It reminds me of an obsession I had when I was young (maybe 12 or 13) where I kept iterating on a design for a mini-sub I had hoped to build. I must have checked out books on the history of the submarine about that time and became obsessed with the simplicity of the original Turtle submarine — operated with hand screws (propellers).

Likely too I saw a homemade sub or scuba tow on the odd Popular Mechanics cover....

I had read enough to incorporate a lead ballast that could be released from inside the sub. I imagined props and motors based around those electric trolling motors you can get for a small fishing boat. I therefore incorporated a car battery into the design. Front and rear ballast tanks allowed me to control the pitch trim. I imagined a small electric automotive tire pump would suffice to force the water out of the ballast tanks.

I obsessed over a mechanism to allow each trolling motor to be gimbaled from a pair of joysticks in the sub. I built mechanical models with paper drinking straws and toilet paper rolls to test the mechanics.

I played with different seating configurations to minimize the size of the sub but keep it "operatable".

It was a weird and impossible fantasy that never had a chance of moving beyond the drawing board stage. You know, especially for a kid with a single mother who was a secretary. But perhaps there was some intellectual and creative stimulation that I was feeding off at the time that made the effort worth it.

Thinking about it now though, how obsessive I was, it might also have spoke to a boredom, isolation and maybe sadness I felt at the time. The sub might have been an escape for me.

To see someone build a sub for real is kind of cool. But it also makes clear how likely my design would have just collapsed right away at about 10 feet depth. I mean, I planned on using plywood for the hull, ha ha.

Not a homemade submarine story but very much related.

When my dad was a teenager he saw a film by Jacques Cousteau, one of the coinventors of the first aqualung and became obsessed with the idea. He lived on a smallholding and had been taught to be self-reliant, so by borrowing his dad’s welding gear he made himself a home-made aqualung. But how to test it?

On the smallholding there was a water reservoir that was deep enough but when he tried it of course he had positive buoyancy so kept floating to the surface. Normal divers have a weight belt, but my dad decided to chain himself to a heavy wooden railway sleeper and just throw it in. So there he was, dragged to the bottom of the reservoir, chained to a railway sleeper with a semi-functioning home-made underwater breathing apparatus.

He must have escaped somehow but when he told the story he would just leave that part a mystery and he’s dead now so there’s no way of finding out.

When I worked for the Navy, we hosted a human-powered submarine race in one of the model basins where we normally tested new ship designs. Anyone could enter but it was mostly university engineering teams. It was great fun to see the homemade designs people came up with and built (and were willing to dive in!) - there some good ones but also some hilariously bad ones. A submarine that can be steered accurately under propulsion is harder to build than a lot of people realize. The most common failure arose from the assumption that a submarine will stay “upright,” forgetting that it can roll in the water (and will unless there is some control surface or ballast preventing it). Thankfully, it was a controlled environment with Navy divers on hand, so we didn’t lose anyone, but a few had to be pulled out.

Step 1: Build the submarine

Step 2: Don't go in the submarine

I went to college with a guy who said he was going to build a submarine. I thought it was a bit out there, but he was a driven guy.

40 years later I had a random call from his brother and asked about his sub dream. Turns out he not only built one, he built an entire company and his company has been building the SportSub for over 30 years now. Several hundred of them exist.

https://sportsub.com/

If I had 93000 USD laying around I might get one too.

Never stop dreaming.

I love the live translation for this talk, and others. Great work from C3 organizers.

Amazing detailed talk. Watched it with my dad, and we both loved the story telling and details. I do applaud the effort of building a pool to test the sub, when it was to far to the water.

When submarines were new, people were afraid to get in, and rightly so!

I enjoyed Kaj Leers “A History of Submarines” (1) podcast. Like a series of history lectures, each episode builds on the last.

I also recommend one of Kaj's sources, “The Submarine in War and Peace: Its Development and its Possibilities” (2). American inventor Simon Lake gives a first-hand account of early submarine development in America. The book's full of illustrations and stories of close calls.

1: https://open.spotify.com/show/27TmgN8qtNdLsP1ns9xrfr or https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-history-of-submarine...

2: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46382

P.S. Subnautica is what sparked my interest in submarines and remains the most immersive underwater survival-exploration game I’ve played.

Awesome to see this; hope they don't go to see the Titanic.

Reminds me of that deranged Danish murderer that built a submarine for undisturbed murder sessions :S sadly his victim did not survive that

Thanks for the pointer to this fantastic talk. The excitement, thoroughness and dedication they put into this project along with their entertaining presentation is wonderful.

Is there a way to mute the speaker while the translation audio is playing? I'm hearing both voices simultaneously, is that intended?