Aka: Geschlossenes Rettungsboot mit pendelnder Kajüte und mit dieser fest verbundenem Schraubenbock, if you want something punchier*.
* (“Enclosed lifeboat with suspended cabin connected to screwjack”)
Hello again!
On the last Foolkiller Friday, I went over the phenomenon of “cylindrical lifeboats with self-leveling inner compartments” that took the lifesaving world by storm for a few years in the early 20th century. If you took one thing away from that, it’s (hopefully) that there were a bunch of such boats. Two of them, as far as I can tell, were actually used as lifeboats.
Robert Brown’s wasn’t one of them. But let’s spend some time investigating the International Automatic Lifeboat, which is sometimes written as two words by everyone involved, including me. However, since I am as far as I can tell the first and only person to have typed the words in more than a hundred years (please join me! Let’s figure this one out!), I’m going to standardize on “lifeboat,” and abbreviate it as “IAL” when necessary to save time.
We are going to do this because, if you follow, the Foolkiller wasn’t real. The Peter Nissen thing wasn’t “real,” the whole submarine aspect wasn’t “real,” and all the details about its discovery and exhibition are shrouded in either mystery, or outright lies, or both. The IAL was real. And, uh—somewhat ominously—I’m going to use this single post to tell you everything we know about it, which I’m sure won’t leave you or anyone with more questions than answers.
(All entries in this series as of October 27th, 2023):
- Introduction
- “The Recovery” (geolocating the location of the 1915 salvage)
- “The Find; or, The Theory of the Case” (fixing the date and circumstances of the salvage)
- “What If It Was Round?” (a history of the cylindrical lifeboat phenomenon)
- “Everything You Wanted to Know About the International Automatic Lifeboat (But Were Afraid to Ask)” (this one!)
- “The Man from the East” (covering Harry Fisher and his lifeboat)
- “The Summer of 1907” (fixing the dates of photographs of the lifeboat)
- “Step Right Up” (tracking the relationship between “the Foolkiller” and C.W. Parker’s carnival)
- “The Prestige” (Samuel Winternitz, Waterdrome, and the Foolkiller’s true owner)
- “Postcard Mania” (trying to find out when the last bridge photo was taken)
- “Blow Yourself Up” (all about William “Frenchy” Deneau)
- “Conclusion [citation needed]” (reviewing open questions)
- “The Experiment” (lessons from a model I built of the lifeboat)
- “Back from the Dead” (David B. Marks, and an update on the salvage)
Alright? Alright.
Our story begins on Christmas Eve, 1902, with patent 748,919—the first germ of the idea of Chicagoan carpenter Robert Brown. At this stage, the boat is shaped like a fat barrel; the description specifies that Brown’s intent is to describe the mechanism of manufacture—i.e., of sheet steel, which would be consistent throughout later designs:
This patent was granted on January 5th, 1904, and Brown promptly got to work on submitting his next one. That was filed on February 26th, 1904, becoming US Patent 776,641. By this point, Robert Brown is now describing a cylindrical lifeboat that is much more similar to Robert Mayo’s earlier boat, with the exception that the compartment is entirely enclosed. Here they are side-by-side (Brown’s is at right):
This patent was granted on December 4th, 1904, at which point things begin to get serious. In March, 1905, the International Automatic Lifeboat Company was incorporated in Portland, Maine offering $350,000 in stock. The company officers are listed in the National Corporate Reporter as being George C. Ricker, Millard W. Baldwin, and James J. Hernan.
This seems to have largely been a formality. Robert Brown had nothing in particular to do with Maine; it was a common state for companies to be incorporated in at the time (like Delaware is today) and those company officers are regularly listed as attached to other Maine corporations around this time. Notwithstanding, this is the point at which the International Automatic Lifeboat gained a name, and the point at which Brown committed to selling it.
The following month (April 6th, 1905), Brown filed patent 812,815, which expounds on the earlier patent by adding two folding stabilizing fins below the waterline and including more explicit reference to propulsion in the form of two propellers, which the boat’s self-leveling design are said to keep reliably below the waterline.
