Found in the Sound
May 13—Divers discover wreck of submarine off Old Saybrook
Editor's note: In addition to the sources cited, this story was drawn from "Going Deep" by Lawrence Goldstone, the files of the Submarine Force Museum and the archives of The Day.
The object shown on two marine surveys was long, cylindrical and unidentified. It wasn't the only mysterious thing on the bottom of Long Island Sound, but it was the right size and shape.
Richard Simon, a commercial diver who works out of Noank and New London, had been studying sonar and bathymetric surveys and eliminating other objects from consideration. This one appeared to be what he was looking for.
Last month, Simon and a team from his company, Shoreline Diving Services, went to a spot off Old Saybrook, and about 200 feet down they made a spectacular discovery: the wreck of a submarine.
The shape on the surveys was the remains of an experimental vessel from the early 20th century called Defender. Not a Navy boat, it was the product of a Connecticut inventor who played a role in early submarine development.
Simon Lake, who lived most of his life in Milford, was an engineer and naval architect who started making submarines in the 1890s. He held more than 200 patents and had a Bridgeport shipyard where he built 26 submarines for the Navy.
Defender wasn't one of them, but it still has a place in maritime history. Its curious story is largely about things that might have happened but didn't. Defender might have been the lead ship in a Navy submarine class. It might have been a pioneering salvage vessel. It might have sailed for the North Pole.
Simon, 35, said he had long known the obscure vessel was somewhere in the sound. Twenty years ago, he saw a list of undiscovered local wrecks, and Defender was the only submarine among them. Intrigued, he wanted to find it.
"We just started looking one day," he said.
After researching how the boat went down and making preparatory dives, Simon's team went out on April 14. He said they threw a grappling hook into the water and tried unsuccessfully to catch it on the wreck. Two days later they went back, dropping a line with a shot weight. Then two divers swam down and circled the area.
Five minutes into the search, there it was: Defender appeared in murky water, rising 12 feet from the bottom and resting on its port side.
The 93-foot vessel was still where it had landed 77 years ago when, long after outliving its potential, it was unceremoniously scuttled.
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The unlikely journey of Defender
The experimental submarine was rejected by the Navy in 1907.
For 40 years, it wandered Long Island Sound looking for a purpose.
Originally named Lake, the sub is launched at Newport News, Va., in 1906
Graphic: Scott Ritter/The Day — Photo Courtesy Library of Congress
Defender's unlikely journey
Originally named Lake, the submarine is launched at Newport News, Va., in 1906
New London
6
Old Saybrook
The experimental sub was rejected by the U.S. Navy in 1907. For 40 years, it wandered Long Island Sound looking for a purpose.
Graphic: Scott Ritter/The Day — Photo Courtesy Library of Congress
Simon Lake hadn't been able to sell his submarines to the Navy like his famous rival, John Holland. Fed up after several rejections, Lake went to Europe, where he made customers of Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary.
But in 1906 he found a reason to again try his luck at home. Congress had sharply increased its appropriation for submarine construction to $500,000. That was thanks largely to Theodore Roosevelt, who championed the undersea vessels after becoming the first president to ride in one.
From Europe, Lake decided to pursue the money. He designed a boat and, at his own expense, had it built by Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. The vessel, eventually known as Defender, was first called Simon Lake XV, then just Lake.
When the Navy secretary ordered competitive trials, with a contract on the line, Lake was all in. His new vessel would be up against one from Electric Boat, which had not yet arrived in Groton. Before the trials, Roosevelt upped the stakes by pushing for an even higher appropriation of $3 million.
