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Brutus de Villeroi (1794-1874) was a French engineer of the 19th century, born in the city of Nantes, who developed some of the first operational submarines, and the first submarine of the United States Navy, the USS ''Alligator'' in 1862.
The "water bug" Nautilus (1833) In 1833, de Villeroi completed a "water bug" submarine, apparently named "Nautilus" in reference to the 1800 submarine created by Robert Fulton. The submarine was 10' 6" long by 27" high by 25" wide and displaced about six tons when submerged. She was equipped with eight dead-lights on top to provide interior light, and a top hatch with a retractable conning tower for surface navigation. For propulsion, she had three sets of duck-foot paddles and a large rudder. She was also equipped with a hatches with leather seals in order to make some manipulations outside of hull, a small ballast system with a lever and piston, and a 50 lb anchor. The ship had a complement of three men. This submarine was demonstrated at Fromentine, Noirmoutier, near Nantes, France, in 1833, and later to representatives of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1837. De Villeroi tried several times to sell his submarine designs to the French Navy (1832, 1855 and 1863), but he was apparently turned down every time. In 1842, Brutus de Villeroi was professor for drawing and mathematics at the Saint-Donatien college in Nantes, where Jules Verne was also a student. He may have inspired Verne's conceptual design for the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, although no direct link between the two men has been established. United States career During the late 1850s, Brutus de Villeroi went to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States, where he developed several submarines. He is recorded in a 1860 American census, where his occupation is described as "natural genius". Salvage submarine (1861) His first American submarine was built for salvage purposes, and it gained fame when it was seized on May 16 1861, by the suspicious Philadelphia police as it sailed up the Delaware River. Commander Henry K. Hoff, USN, wrote a report to Captain S.F. Dubont, Commanding Officer of Naval Station Philadelphia, describing the performance of the submarine and its interest to the Navy (Full text ): "In justice to Mr. De Villeroi we should state that the boat in question was constructed for salvage purposes and not for war uses, (for the latter, he proposes if his services are accepted by the Government to construct another on a larger scale whose greater capacity would afford additional facilities for the maneuvers of the men while it would also be provided with greatly increased power of propulsion) so that in the experiment we have considered the machine employed simple as a model to demonstrate the principles to be established by the inventor." (Letter by Henry K. Hoff, Commander, 1861) Brutus de Villeroi's next ship, the USS Alligator, would be largely inspired from this design. The USS Alligator (1862)
Later life In 1863, Brutus de Villeroi, after a dispute with his American associates, proposed his submarine design to the government of Napoleon III of France, but it was rejected as impractical and poorly researched. The French Navy was also already working on another design, Plongeur, with a compressed air engine, which was launched in 1863. De Villeroi remained in the United States and died of chronic bronchitis in 1874. He was buried in Philadelphia. Notes | ||||||||||
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