This is the one that looks closest to the boat we know existed, and where—at least according to the historical record—the International Automatic Lifeboat first takes physical form. The Power Boat News article was published in January, 1906. So by the end of 1905, the boat was motorized and had apparently/allegedly been tested. Patent 812,815 was granted on February 20th, about a month after the Power Boat News article came out, and then…
Well, actually, here’s where things start to get weird again. The Constant’s Mark Chrisler was able to find a few photos of the IAL, with the Metropolitan Western Elevated Railroad Bridge behind it (seen above). These photos are worth a whole article on their own, but they did (helpfully) provide an early break in this story.
See, in 1909 Brown and the “International Life Boat” Company were mentioned in an article in the Chicago Tribune, but there were no other mentions of any company by that name. So I tried approaching it from the other angle. Searching for mentions of the bridge, or whatever dock that might’ve been, I eventually turned up this, from the minutes of the Chicago Sanitary District:
Mr. Williams presented the following report from the Committee on Real Estate Development:
CHICAGO, October 31, 1906
To the Honorable, the President and the Board of Trustees of the Sanitary District of Chicago.
GENTLEMEN—Your Committee on Real Estate Development beg leave to report that they have received a request from the International Automatic Life Boat Co. for a permit to tie up to the dock of the Sanitary District between Van Buren St. bridge and Jackson Blvd. on the west side of the river, during the months of October, November, and December, and are offered $15.00 for the privilege, and your Committee, having had the same under consideration, respectfully recommend the passage of the following order:
ORDERED. That the President and Clerk be and they are hereby authorized to execute a permit to the International Automatic Life Boat Co. to tie up to the dock of the Sanitary District on the west side of the river between Van Buren St. bridge and Jackson Blvd. for October, November, and December, upon payment of the sum of $15.00
Which is what finally gave us the name of the company, and therefore the name of the boat—which is helpful! But also, which I reprint in full because if this sounds like a lot of work to get one damned docking permit, it was apparently a bit odd for the Sanitary District, too—outside the IAL, they did this only three other times, and the small sums of money meant it was unusual enough that in one annual report they even called out the wide range of accounts the Sanitary District dealt with.
But also, this was October. And on October 9th, in the Chicago Tribune, we find the following classified ad:
WANTED—COMPETENT STOCK SALESMEN BY INTERNATIONAL AUTOMATIC LIFEBOAT CO: NEW BOAT NOW ON EXHIBITION. CALL 322 RAILWAY EXCHANGE BLDG. TEL HARRISON 3676
On October 10th, the exact same ad runs, and on October 23rd:
WANTED—STOCK SALESMEN BY INTERNATIONAL AUTOMATIC LIFEBOAT COMPANY. THE ONLY PATENTED SAFETY BOAT. ON EXHIBITION IN CHICAGO HARBOR. COMPANY WILL ALSO BUILT PLEASURE MOTOR BOATS. TELEPHONE HARRISON 3676. 322 RAILWAY EXCHANGE BUILDING
This is the last time the IAL, or the International Automatic Lifeboat Company, will be mentioned in the Tribune—or any American publication—until the 1909 lawsuit, in which the company’s name is printed incorrectly. And I hope that you, like me, have Some Questions right now. For a start: where was the boat before October?
Well… we don’t know. We can only say with some certainty where the boat wasn’t. The classified ad says it is “on exhibition” in Chicago Harbor, but the International Automatic Lifeboat Company wasn’t one of the exhibitors at the 1906 Power Boat Show in April. It also wasn’t at the Second Annual Power Boat Show in March, 1907, which was a much larger affair, and which had at least one other lifeboat being sold (by the Merlin Hydraulic and Engineering Works) and so would have been a pretty good venue.
Okay, then—what about after October? Again: we don’t know. The sum total of the explicit evidence so far is three pictures showing it docked in the Chicago River. For implicit reference, we know that in 1907 IAL Co. paid the Chicago Sanitary District docking fees for the entire year, and in 1908 they paid them docking fees up through and including March. After March, 1908, there is no hard evidence for the IAL’s existence at all until it gets dragged out of the river in December, 1915.
