Submarine Engineer
Simon Lake was one of the most original and persistent submarine pioneers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a man whose ideas were often far ahead of the technology, funding, and naval doctrine of his time. He was born in 1866 in Pleasantville, New Jersey, into a family that encouraged mechanical curiosity. As a boy he became fascinated with Jules Verne’s novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Captain Nemo’s submarine made a lasting impression on him. Unlike many readers, Lake did not treat the book purely as fantasy. He began sketching his own underwater vessels while still in his teens and resolved to turn the idea into reality.
Lake studied engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology, one of the leading engineering schools in the United States, though financial difficulties prevented him from completing a formal degree. This did not stop him from becoming an engineer in practice. He was largely self-taught, learning through experimentation, trial, failure, and constant refinement of his designs. In the 1890s he began building experimental submarines at his own expense, driven more by conviction than commercial backing. His early work focused on creating submarines that could operate safely on the seabed as well as underwater, reflecting his belief that submarines would be valuable for exploration, salvage, and commercial purposes, not only for warfare.
His first successful submarine, the Argonaut, was launched in 1897. It was designed to travel along the ocean floor on wheels and included features that were revolutionary for the time, such as a lock-out chamber that allowed divers to exit and re-enter the vessel while submerged. Lake personally took the Argonaut on voyages along the Atlantic coast, even navigating beneath the surface from Norfolk, Virginia to New York, proving that submarines could be practical working vessels rather than fragile experiments. These voyages brought him public attention but not the sustained financial or naval support he needed.
By the turn of the century, Lake had founded the Lake Torpedo Boat Company and was refining submarine technology further. In 1902 he developed what is widely regarded as the world’s first practical collapsible periscope for submarines. Earlier submarines either had no effective means of seeing the surface while submerged or relied on fixed viewing tubes that limited depth and flexibility. Lake’s collapsible periscope could be raised and lowered, allowing a submarine to remain deeper and safer while still observing the surface. This invention significantly improved situational awareness and survivability for submarines and became a standard feature in submarine design worldwide. The periscope exemplified Lake’s approach to engineering: simple in principle, mechanically sound, and focused on solving real operational problems.
Lake went on to design and build numerous submarines for the United States Navy and for foreign governments, including Russia and Germany. His Lake-class submarines incorporated double hulls, improved ballast systems, better control surfaces, and greater underwater endurance. Many of these features influenced later submarine construction, even when his specific designs were not adopted wholesale. Despite his contributions, Lake often found himself overshadowed by his contemporary John Philip Holland, whose designs were favored by the U.S. Navy. This rivalry was one of the great frustrations of Lake’s career, as he believed, with some justification, that his boats were safer and more versatile.
Beyond military submarines, Lake remained committed to the idea of undersea exploration and commercial use. He designed submersibles intended for Arctic exploration, seabed mining, and salvage operations. He proposed ambitious plans for underwater research stations and even undersea transport long before such ideas became technologically feasible. Many of these projects never progressed beyond drawings or prototypes, largely due to lack of funding, but they demonstrate how broadly Lake thought about the future of underwater technology.
In later life, Lake continued to invent and write. He published articles and books explaining submarine technology and advocating for greater investment in undersea research. During the First World War, his expertise was more widely recognized, and he served as a consultant on submarine matters. However, he never achieved the level of wealth or fame that his innovations might suggest. Much of his career was marked by financial struggle and disappointment, tempered by the knowledge that many of his ideas had quietly become standard practice.
Simon Lake died in 1945, just as submarines were proving their decisive importance in the Second World War, a development that validated much of what he had argued decades earlier. In later years, historians and naval engineers increasingly acknowledged his role as a foundational figure in submarine development. He is remembered today as an inventive, stubborn, and visionary engineer whose collapsible periscope, seabed-operating submarines, and insistence on practical underwater navigation helped shape modern submarine design. Although he did not always receive recognition during his lifetime, his legacy lives on every time a submarine raises a periscope to observe the surface while remaining hidden below.
