Holland Torpedo Boat Company Station

The Holland Torpedo Boat Company Station

In late 1898 American inventor and submarine pioneer John P. Holland was exhausted from the nearly unrelenting activity needed to get his submarine, the Holland VI, ready for U.S. Navy trials. Needing an influx of capital to continue to fund the tests and realizing that a full production capability was needed to build follow-on units should the Holland VI be accepted, Holland agreed to have his Holland Torpedo Boat Company acquired by the newly formed Electric Boat Company. EB was the brainchild of Isaac Rice, a New York City capitalist who was eager to explore the potential of submarines in naval operations. HTBC was to be a wholly owned subsidiary of EB with John Holland as its general manager and financier Elihu B. Frost as Secretary-Treasurer.

Holland under tow to the New Suffolk station, summer 1899

Holland, never the savvy business man, was further exhausted by all the machinations of the business world and decided that he needed a break to rejuvenate his energies. He set off for his native homeland Ireland, looking for a good rest. Nearly as soon as Holland's passenger ship cleared New York Harbor, Rice set in motion a plan to move the Holland VI and most of the HTBC subsidiary to a new facility on Little Peconic Bay, Long Island at a little town called New Suffolk. Rice leased the Goldsmith & Tuthill Boat Yard along First Street in New Suffolk and set up a dedicated maintenance and storage facility, along with a machine shop and a draftsman's shop. The new yard had a hook shaped stone rip-rap breakwater that formed a small protected basin that would provide docking space for the Holland VI and any potential follow-on sister craft. Accommodations were acquired in the town for the company's personnel, including Holland and Frost. The new facility was not a construction yard, as it lacked the space for building ways. The Holland VI's construction had been sub-contracted to Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard at Elizabeth, NJ, and it was likely that follow-on boats would be built there as well. The New Suffolk station was for final fitting out and testing.

HTBC employees in front of the machine shop, circa 1900. Note how the rooftop sign was worded here. Compare to the later picture below.

The move of the HTBC subsidiary to New Suffolk without Holland's knowledge was actually one of a series of Machiavellian business moves by Rice, who sought total control of the company and was seeking to move Holland out of the way, literally and figuratively. Holland had already signed over his patents to Electric Boat in a move to raise capital for continued tests and future construction. However, there was also a very practical reason for the move as well. The previous testing areas for the Holland boat had been in Raritan Bay off Staten Island, NY and Perth Amboy, NJ near the Crescent building yard. Inevitably, the trials of the submarine garnered tremendous interest from the press and the New York City public alike and the submarine was often accompanied by a plethora of pleasure craft, making it potentially dangerous to operate the boat submerged. The move to rural New Suffolk gave the company a reasonably private operating area to test the boat in, and it kept it from the bulk of the prying eyes of the press.

The trials of the Holland VI on Great Peconic Bay were entirely successful and after a haulout for minor modifications and repairs at Greenport, NY and one more trial run the boat was finally purchased by the Navy in April, 1900 and commissioned as the Holland in October. Electric Boat, however, was already looking to the future. Entirely at their own expense they contracted with Crescent Shipyard to build a larger and improved version of the Holland, with the intent of using her as a demonstration model for seven copies that Rice was working diligently to get the Navy to purchase. This new boat, called Fulton, was quickly moved to New Suffolk for testing and demonstration trials. The Fulton trials were entirely successful and they cleared the bureaucratic logjam around the authorization for the seven Adder-class submarines, five of which quickly followed the Fulton to New Suffolk (two of them were built in San Francisco).

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  The EB/HTBC facility at New Suffolk. The tug Kelpie is in the foreground, with the hulk of the 1895 Plunger moored ahead of it. In the background a several of the Adder-class submarines. Note the sign on the roof of the machine shop/draftsman's shop.
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  Several of the Adder-class boats moored at the northern corner of the basin. Moccasin (Submarine No. 5) is in the right background.
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  A view looking back from about half-way down the quay wall. Adder (Submarine No. 3) is in the background.

Fulton, Adder, Plunger, Moccasin, Porpoise, and Shark were joined in New Suffolk by a company owned tugboat called the Kelpie, which accompanied the boats as they made their initial trial runs in Great Peconic Bay. In addition, the hulk of a never completed steam powered submarine contracted to Holland's company in 1895 (also called the Plunger) was towed up to the station and moored to the quay wall inside the basin. Sleepy little New Suffolk became a busy and prosperous place for several years, with the new Adder-class submarines arriving regularly and trials being run out in the bay. New Suffolk was far enough away from New York City to keep the public and press at bay, but Rice was savvy enough to understand the advantages of getting favorable publicity and thus selected members of the press were often invited out to view the comings and goings around the station. The nearby southern shore of Long Island was also becoming a popular destination for summer vacations of the New York elite, and thus viewing the submarine movements became a favored pastime for Rice's urban colleagues. In addition, many high ranking Naval officers visited the site to see how the boats performed. Of course, the town played host to the incoming crews of the new submarines.

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