This is not to say that there is no evidence for Robert Brown, though, or for the company. Patents filed during this time are mentioned in the British, French, and German press (that would be cabot de sauvetage and Rettungsboot, in case you’re behind on your Duolingo today). Brown filed Canadian patent 110,124 on August 22nd, 1907, which was granted on February 4th, 1908. Between those points—on or about November 30th, 1907—a Canadian subsidiary was established:
The International Automatic Life Boat Co., of Canada, the parent company of which is at Chicago, is being organized at Rexton, N.B., by Jas. F. Stephens, Chicago. The directors are J.F. Stephens, H.M. Ferguson, Rexton, and W.D. Carter, of Richibucto. The company will have $350,000 capital, shares $1,000 each, fully paid and non-assessable. They will manufacture, either at Rexton or Richibucto, “The International Life Boat” life-saving apparatus, steam and motor boats and launches, cruisers and yachts, and equipment. The lifeboat is torpedo-shaped, of steel and aluminum, and will hold 40 to 100 persons. The outer shell contains an inner carriage, suspended below the centre of the boat, which carries the load. This brings the weight at all times below the centre of gravity, and renders the boat instantly self-righting under all conditions. It requires only one man to operate it. It cannot be sunk, and cannot be crushed against another vessel. The whole cost is less than that of ordinary wooden lifeboats.
This to me is quite interesting. It doesn’t seem like the company went anywhere, and I can’t find out much more about James Stephens or the others. But it does, unlike the classified ads (or the Power Boat News article, for that matter—more in a bit) describe the boat accurately as we understand it—i.e., as a torpedo-shaped lifeboat with a self-righting inner carriage, so it’s clear what Canadians would be getting themselves into if they invested in the company.
And, like the classified ads, it mentions that the company will also make other types of boats. This is more than a year after the last classified ad ran in the Chicago Tribune, which made that claim, and I’m not sure how to take it. Was this ever true? Was this ever Robert Brown’s intent? Because, if so, he doesn’t seem to have ever done anything along those lines. If not—if it was just an attempt to drum up money—then who was making that claim? James Stephens?
Or Robert Brown himself? And if it was Robert Brown, what does that tell us about the man? This is one of the big outstanding questions in this whole thing, if you ask me. Because it is, I should think, pretty easy to take the least charitable reading: Brown was an also-ran, a grifter who was one of countless people trying to cash in on this idea and make a quick buck. In an earlier Foolkiller Friday, I said that I had some speculation about the IAL that I’d back-burned for lack of evidence, and this is one of them.
The classified ads call the IAL “the only patented safety boat,” for instance. This isn’t true. The Joseph Francis life car literally says “FRANCIS PATENT METALLIC LIFE CAR” in big block letters on it. An article from July 18th, 1906 describes Robert Brown trying to acquire the Rescue Life Boat Company founded by Robert Mayo, who also had patents, so even if Brown hadn’t heard of Francis he damned well knew that there were other patented boats of his design by the time the classified ad was running. So maybe he was just a huckster.
On the other hand… he did go so far as to have a boat built. And if the Canadian subsidiary didn’t go anywhere, at least the Maine one did. IAL Co. was assessed $25 in Maine state taxes for 1906, and $50 in following years. Finally, on August 14th, 1911, it is provided on a list of “corporations with unpaid taxes, whose charters will be suspended,” after which it is never mentioned again and presumably ceased to exist. Robert Brown himself was adjudicated bankrupt on January 16th of that year.
But we do find, on a list of lifeboats approved by the Steamboat Inspection Service, the following:
International Automatic Lifeboat Co., Chicago, Ill. and Portland, Me. Metallic lifeboat. (1911.)
1911 being the year in which it was approved. And that gives us another enticing clue. Remember how I mentioned that the life-saving service had investigated a few other cylindrical lifeboats and rejected them? Well, in the 1911 annual report of the US Life-Saving Service, there is a full writeup that goes like this:
15. International automatic lifeboat (International Automatic Lifeboat Co.),
Results.—Blue prints and specifications of this device were submitted to the board, through the general superintendent, by R. A. Brown, president of the International Automatic Lifeboat Co. This letter also stated that an agent of the company would appear before the board, if desired, with a model of the device for the purpose of demonstrating its merits. The company also submitted a copy of a report of the committee on life-saving appliances connected with the Steamboat-Inspection Service, which states that the “committee are of the opinion that a boat built in accordance with the plans and specifications presented, and the rules and regulations of the Board of Supervising Inspectors, would be safe and efficient, and should be allowed for use on steam vessels.
