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Early Submarines: Topics in Chronicling America

Search Strategies & Selected Articles

The links below provide access to a sampling of articles from historic newspapers that can be found in Chronicling America. You can further explore the topic of "Early Submarines" using the following search strategies:

  • Use the following terms in combination, proximity, or as a phrase:
    John Phillip Holland, Lusitania, Navy Department, Submarine, submersible, torpedo, U-Boat.
  • It is important to use a specific date range if looking for articles for a particular event in order to narrow your results. Many of the top search results pertain directly to World War I, so to find anything earlier you may want to restrict the dates in your search.
  • There was a wild variation in terms applied to early submarines prior to the emergence of submarine as the consensus term. Early submarines were often called submersibles, torpedo boats, torpedo rams, submarine torpedo boats, aquatic machines, cigar boats, and turtles.
  • Including the name of component parts of a submarine such as the ballast or periscope can yield more results because the names of many components were standardized before submarine became the standard appellation for a submersible naval vessel.

Selected Articles from Chronicling America