Electric boat

While a significant majority of water vessels are powered by diesel engines, with sail power and gasoline engines also remaining popular, boats powered by electricity have been used for over 120 years. Electric boats were very popular from the 1880s until the 1920s, when the internal combustion engine took dominance. Since the energy crises of the 1970s, interest in this quiet and potentially renewable marine energy source has been increasing steadily again, especially as solar cells became available, for the first time making possible motorboats with an infinite range like sailboats. The first practical solar boat was probably constructed in 1975 in England.

History

Early

An early electric boat was developed by the German inventor Moritz von Jacobi in 1839 in St Petersburg, Russia. It was a 24-foot (7.3 m) boat which carried 14 passengers at 3 mph. It was successfully demonstrated to Emperor Nicholas I of Russia on the Neva River.

Golden Age

It took more than 30 years of battery and motor development before the electric boat became a practical proposition. This method of propulsion enjoyed something of a golden age from about 1880 to 1920, when gasoline-powered outboard motors became the dominant method.

General Dynamics Electric Boat

General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB) is a subsidiary of General Dynamics Corporation. It has been the primary builder of submarines for the United States Navy for more than 100 years.

The company's main facilities are a shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, a hull-fabrication and outfitting facility in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, and a design and engineering facility in New London, Connecticut.

History

The company was founded in 1899 by Isaac Rice as the Electric Boat Company to build John Philip Holland's submersible designs, which were developed at Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Holland VI was the first submarine that this shipyard built, later renamed USS Holland (SS-1). On 11 April 1900, it became the first modern submarine to be purchased and commissioned into the United States Navy. The success of Holland VI created a demand for follow-up models (A-class or Plunger class) that began with the prototype submersible Fulton built at Electric Boat (EB). Some foreign navies were interested in John Holland's latest submarine designs, and so purchased the rights to build them under licensing contracts through the Electric Boat Company, and these included Great Britain's Royal Navy, Japan's Imperial Japanese Navy, Russia's Imperial Russian Navy, and the Netherlands' Royal Netherlands Navy.