Holland was born and raised in Ireland. Although employed as a schoolteacher, he read about early experiments with submarines carried out by William Bourne (d.1853), Cornelius Drebbel, and David Bushnell, and by 1870 he drew up his first plans for a submarine. He emigrated to the United States in 1873, resumed teaching, and continued to pursue his research on submarines. The United States Navy rejected his plans in 1875, but the American Fenian Society, a group of Irish patriots who hoped to undermine England's naval power and gain independence for Ireland, commissioned Holland to build a submarine. Holland's first model sank during testing, but the second model, the Fenian Ram, was successfully launched in 1881. A full-scale vessel, the Fenian Ram had many of the features we associate with modern submarines. The cigar-shaped sub used electrical power for propulsion under water and had an internal combustion engine for surface propulsion. It was...