Documents highlight early work of submarine inventor

A VAST collection of historic documents which sheds light on the early work in Cork of submarine inventor John Phillip Holland was presented to the country’s maritime college yesterday.

The Edward M Graf collection details how Christian Brother John Phillip made his first drawings of his submarine while a teacher at Cork’s North Monastery secondary school. It also details how he carried out the first submerged experiments with scale models and explosives in the school’s ornamental pond in 1858 and later in the Lee. The wooden models were built by the North Mon’s renowned science teacher, Br Burke.

John Phillip Holland is acknowledged as the father of the modern submarine. He designed vessels at the turn of the century for the American, British, Dutch and Japanese governments.