The board examined the plans and specifications of the boat and discussed its qualifications for use in the Life-Saving Service. The board believes that great difficulty would be experienced in holding the boat alongside a wreck and transferring passengers to it in a seaway. It is thought that the rolling of the boat and the lack of facilities and deck space for handling and making fast lines, etc., would present serious if not entirely insurmountable difficulties in most cases of attempted rescue in a rough sea.
The idea of the inventor for transferring passengers to the boat by means of the breeches buoy, the handling of lines or cables by means of a winch down in the bow of the boat, and the propulsion of the boat by hand power, are considered entirely impracticable under conditions which usually obtain when such work would have to be done. Another obvious defect in this boat is the lack of auxiliary sail or oar power, and the boat would be helpless should the propeller or steering gear be disabled. It would seem to be extremely difficult for men on the deck of this boat to rescue people from the water excepting under most favorable conditions or when persons to be rescued are able-bodied men.
Needless to say, the board “is of the opinion that the international automatic lifeboat” sucks, like all the other ones they investigated*, although this is one of the more detailed examples of a rejection letter from them. And, again, there’s some mystery here. There are two full years between this rejection in 1911 and the IAL’s last docking permit in March, 1908. Where was it during this time? Apparently the SIS only saw “plans and specifications,” just like the Life-Saving Service.
* By the by: they did wind up investigating Baumgart’s boat, and hated it more than usual. I’ve edited last week’s post to reflect this.
Had the boat already sunk by that point, or was it still under Robert Brown’s control? It seems like Brown is making a good-faith effort to get the boat adopted as late as 1911, at which point he was out of money and the lifeboat fad was starting to die down. His last patent for the IAL, 870,928, was filed in March 1907 and granted on November 12th of that year. At that point, in theory, he’d had a working model boat for more than a year. It seems to be a fairly iterative improvement over the previous one, with the addition of a turret at the stern:
Was he making changes based on his experience? You’d want to think so, right? Here I am going to throw a bit of a wrench in things. I ended last week’s Foolkiller Friday by saying that there was no way that Deneau could’ve thought what he found was anything other than a lifeboat, “unless,” and here is where we run into a little bit of trouble. I have presented to you everything that is currently known about the International Automatic Lifeboat:
- Four patents, one of which very closely approximates the known photos of the boat
- The dates of incorporation for the International Automatic Life Boat Co., its tax records, and its eventual dissolution
- A newspaper report about IAL Co. Canada being organized (though nothing about its dissolution)
- Three classified ads
- Payment records to the Chicago Sanitary District putting it at the Van Buren Street dock between 1906 and 1908
- A note from the Steamboat Inspection Service
- Its evaluation by the United States Life-Saving Service
- A writeup in Power Boat News
Of these, the Life-Saving Service writeup and the Power Boat News are probably the most useful, because they were written to describe something by someone who wasn’t trying to sell it, and therefore might be hoped to be somewhat objective. Right? But let’s take a closer look at that second one. Here it is again:
The photo reproduced herewith does not represent a flying-ship, as may be supposed, but is a new patent life-saving power boat which is being brought out by Brown Bros., building contractors, of Chicago, Ill. The boat is built entirely of steel, is 40 ft. long, and has a breadth of 4 ft. She is expected to be adopted by the United States Government, when she shows up in demonstration that she is equal to the claims of the patentees. The boat is fitted with a 3-cylinder, 4 by 5 McDonald-Erickson 2-stroke engine. In a recent trial trip on the Chicago River she made about 5 miles per hour, but as the outfit was not completed at the time, it was not a fair test. It is expected, though, that when everything is in ship-shape she will develop at least 10 miles, in almost any kind of a sea. The hull was built by Kling Bros. of Chicago, and the power furnished by A. H. McDonald, also of that city.
And there is one important thing we should get out of the way real early here, which is that despite the “news” part of the name, Power Boat News doesn’t seem to have been the kind of publication that sent out actual journalists. In general, they seem to have reprinted whatever anybody wrote in, which in this case is something more like a press release. As such, some of the details require a bit of... nuance, let’s say.
For example: there were multiple “Brown Bros” companies in Chicago at this time; the most famous, Brown Brothers Manufacturing Co., made deck lights and sidewalk lights and manhole covers through most of the second half of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. They are unrelated. So are the Brown Bros. painting company and the Brown Bros. who were grocers.
