I believe she was purchased by the authority of the Act of June 7, 1900, which read as follows: "The Secretary of the Navy is hereby authorized and directed to contract for five submarine torpedo boats of the 'Holland' type of the most improved design, at a price not to exceed one hundred and seventy thousand dollars (£35,000) each: _Provided_, That such boats shall be similar in dimensions to the proposed new 'Holland,' plans and specifications of which were submitted to the Navy Department by the Holland Torpedo Boat Company, November twenty-third, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine." [Illustration: THE "HOLLAND" RUNNING ON THE SURFACE Courtesy of the Engineering Magazine] The United States was, therefore, at the beginning of the twentieth century, fairly launched on a policy of submarine boat construction, and other governments rapidly followed suit. France had, in the meantime, brought out two new boats, the _Morse_, 1898, and the _Narval_, after the designs of M. Lauboeuf, launched October 26, 1899. The _Gustave Zédé_ had also been modified by adding hydroplanes so that she became controllable submerged. The _Morse_ was one hundred and eighteen feet long by eight feet three inches beam, with a displacement of one hundred and thirty-six tons, of about the same type as the _Gustave Zédé_. The _Narval_ was one hundred and eleven feet six inches in length by twelve feet four inches beam; one hundred and six tons surface displacement and one hundred and sixty-eight tons submerged. She was, like the author's 1893 design, a double hull vessel controlled by hydroplanes. She was fitted with "Dzrewiecke" apparatus for carrying and discharging torpedoes, two of which were carried on either side. The _Narval_ was a successful type and appears to have been the first French naval vessel to adopt a ship-shape outer hull of lighter plating. She was also, so far as my records show, the first French boat to be fitted with two motive powers--viz., steam for surface work and electricity for submerged work. To distinguish her in these particulars from the purely electric boats of cigar-shaped form, like the _Gustave Zédé_ and _Morse_, Mr. Lauboeuf called her a submersible. Very little was known about the French boats at this time (1900), as their method of construction and experiments were kept secret, but enough information leaked out as to their reported success to cause the British public much uneasiness, and they began to demand that their Admiralty should also take up the development of the submarine. No one had, so far, evolved a satisfactory type in England, so when the fact became known that the United States Congress had made an appropriation for five Holland boats, the British public became still more insistent that they should also have submarines.