Hello, and welcome to Foolkiller Friday, the Cohost series where we talk about a submarine/lifeboat/sideshow attraction stuck in the mud of the Chicago River for years and stuck in my brain for significantly longer.
So far, these posts have focused on what happened before the salvage. Now, we’re going to turn our attention to what happened afterwards, and in order to do that I think it would be helpful to recap the conventional story of the “Foolkiller” itself.
(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)” (…)
- “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” (this one!)
- “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)
I was originally going to write up that summary, but actually I think we’d all be best served by a guest writer this time—the Leavenworth Courier, in this case, all the way from on April 29th, 1916.
The History of the First Submarine Ever Built—The Fool Killer
The History of the First Submarine Ever Built—The Fool Killer
Early in December last, Capt. Deneau, (deep sea diver), while at work on the bottom of the Chicago River near Wells Street, discovered what has since proved to be one of the first if not the first submarine ever built.
The submarine is of steel and embodies in its shape and general construction, many of the ideas of the most successful present day submarines. Most of its history is shrouded in mystery but what little is known would stir the imagination of a Poe.
Away back in the early 70's, long before the wildest flights of fancy could have conceived the awful scenes of carnage now taking place in Europe at at a time when the submarine was viewed with skeptism [sic], an American Inventor, we are told, constructed and launched the submarine In the East and later navigated West by way of the Great Lakes, finally reaching the Chicago River and while there are no records to show what was accomplished, the present condition of the boat would indicate that it was entirely seaworthy and many years in advance of the times.
At the time of its disappearance, there was some talk of bitter rivalry and dark plotting, but as time wore on and nothing developed, it became a forgotten incident until its discovery by Capt. Deneau. The United States government having granted permission for its removal, the boat was raised, docked and found to be in a splendid state of preservation and not unlike the submarines now doing such destructive work in European waters. Preparations were begun at once for exhibition purposes and while removing the mud from within the hull, It was discovered that the boat held a crew, and what a ghastly crew, the bones of a man and a skeleton of a dog. Whose bones kept the long, still watch must forever remain mystery. Everything recovered has been carefully preserved and forms a part of this most interesting mysterious exhibit.
The exhibition was under the personal supervision of Capt. Deneau, who, it will be recalled, proved to be "The man of the hour" at the time of the Eastland disaster, tolling incessently [sic] amidst scenes so horrifying as to cause the stoutest hearts to grow faint, he was the last diver to leave the water, having brought to the surface the bodies of two hundred and fifty victims.
Captain Deneau has spent his life in this hazardous calling and his graphic description and demonstration of the perils of deep sea diving is replete with thrills.
Fate plays strange tricks and in the recovery of this old submarine, another tribute has been paid to American genius, tardy enough to be sure, but at a time when it will be most appreciated. Every American citizen proud of his country and the achievements of its people will experience a new thrill in the contemplation of this old boat which comes out of the depths, as if to vindicate the genius of its builder by inviting comparison with modern submarines, thus justifying the efforts of a long forgotten and discredited inventor whose misfortune it was to have died, being unable to see the result of his genius.
C. W. Parker has secured this great attraction at a fabulous price, and it will be one of the great features to be seen with "PARKER'S GREATEST SHOWS" this season.
This ends with the mention of C.W. Parker, and in the conventional Foolkiller Chronology it’s generally understood that, after exhibiting the Foolkiller in Chicago for a time, Frenchy Deneau sold it on to Parker’s Greatest Shows. Then, at some point, it was returned to Chicago to appear at the Riverview amusement park, and then it disappeared.
I wanted to start here because it’s a good encapsulation of the story of the Foolkiller, as distinct from the facts. I don’t think enough has been written about the extent to which C.W. Parker’s showmanship, and the Leavenworth Courier that acted as a mouthpiece for it, are really emblematic of that story.
So they’re going to be the stars of this one.
Here, you see, we have the purest essence of the pitch: the spirit of American genius distilled into one mad soul, and the tragedy of his invention being lost in the mud for years. The drama of “bitter rivalry and dark plotting,” and the heroism of Captain Deneau, who was definitely not a hard-luck trickster type but “the man of the hour” of the Eastland sinking (and not just in the sense of fabricating evidence to exonerate the ship’s owners).
