Books: Undersea Anecdotes

SUBMARINE: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIMON LAKE—As told to Herbert Corey—Appleton-Century ($3).

Simon Lake's first submarine was a 14-foot, flat-bottomed contraption, built of yellow pine and looking vaguely like a flatiron mounted on wheels. It had a compressed-air reservoir built of an old soda-fountain tank, and motive power for both its propeller and wheels was supplied by a hand-driven crank. When the redheaded, hot-tempered Simon Lake and his cousin Bart paddled it down the Shrewsbury River in New Jersey in 1894, Bart opened the valves, the submarine sank, a stream of water squirted in...