used this information for the construction of the vessel with which in
the early part of the seventeenth century he carried out some
experiments on the Thames. It is doubtful, however, whether van
Drebbel's boat was ever entirely submerged, and the voyage with which he
was credited, from Westminster to Greenwich, is supposed to have been
made in an awash condition, with the head of the inventor above the
surface. More than one writer at the time referred to van Drebbel's boat
and endeavored to explain the apparatus by which his rowers were enabled
to breathe under water.

Van Drebbel died in 1634, and no illustration of his boat has been
discovered. Nineteen years later the vessel illustrated here was
constructed at Rotterdam from the designs of a Frenchman named de Son.
This is supposed to be the earliest illustration of any submarine, and
the inscription under the drawing, which was printed at Amsterdam in the
Calverstraat, (in the Three Crabs,) is in old Dutch, of which the
following is a translation:

The inventor of this ship will undertake to destroy in a
single day a hundred vessels, and such destruction could not
be prevented by fire, storm, bad weather, or the force of the
waves, saving only that the Almighty should otherwise will it.

[Illustration: The figures on the drawing refer to the following
explanations:

1. The beam wherewith power shall be given to the ship.

2. The rudder of the ship, somewhat aft.