Narcís Monturiol i Estarriol

Narcís Monturiol Estarriol (28 September 1819 – 6 September 1885) was a Spanish Catalan engineer, artist and intellectual. He was the inventor of the first combustion engine driven submarine, which was propelled by an early form of air-independent propulsion.

Biography

Monturiol never practiced law, instead turning his talents to writing and publishing, setting up a publishing company in 1846, the same year he married his wife Emilia. He produced a series of journals and pamphlets espousing his radical beliefs in feminism, pacifism, and utopian communism. He also founded the newspaper La Madre de Familia, in which he promised "to defend women from the tyranny of men" and La Fraternidad, Spain's first communist newspaper.

Monturiol's friendship with Abdó Terrades led him to join the Republican Party and his circle of friends included such names as musician Josep Anselm Clavé, engineer Ildefons Cerdà, and reformist Ildefons Cerdà. Monturiol also became an enthusiastic follower of the utopian thinker and socialist Étienne Cabet; he popularised Cabet's ideas through La Fraternidad and produced a Spanish translation of his novel, Voyage en Icarie. A circle formed round La Fraternidad raised enough money for one of them to travel to Cabet's utopian community, Icaria.

Following the revolutions of 1848 one of his publications was suppressed by the government and he was forced into a brief exile in France. When he returned to Barcelona in 1849, the government curtailed his publishing activities, and he turned his attention to science and engineering instead.

A stay in Cadaqués allowed him to observe the dangerous job of coral harvesters where he even witnessed the death of a man who drowned while performing this job. This prompted him to think of submarine navigation and in September 1857 he went back to Barcelona and organized the first commercial society in Spain dedicated to the exploration of submarine navigation with the name of Monturiol, Font, Altadill y Cia. and a capital of 10,000 pesetas.

In 1858 Monturiol presented his project in a scientific thesis titled The Ictineo or fish-ship. The first dive of his first submarine, Ictineo I, took place on September 1859 in the harbour of Barcelona.

Ictineo I

Ictineo I had dimensions of 7 x 2.5 x 3.5 m (l x b x d) and its intended use was to ease the harvest of coral. The internal water-tight hull was of cïrcular cross-section to resist hydrostatic pressure and had 7 m³ volume, while the outer hull was streamlined (fish-shaped), roughly an ellipsoid of circular section. There is a very remote possibility that it was inspired by the prototype Brandtaucher of Wilhelm Bauer that had already sailed in 1851; Brandtaucher is now in the German Military History Museum in Dresden. The revolutionary idea of the inner pressure-resistant hull and outer hydrodynamic one was brought forth for the first time ever. Between the two hulls there were water ballast tanks, a tank that supplied oxygen for breathing and illumination and an hydrogen tank that supplied an oxyhydric lamp for illuminating the water depths. The Ictineo I employed a flat blade propeller powered by a crew of four men.

Immersion was achieved by means of a horizontal helix that could turn in both senses and water and air pumps for the purposes of ensuring stability and flotation. The prow was equipped with a set of tools suited to the harvest of coral since this was the original purpose of the submersible.

The partial success of this dive brought popular enthusiasm but no support from the government. As a result, Monturiol wrote a letter to the nation and encouraged a popular subscription which raised 300,000 pesetas from citizens of mainland Spain and Cuba.

With the money obtained, the company La Navegación Submarina was formed with the objective of developing the Ictineo II.

A modern replica of the Ictineo I stands in the garden entrance to the Marine Museum in Barcelona.

Ictineo II

Ictineo II was launched on 2 October 1864 and was the first successful combustion-powered submarine. Indeed it was the first submarine to overcome the basic problems of machine powered underwater navigation. It had dimensions of 14 m x 2 m x 3 m (l x b x d) with 46 tonnes of displacement and 29 m³ capacity. It was built with olive tree wood with oak reinforcements and a 2 millimeter thick copper layer. On its upper side it had a deck 1,3 meters wide and a hatch with three glazed portholes of 200 mm diameter and 100 mm thick glass blocks. From the conning tower the helm could be steered by means of an endless screw gear. Four sealed compartments of 8 m³ were symmetrically located on each side and guaranteed buoyancy when they were empty. These compartments could be flooded at will to submerge. Surfacing was achieved by injecting air into the compartments with a pump. A weight could be moved longitudinally along a rail in order to control pitch while diving. This weight was remotely controlled by the engine driver. The submarine also had an escape mechanism that allowed to jettison the ballast and surface in case of emergency.

The most important invention of Monturiol was the anaerobic engine of Ictineo II together with the solution to the problem of oxygen supply in an hermetic container. The engine employed a chemical mix of manganese peroxide, zinc and potassium chlorate that reacted, generating the temperature needed for the production of steam and produced gaseous oxygen which, was collected in exhaust tanks and used afterwards for breathing and illumination purposes.

Due to financial problems, Ictineo II was sold as scrap in 1868. A replica can be seen at the harbour of Barcelona.

No other submarine employed an anaerobic propulsion system until 1940 when the German Navy tested a system employing the same principles, the Walter turbine, on the experimental V-80 submarine and later on the Type XVII submarines. The problem of air independent propulsion was finally solved with the invention of the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus.

Other inventions from Monturiol include a process to speed up the manufacturing of adhesive paper which he used when he was named director of the National Stamp Factory in Madrid.

Monturiol died in Barcelona in 1885. Spain honored him on a postage stamp in 1987 (purportedly his death centenary; the reason for the discrepancy is unclear).

References

• Stewart, Matthew Monturiol's Dream: The Extraordinary Story of the Submarine Inventor Who Wanted to Save the World. Profile Books Ltd..
• Editorial Ramón Sopena; Diccionario Enciclopédico Ilustrado 1962

External links

• Monturiol, a forgotten submariner; by Thomas Holian in Undersea Warfare