Of course, basically all of this is made up. They did this a lot, and of course that should come as no surprise—Parker was, after all, an entertainer. For example: one element of the saga that has never entirely been settled is the story of its “ghastly crew.” The factual (big air quotes there) reporting from the Tribune on January 16th, 1916 says this:
SKULLS FOUND ON FOOLKILLER, OLD SUBMARINE
Unwritten Tragedy of Chicago River New Puzzle for Police
An unwritten tragedy of the Chicago River was brought to light after twenty-five years yesterday when the bones of a man and the skull of a dog were taken from the mud-coated “Foolkiller,” the ancient submarine that occupied a berth in the river bed since 1870.
”The Foolkiller” was taken from the bottom of the river a few weeks ago by William Deneau, a diver for the Great Lakes Dredge and Dock company. He obtained permission of the federal government to remove the old hulk for exhibition purposes.Relic of Early 70s
The craft was built in the early ‘70s by an eastern man and floated. Its first submersion was its last but one. It remained down for twenty years and then was purchased and raised by William Nissen. He made some experiments with it, but one day about twenty-five years ago it disappeared and was not seen since.
Deneau, while making some investigations in the muddy bed of the river at Wells street, came upon the steel vessel deep in the mud. It was brought to the surface by chains, but no sooner had its pointed nose poked into the air than it sank again. More subsea maneuvering was necessary before it was finally brought up and towed to the Fullerton avenue bridge, where Deneau and his helpers set about cleaning it.
Yesterday in the mud that crusted the inside of the queer craft were found the skull of a dog and some human bones. The matter was reported to Capt Thomas F. Meagher of the Shakspeare avenue station, and he suggested the bones be sent to the county morgue, where Coroner Hoffman will order an examination. The police have begun a search of records of the missing about the time of the disappearance of the “Foolkiller,” and home to connect such an affair with the discovery of the bones.
We should probably note at least a couple things here. One, I don’t think it’s clear in any way that this really happened. In this very article the writer both says that the submarine has been in the riverbed since 1870 and since 1890 (“about twenty-five years ago”). In actuality the IAL had sunk at most seven years prior. When were the police looking? You would assume this is the point at which the boat’s owners would have stepped forward, if so, to clear up any misconceptions that might tie them into a murder mystery.
Two, if Coroner Hoffman and Thomas F. Meagher of the Shakspeare [sic] Avenue Station came to any conclusions, those are never reported on. On the one hand, I’m not surprised by this at all—what kind of forensics were you going to do in 1916 with “the bones of a man and the skull of a dog”?
On the other hand… no. No, it’s just the same hand. On the same hand, said bones were part of the exhibition at State Street, so apparently the coroner decided to give them back. (????)
Three, I think one of the biggest questions about the Foolkiller has always been: “were the bones real?” and it’s kind of interesting that nobody seems to have a strong opinion on that question. Because, having followed this for years—having immersed myself for the last six months in this damned thing—let me plant my flag in the ground and say:
Yeah, I have no idea either.
It’s possible that Deneau planted the bones as a prop. It’s possible that they were simply debris in the river mud that got washed into the boat and were discovered when the wreck was cleaned out. It is very minimally possible that someone was inside the boat when it sank. Mark Chrisler proposed this in his last episode on the topic, when the photographs of the IAL at the Polly “L” bridge were new and there was speculation that it might’ve been used as a houseboat.
Knowing more about the boat and its disposition now, I think that was unlikely—ooh. Hold on, a chance for—
Wild, unsubstantiated speculation
Actually, it occurs to me that I haven’t planted an actual flag in what I think happened to the IAL, because most of this series has been me trying to stay as close as possible to the facts. However, if I had to make a guess, it’s this: as of 1911, Robert Brown and the IAL Co. were bankrupt. By that point, he had stopped paying docking fees three years earlier, but he was still trying to sell the IAL to the life-saving service, so I consider it ambiguous as to whether he was still working on the physical boat. Possibly it was out of the water, or possibly he’d found someplace cheaper to moor it. Either way, I can’t see him retaining it as an asset after 1911.
My guess is that it was sold to his creditors, or possibly back to Kling Brothers, and wound up in the possession of one of the boat builders and repairers around Wells Street Bridge, where one of two things happened. Either it was lost accidentally—its watertight integrity had been compromised by years of neglect or it was damaged in a collision—and not considered worth salvaging, or it was sunk deliberately as a means of disposal, in either case probably around 1911 or 1912.
