Found Missing Sub!
Click to enlarge. =)
This wooden sub is outside the Maritime Museum in Barcelona, Spain–a visit that I totally recommend if you’re ever in town. It was designed in the 1860s and held six people. A later design by the same inventor held 30 people, had lateral stabilisers, gauze filters to freshen the interior breathing air, and even a net and ‘poker’ on the bow for scraping coral samples off underwater reefs! I’m quite sure this helped inspire Jules Verne, not to mention George Dunning who animated the Beatles’ famous movie. The windows are rather minimal, in fact you’d get a better view from a deep sea diving suit. And of course, this was all before my namesake Morgan Robertson invented the periscope. But the rudder and propellor are excellent. All it lacked was a couple of hydrogen balloons to make it a dual purpose, go-anywhere radical steampunk ride!
Geez… what sort of “manouvers” could have run this thing a-ground in the middle of the city?!?!
Beech
Wow, that is cool.
Conspiracy theories abound.
Maybe the song gets a rewrite…’Seems she ran aground, on a sandbar, in a playground”
Is that a replica of the U.S. Civil war sub that sank all the blockade ships that they found off the coast a few years back?
Nice one Thomas where did you find it ?
Looks like that would float rather than dive.
I bet you’d like to take that home with you, Thomas, woodn’t you?
Woodn’t that look noice beside the lifeboat.
Hee hee!
Kara, admirer of cool stuff!
Not so much steam punk sub, as wood punk?? LOL
Here’s an idea for a competition… How many span tins can you fit inside it?
Andrew
She’s a real beauty. I wonder how did they keep getting fresh air into those types of subs? Without a fresh oxygen supply I would think they would run out of air fairly quickly. Hmmm.
Looking at the picture again, I’m noticing that there is a rudder that leads to the top at the stern. Was there a way to steer it from inside?
A vintage sub!! Excellent.
I wonder how it stayed watertight, though
I’ll be sure to check it out if I somehow end up in Barcelona
Monica
Kind of like a big barrel, isn’t it! Except that it was built to keep
liquid out, not in!
Awesome photo, Thomas (and photographer)–thanks for posting
it for us!
Peace and waterproofing,
Kara
Holy Moly,
All that brightwork to keep up! Is this outside ALL of the time? somebody is going to need Rebecca J. Wittman’s teriffic book on maintaining brightwork. http://www.amazon.com/Brightwork-Companion-Tried-True-Strongly/dp/0071422773/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208139313&sr=1-1
This project would require the attention of someone who’s idea of Zen is forever carefully massaging Mahogany or White Oak and the endless yearly coats Epifanes that something like this would require. It would be fun, but after doing it, I’d want to hide very far from any kind of UV rays. Maybe a special bubble made by Foster Grant might work.
What a piece of engineering this is…beautiful! It almost looks like you could tap it and get some great root beer out of it!
I don’t think I’d like to be a crewman, though. Talk about claustrophobia.
Like 80sGeek I’m curious about how the vessel was kept watertight. What did they use to bring light into the vessel? Seems like if they used kerosene that the air would become fouled. How deep could a vessel of this type submerge?
Strangely, there’s [genuinely] a nuclear submarine parked outside my house this morning.
HMS Sceptre = NOT MISSING
I think Wes Anderson was inspired in this sub for his film Aquatic Life! Did you see the little sub in that movie?