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Losing out
May 1907: Lake loses Navy trials to Electric Boat's Octupus, shown at left, off of Newport, R.I., in Narragansett Bay; is soon after renamed Defender
Graphic: Scott Ritter/The Day — Photo Courtesy Mystic Seaport Museum
Losing out
May 1907: Lake loses Navy trials to Electric Boat's Octupus, above, off of Newport, R.I., in Narragansett Bay; is soon after renamed Defender
Graphic: Scott Ritter/The Day — Photo Courtesy Mystic Seaport Museum
The competition between Lake's self-named submarine and EB's Octopus was hyped by the press, one newspaper calling it an "aquatic battle royal." In May 1907 in Narragansett Bay, a Navy trial board judged each boat on speed, diving and other factors.
Things didn't go well for the Lake, which accidentally broached the surface 18 times.
"They had a great deal of difficulty in getting it to submerge, and then once it was submerged it tended to want to pop to the surface," said submarine historian David Johnston.
In virtually every category, the Lake was outclassed.
"It is the unanimous opinion of this board that the Octopus is the superior boat," the Navy's report said.
The Lake appeared to be finished, and it mostly disappeared from history for the next two decades. But it would get another shot with the Navy.
Six survivors trapped in the sunken submarine S-4 could communicate with the outside by tapping on the hull in Morse code.
"Is there any hope?" they asked.
But they ran out of oxygen while waiting to be saved. A howling storm had delayed the rescue.
The loss of S-4 in December 1927 was the latest in a series of submarine accidents that focused the Navy's attention on rescue and salvage. By then, Lake's career building for the Navy had come and gone. But he saw an opportunity.
Just after his boat had lost the 1907 trials, Lake converted it to a salvage vessel with an escape hatch for divers and wheels on the keel. He renamed it Defender and conducted experiments.
In one, Defender went to the bottom of Long Island Sound and settled next to a sunken coal barge. Lake exited the hatch and, by telephone, directed the submergence of a cargo sub he had invented, which retrieved 15 tons of coal with a pump.
Much later, in 1928, Lake refitted Defender again for rescuing trapped submariners and contracted with the Navy for tests. The idea was to give divers an undersea base so they could work in all weather.
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A new role?
1928: Defender is retrofitted as a salvage boat in Bridgeport after the S-4 disaster; the following year, the sub undergoes Navy salvage tests at Block Island, R.I.
Late 1929: Defender is laid up at the Thames Shipyard in New London (pictured left)
Thames Shipyard New London
Block Island
Bridgeport
Graphic: Scott Ritter/The Day — Photo Courtesy Submarine Force Museum
A new role?
1928: Defender is retrofitted as a salvage boat in Bridgeport after the S-4 disaster; the following year, the sub undergoes Navy salvage tests at Block Island, R.I.
Late 1929: Defender is laid up at the Thames Shipyard in New London (pictured above)
Thames Shipyard New London
Block Island
Graphic: Scott Ritter/The Day — Photo Courtesy Submarine Force Museum
As the Navy watched, Defender spent the summer of 1929 at Great Salt Pond on Block Island, where a diver practiced exiting the sub underwater and working to raise a sunken pontoon.
Lake and his business partner, a former Navy skipper named Sloan Danenhower, had an associate: a publisher and promoter named George Palmer Putnam, who brought the tests some publicity.
In July Putnam arrived with his future wife, aviator Amelia Earhart, who a year earlier had become the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane. She dived from Defender's escape hatch, then recounted the adventure in "Cosmopolitan."
"When we flew across the Atlantic, much water was beneath us," Earhart wrote. "... But now I have experienced something new. I have been under the water, looking up!"
But there was strife behind the headlines. The tests had been delayed by a severed hawser, which caused anger and suspicion. Danenhower and the Navy supervisor fought and had to go to Washington to resolve their differences. Then the Navy ended the tests before Defender could perform in rough weather.
Despite Lake and Danenhower's protests, Defender was again judged a failure.
If the Navy was through with the vessel, Lake and Danenhower weren't. Even before Block Island, they were talking of using it for a voyage to the North Pole. Defender would travel beneath the polar ice, which had never been done.
"A superstructure of steel beams will enable the Defender to crash through the ice to come up for air," enthused "Popular Science Monthly."
