far as the utility of his submarine. He thought that it could be used to plant torpedoes beneath a war vessel. The Civil War navies had begun to explore this avenue of underwater warfare with the Hunley and Housatonic, but George Baker seemed to foretell the Navy Seals of the two twentieth century world wars. He thought his submarine could also be used to locate wrecks. It would assist the explorations of divers by using a powerful electric light that threw a bright light a distance of sixteen feet when the boat was under water. The light was manipulated from an iron projection from the top of the boat known as a conning tower. Baker described it further by saying, “The tower is much the size and shape of a stiff hat and is provided with peep-holes on all sides, the glass being heavy plate an inch thick.”
On Saturday, April 2, 1892, George Baker conducted an experimental run of his submarine in the River Rouge near the exposition grounds. He had counted on fifteen and a half feet of water, but heavy northeast winds had blown for at least a day before the trial and the wooden submarine scraped on the bottom when it submerged. Undaunted, Baker planned another trial for the following week. On April 29, 1892, he ran a successful trial with Goddard, his construction foreman. They submerged the Baker Boat for an hour and fifty minutes in the River Rouge.
The editor of Western Electric accompanied George Baker and Goddard, his foreman, on the second trial of the Baker Boat on May 20, 1892 in the River Rouge. After the trial, the editor wrote, “Some little difficulty was found in depth keeping, however, and this was perhaps the chief fault of the boat. The twin propellers with their every-way gearing are distinctly novel and the Baker is on the whole a great credit to her inventor.”
In June 1892, according to the New York Times, Commodore William Folger Chief of the Bureau or Ordnance at Washington has instructed W. Scott Simms inventor of the Simms-Edison torpedo boat to try out the submarine boat invented and built in Detroit by George Baker. Acting on the recommendation of Commodore Folger, Mr. Sims visited Detroit on June 25, 1892, to meet George Baker and inspect his torpedo boat. Mr. Sims said that Commodore Folger believed that the combination of his torpedo and George Baker’s boat would make a perfect destroyer for the American Navy.
Mr.Sims couldn’t inspect the Baker Boat because it was being repaired, but George Baker impressed Mr. Sims. Mr. Sims said that George Baker had “the first boat that has been made to ride on an even keel…It is navigable, easily controlled, and of a powerful structure.”
By late 1893, the Navy Department had opened a new competition for a submarine torpedo boat. George Baker already had produced an operational submarine, so he seemed to be a lap ahead in the contest with John P. Holland of the John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company to win a contract to furnish the first operational submarine to the U.S. Navy. John Holland was the better known inventor and in July 1893, the New York Times declared Holland the winner of the competition. The Navy was much slower to favor Holland, because although he was better known that George Baker, Baker had a circle of friends in Washington D.C.
George Baker had finished building and testing his Baker Boat the year before and he could easily put her through sea trials on Lake Michigan for the Navy. Iowa Senator William B. Allison and Baker’s lawyer General C.N. Shelley, persuaded the Secretary of the Navy that the Navy should put the Baker Boat through its sea trials. In fairness to John Holland the Navy invited John Holland to sponsor a boat of his own. Holland objected to these tactics because Navy officials had told him that the Board had approved his design. He said that vandals had stripped his vessel and the cost of refitting her would be prohibitive. He said his boat company already was financially embarrassed because of the design competition and that the contest circular advertised only for designs, not completed ships competing against each other. The New York Times report of July 28, 1893 had announced that Holland had won. Was the Board changing its mind?
The Board replied that no newspaper in the country was the official organ of the Navy Department and that when an inventor like Baker produced a ship, the Navy could properly test her.
By mid September 1893, the Navy had completed its tests and the newspapers again announced that the Naval Board had recommended John Holland’s design over that of George Baker. Again politics ruled and other Washington officials delayed approving Holland design. The Holland Torpedo Boat Company took the risk of offering George Baker $200,000 worth of Holland Company stock in exchange for Baker assigning his patents “free of all encumbrances to the Holland interests.”
George Baker kept politically maneuvering and insisting that the navy test his submarine before building one from John Holland’s design. Although Holland was still considered the winner of the competition, George Baker managed to delay construction of the Holland submarine. In March 1894, George Baker traveled to Washington D.C. to confer with Naval officials about securing the $250,000 that Congress had designated to build a submarine boat. He suffered an attack of appendicitis and died on March 23, 1894.
George’s family brought his body back to Des Moines, Iowa, on the train and an escort of Civil War veterans from The Crocker Post escorted him to the church and then to the Woodland Cemetery in Des Moines. His obituary said the Governor’s Guards fired a final volley for “a brave soldier, a good man, a tried & true friend, a man of courage, integrity and genius who lived as he died, honored, respected & loved by all who knew him.
In March 1895, the government awarded the contact to the Holland Torpedo Boat Company. But George Baker, his submarine dream, and his trials in the River Rouge made the Holland Torpedo Boat Company’s success possible.
References
Burgoyne, Alan. Submarine Navigation: Past and Present. E.P, Dutton & Company, New York, 1903.
Morris, Richard Knowles. John P. Holland; Inventor of the Modern Submarine. University of South Carolina Press, 1998.
Detroit Free Press, January 6, 1892
Detroit Free Press, July 6, 1892
Des Moines Leader, April 16, 1892. “Baker’s War Boat.”
Endnote
A few years after I wrote this article, I received a comment from J.C. Davis, a fellow researcher / This is what he had to say about the Detroit Boat Company and the Detroit Engine Works. I forget exactly what year it was when I found out about George Bakers submarine but it had to be shortly after I first posted my Detroit Engine Works website in 1998. As you can probably guess I have a lot of time in researching for my website and when I came across the Baker submarine I was just blown away that someone had built something like this way back then. Then when I came across a short article by one of the Chicago news papers that stated the Detroit Boat Co. was the one building this submarine for Mr Baker I thought wow! how great is this. The Detroit Boat Co. was owned and operated by the same management as Detroit Engine Works. I thought I'm going to post this great piece of history and story on my website. As I did a little more research I found a problem something was not right, the time line did not work as Detroit Boat Co. first started their business around 1906. The Chicago news article I found was dated around 1891. George Bakers submarine patent was dated Dec 4, 1894. The research started again. This is when I discovered there was two different companies, Detroit Boat Company and Detroit Boat Works. DBW was incorporated in 1890 and also located on Jefferson Ave in Detroit Michigan. It appears that back then (1890's) the company was being called DBC or DBW did not really matter because there was only one Detroit boat company or works. So the confusion started in 1906 when the second company came to life owned by Detroit Engine Works/ Wadsworth manufacturing Co. I really wished Detroit Engine Works/ Detroit Boat Co. was some how involved with the George Baker submarine but it just does not appear to be so. That was my question to you, where did you get the info about Detroit Boat Co. and Detroit Engine Works being part of the baker sub? However, it appears that the Free Press might have confused the two companies and I erroneously chose the incorrect company. If that is indeed the case, I apologize for the error. Here is a link to his website: ww.antiquengines.com/Detroit_Engine_Works_Menu.htm |
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