We are talking about Robert and William A. Brown, who were located at 380 Dearborn Street at least as early as 1892 (distinct from the Robert and William D. Brown publishing company at 21 Wabash—you see how researching this is a bit of a pain). The company employed 16 people in 1900; they were carpenters. But—do you see where I’m going with this?—who cares? The life-saving power boat is not being brought out by “Brown Bros., building contractors.” It’s being brought out by the International Automatic Lifeboat Company, which had been incorporated for nearly a year at that point.
I’ve said a couple of times now that I don’t know whether the test described here actually took place. But—again—what kind of test was this? It’s a lifeboat! It doesn’t need to go 5 miles an hour, or 10 miles an hour, or any miles an hour—it just needs to stay afloat. I mentioned last week that “lifeboat” meant two different things, and clearly Power Boat News thinks this is a shore-based life-saving boat…
But it wasn’t. Brown eventually tried to get it adopted as such, yes, but both times the vessel’s operation is mentioned (the first and last patents, 748,919 and 870,928) he is consistent in saying “passengers enter the boat” and then it is “launched”; in patent 812,815 he mentions adaptations such as a winch “by means of which the life-boat is lowered from the deck of a vessel” that permits it to be launched by a single person. The Power Boat News piece doesn’t mention this. It also doesn’t mention the boat’s distinguishing feature, which is the rotating inner compartment.
Whoever sent the article in, it wasn’t Brown. The focus on the engine may point to McDonald—Albert McDonald’s engine company was in the news that year having performed quite well in some boat races. But if you look closely, you’ll see some writing below the boat in the included image. It’s not very clear in that photo, but I was able to find a better copy:
Which pretty clearly says “Kling Bros.” and then “Builders Chicago,” the company that constructed the hull. Kling Bros. were a reputable engineering concern, which moved away from downtown in ~1917 and stayed there until being purchased by Hill Acme in the 1970s; Hill Acme is part of Magnum Integrated Technologies now, but they were still supporting Kling machine parts at least through the early part of the 21st century.
At the time, they were located at 285–291 Hawthorne Avenue, which doesn’t exist anymore—Hawthorne is what Kingsbury used to be north of Chicago Avenue. Here they are in a 1906 Sanborn fire map:
They had a dock and advertised themselves as doing repair work on boats, which makes them a reasonable partner for Robert Brown, and I assume they wanted their name in Power Boat News as someone who you could trust to repair your power boat—which were becoming popular in Chicago at the time. All of this is to say that I don’t know how much of the only contemporary description of a physical boat is accurate. Was it finished at the time, complete with the inner compartment? Was it motorized? Because, based on whatever Brown sent them, the US Life-Saving Service was under the impression that the IAL was hand-powered.
If whatever Frenchy Deneau pulled out of the river was complete—rotating inner carriage and all—there’s absolutely no way it could’ve been mistaken for anything else. If, on the other hand, what existed was an empty shell with a motor in it… well, I mean, in that case it was still obviously not a submarine. It had no submarine accoutrements—no ballast tanks or pressure hull—but did have ladders, and a door in the stern, and a shape that we now know was somewhat more conventionally hulled than it’s depicted in the “Fool Killer” advertisement.
But maybe it would’ve been less clear what it actually was.
The classified ads say the boat was being exhibited, which implies that it was complete, but this is my point! Was it ever complete? We don’t know. If it was, why didn’t Brown exhibit the IAL at any boat shows? We don’t know. How close is the Power Boat News boat, or the one photographed in the river, to Brown’s intended vision? We don’t know. Did Brown have a vision? We don’t know.
The previous 4,000 words are what we have to go on, and every time I think that sounds like a lot, it turns out to be precious little indeed. I hope at this point you also have more questions! And I hope that it is still more interesting than it is frustrating, despite the lack of payoff this week :P
In the course of conducting more research for this episode I turned up some tantalizing new bits of information on the IAL qua Foolkiller, so like I said: there’s definitely still more to be found. I’m still turning over in my head what that means, so I think next week we’re going to cover another wrinkle in this whole affair, in the form of: Robert Brown and Frenchy Deneau’s Evil (?) Canadian Twins.
Stay tuned!