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Here's a bit of history about the Steam powered
water jet engine.
Regarding using steam engines in submarines, here
is an excerpt from one of the crew of the Holland submarine plunger....."Plunger, launched in 1897, failed before ever leaving the
dock. The temperature in the fireroom reached 137°F at only two-thirds rated
output. As one of Holland's employees later testified, "They forced us to put
steam in the Plunger against Mr. Holland's advice. When we . . . put the
steam on, we found it was so hot we could not live in her." In what must be an
unwitting irony, the first U.S. Navy submarine with built-in air conditioning
was the 1935 Plunger, SS-179.
The steam jet engine was actually invented by the
greeks around the 1st century a.d. It was never developed and was a spinning toy
that consisted of a copper pot, with small tubes or jets, suspended on a chain
over a fire.
When the water in the pot heated and the steam
exited the jet tubes, the pot spun on the chain. If this had been exploited at
the time, the industrial revolution could have happened 2000 years ago! We might
have been advanced technologically by 2000 years more
than we are today!
The steam jet propulsion engine was invented in
1786 by James Rumsey who built upon the earlier work of Bernouilli and
ideas of Benjamin Franklin. . Here are some quotes about it and links
too.
"James Rumsey began his experiments in steam navigation in 1774, and in 1786 he succeeded in driving a boat at the rate of four miles an hour, at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, on the Potomac River. His method was a power-driven pumps forcing a stream of water aft, and so propelling the vessel forward. It had been proposed by Bernouilli before and has been reinvented many times since. Hydraulic, or "jet propulsion" proposed by Rumsey has never been seriously accepted, but Rumsey received a patent grant from the State of Virginia and addressed a London society "On the Application of Steam." He died in 1793 at the age of 50 years. In 1839 the State of Kentucky voted his son a medal commemorative of the father's services "in giving the world the benefit of the steamboat."
"On December 3, 1787 James Rumsey's steam-powered water-jet craft ran successfully for about two hours on the Potomac River averaging about 3 miles per hour"
"Rumseian ExperimentSteamboat Hull: wood Mach: steam engine, water jet Built: James Rumsey, Shepherdstown, W. Va.; 1785. One of the first Americans involved in the development and application of steam navigation was James Rumsey, an affable but secretive hotelkeeper from Bath, Virginia (now West Virginia). In 1785, one of his guests happened to be General George Washington, to whom he showed his model of a pole boat that used the river current to travel upstream. Later that year, Rumsey hit upon the idea of harnessing steam power for his engine, and he eventually dropped the pole boat idea for a boat driven by a water jet. Although technologically ahead of its time, the idea of jet propulsion had more support than the paddle systems devised by Rumsey's rival John Fitch. Benjamin Franklin had proposed the idea to the American Philosophical Society, and the machinery was relatively simple. Rumsey's engine consisted of a single piston rod connecting two cylinders. The upper cylinder was part of the engine while the bottom cylinder acted as a pump, drawing water into the boat through valves in the keel on the up stroke and forcing water out through a tube in the stern on the down stroke. Rumsey tried his vessel for the first time on March 14, 1786. "The boat went against the current of the Potomac, but many parts of the machinery [were] imperfect, and some parts rendered useless by the heat of the steam." By the next year, Rumsey was in direct competition with Fitch for state monopolies and on December 3, 1787, he made a second demonstration during which his vessel was said to have gone at a rate of three miles per hour against the current; eight days later, his speed was estimated at four miles per hour. The vessel made no more trials, but Rumsey started the Rumseian Society and in 1788, he went to England bearing letters of introduction from Franklin and others. Patent negotiations with engine makers Matthew Boulton and James Watt collapsed. Construction of a vessel patriotically called Columbia Maid, but which Rumsey referred to as The Rumseian Experiment, was suspended for two years while the inventor staved off creditors. He had resumed work on the engine when, on December 18, 1790, he died just before he was to address the Society of Arts. Flexner, Steamboats Come True."
"1784 James Rumsey built a pump-driven boat (water-jet) that successfully steamed upstream on the Potomac river in 1786, and in the following year he obtained a patent from the State of Virginia."
"Rumsey's experiments began in 1774, and in 1786; he succeeded in driving a boat at the rate of four miles an hour against the current of the Potomac at Shepherdstown, W. Va., in presence of General Washington. His method of propulsion has often been reinvented since, and its adoption urged with that enthusiasm and persistence which is a peculiar characteristic of inventors.
"In 1787 James Rumsey made the first pump jet motor, which drew in water at the prow and released it from the poop."
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