But by 1930, even its owners had to admit Defender wasn't the sub for the job. Instead they adapted a decommissioned Navy boat, O-12. Renamed Nautilus and captained by Danenhower, it carried explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins farther north than any vessel had gone but failed to reach the pole.
Then Lake decided to use Defender to explore an 18th-century frigate that had sunk in Hell Gate, near New York City. Legend had it there was gold aboard. But the plan fell through.
After that, Defender was parked at Thames Shipyard in New London with no real purpose. By 1932 the boat was leaking and had to be hauled out for repairs. The following year it was auctioned, apparently because Lake couldn't pay the storage bill. The shipyard bought it for $500.
If Defender wasn't up to its past challenges, it turned out to be good at surviving. In 1937 Danenhower bought the boat back and moved it from a Thames River mud bank to a shipyard in Shaw's Cove, where it was to be scrapped.
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Under water
December 1937: Defender is moved to Shaw's Cove in New London (pictured left) to be scrapped
January 1939: Defender is towed to Noank, where it sinks
1944: Defender is towed to Old Lyme, where it sinks in a hurricane
Shaw's Cove
Noank
Old Lyme
Graphic: Scott Ritter/The Day — Photo Courtesy Submarine Force Museum
Under water
December 1937: Defender is moved to Shaw's Cove in New London (pictured above) to be scrapped
January 1939: Defender is towed to Noank, where it sinks
1944: Defender is towed to Old Lyme, where it sinks in a hurricane
Shaw's Cove
Noank
Old Lyme
Graphic: Scott Ritter/The Day — Photo Courtesy Submarine Force Museum
For reasons unknown, that didn't happen, and in 1939 Danenhower had the boat towed to still another yard, in Noank. It sat there, partially submerged, until 1944, when it was towed to the Connecticut River in Old Lyme, where Danenhower lived on a lightship. The sub arrived just in time to sink in the Great Atlantic Hurricane that September.
Defender sat on the bottom for a year, outlasting its inventor, who died in 1945. Deemed a hazard to navigation, the boat was raised by the Army Corps of Engineers and towed to Old Saybrook. Even Danenhower was done with it by then, but it attracted curiosity seekers.
Finally, on Feb. 12, 1946, engineers took the tired old vessel in tow, brought it into the sound, and watched as it filled with water and disappeared.
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Laid to rest
1945: Defender is raised from the Connecticut River and towed to Old Saybrook
February 1946: Defender is scuttled off Old Saybrook
Old Saybrook
Graphic: Scott Ritter/The Day — News Clip: The Day
Laid to rest
1945: Defender is raised from the Connecticut River and towed to Old Saybrook
February 1946: Defender is scuttled off Old Saybrook
Old Saybrook
Graphic: Scott Ritter/The Day — News Clip: The Day
Seventy-seven years, two months and four days later, the hull was covered with yellow sea flora when it was lit up by recreational diving lights. Steve Abbate and Joe Mazraani had just descended from Simon's vessel, R/V Integrity.
"I was surprised how intact the sub actually was," said Abbate, noting the hull was visible 15 feet in either direction from where the lights were shining.
The divers swam the length of the vessel over the starboard side. They saw port holes and the conning tower, and confirmed that the bow shape and other features matched Lake's design.
"Finding any shipwreck that no one has been on before, not many people have had that honor," said Abbate, who turned 60 the day after the dive. "It was a heck of a birthday present to find the sub."
Simon believes that while raising Defender is technically possible, it would be prohibitively expensive.
"I'd love to see it sit at (Mystic) Seaport or at the sub museum, but I don't think that's a reality," he said.
Instead he plans to document the vessel before releasing its exact position and is working with the state archaeologist. He's also researching the boat and plans to share all he finds with the public.
"It's all of our history," he said. "You think about New London and Groton. In my opinion we're the submarine capital of the world."
