Wooden-soled shoes? Probably never heard of them. They were Robert Creuzbaur’s invention, before he turned to a design for an underwater torpedo tube. The early Texas surveyor and draftsman, won a patent in 1863 for both his shoes and his torpedo tube, which he called an underwater cannon. It would be the chief armament of his Sea King, an iron-plated wooden gunboat whose underwater gun might sink the wooden warships blockading the Texas Gulf coast and the coastline of the rest of the Confederate States of America.
The Confederate Navy wasn’t impressed with his boat or his weapon. Their report to the Confederate Congress in 1862, "…by a number of eminent naval officers…stated ‘that nothing has been done to prove the alleged claims to the speed, invulnerability, and efficiency of the vessel in either or all of which we have no confidence.’"
So much for the early submarine. The same year, 145 years ago Thursday, saw the ironclads Monitor and Merrimac (also the Virginia) fight to a draw in Hampton Roads. By the time Creuzbaur got his shoe and torpedo tube patents, North and South were betting on iron ships, but not underwater cannons for sinking wooden ones. After the war, Cruezbaur moved to New York where, besides investing in the inventions of others, he faded into an obscurity not even Google can penetrate.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 