The container could be expanded and filled,
and would send the Advance to the surface.
Another peculiar feature was that the engine-room, dynamos
and other apparatus were all contained amidships. This gave
stability to the craft, and also enabled the same engine to
operate both shafts and propellers, as well as both the
negative forward electrical plates, and the positive rear
ones.
These plates were a new idea in submarine construction,
and were the outcome of an idea of Mr. Swift, with some
suggestions from his son.
The aged inventor did not want to depend on the usual
screw propellers for his craft, nor did he want to use a jet
of compressed air, shooting out from a rear tube, nor yet a
jet of water, by means of which the creature called the
squid shoots himself along. Mr. Swift planned to send the
Advance along under water by means of electricity.
Certain peculiar plates were built at the forward and aft
blunt noses of the submarine. Into the forward plate a
negative charge of electricity was sent, and into the one at
the rear a positive charge, just as one end of a horseshoe
magnet is positive and will repel the north end of a compass
needle, while the other pole of a magnet is negative and
will attract it. In electricity like repels like, while
negative and positive have a mutual attraction for each
other.
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