The dates are little tricky. As I said in Part 2, two boats were salvaged at Wells Street in October, 1912, and nobody pulled up the IAL, so maybe it wasn’t there yet. On the other hand, the later you push the date, the closer you get to the era where the city is cracking down on using the river as a dumpster. I’m not sure.
A third option is that Robert Brown intended to make iterative improvements to the boat, took it to one of the Wells Street boat-builders, and it sank at that point and was not recovered because he couldn’t afford it, which gave it a good long period of time to get buried before it was found in the 1915 dredging operations in the north draw.
…There is actually a fourth Spicy Option that I was going to try to include in this Foolkiller Friday but I think I might run out of time. In any case, I think it was under someone’s ownership when it sank and they would’ve noticed a missing person if someone had gone down with the boat. This is why I said it was unlikely—
—but it doesn’t matter because of the fourth thing that bears noting, which is the... let us say the character of the reporting about these bones, and the way it’s recounted by Parker, et al.
In January, 1916, we hear about “the bones of a man and the skull of a dog.” On March 24th, 1916, the Leavenworth Post tells us that it was, specifically, “a young man, apparently about thirty years of age, of engaging manners, striking personality, and liberally supplied with money. His only companion a faithful Collie dog who went to his death in the bottom of the river with his mysterious master.”
As time passed the “fool killer” boat, its stranger owner and his dog were forgotten until a few days ago when William Deneau the noted diver and his assistants brought to the surface the rusted hulk of the old craft which was packed full of river mud that had seeped in year after year when it went to the bottom and failed to come back. Deneau and his assistants dug carefully into the mud, examining each shovelful of it separately. When they came to the bottom of the boat on the floor was discovered the skeleton of a man locked in close embrace with the skeleton of a dog; companions in life, companions in a mournful death.
Which is quite poetic, and quite tragic, but also seems like one hell of an extrapolation from the available details, doesn’t it? The Leavenworth Post article has two salient points, though. The first is what it tells us at the end: “It was rumored that C.W. Parker of this city was the purchaser and a reporter of the The Post called at the offices of Mr. Parker yesterday and ascertained that Mr. Parker was actually the purchaser and is now in Chicago preparing the shipment of the precious relic—bones and all—to his headquarters here in Leavenworth and its arrival is expected daily.”
That is to say, this whole piece is also—like the one I opened today’s Foolkiller Friday with—just a long-form advertisement for C.W. Parker’s Greatest Shows in the guise of reporting. It’s playing up the same story that will the Post will be running a month later, which drives I think the romance of this whole affair. One might, indeed, be forgiven for thinking that the whole “first submarine,” “bones,” “unfortunate inventor” story was the invention of a carnival showman, were it not that it’s there from the very beginning and Deneau, while a self-aggrandizer, was not a carnival showman.
The other salient piece of information is the article’s headline:
EASTLAND DISASTER WAS CAUSED BY THE FAMOUS “FOOL KILLER”
To recap something I mentioned back in the very first of these essays, when the SS Eastland rolled over at her berth in the Chicago River, there were essentially two theories. One theory was that the ship was naturally top-heavy, was never properly tested for her ability to recover from a list, and had gone through later revisions* that increased the mass of her superstructure and made her even less stable; the last straw being that her unscrupulous owners had overloaded and improperly ballasted the vessel. This was the theory advanced by the government, the investigators and, eventually, a grand jury.
* Some of these were for profit and to improve the ship’s speed. However, the ship was compelled to carry additional lifeboats following the sinking of RMS Titanic, which also (famously and ironically) contributed to the issue.
The other theory was advanced by the ship’s owners, and it went more like: “the ship was perfectly fine, you guys. What happened was, it hit something in the river that kept it from righting itself. How could this be our fault?”
Now, this introduces a bit of a complication, because at the same time as Frenchy Deneau was claiming to have found a submarine in the Chicago River, he was also testifying about other obstacles he’d found in the Chicago River, including the ones that the owners claimed were responsible for the ship rolling over. At no point, ever, does anyone link the two. You could plausibly advance a conspiracy theory here that the “Foolkiller” was originally found somewhere upstream of the Wells Street Bridge, and that the reason it was moved in later reporting is because the original location would’ve made it part of an official investigation.
Nobody seems to have made that argument at the time, and I think the more plausible reason is the one I advanced in “What If It Was Round”—that enough people in Chicago knew what the IAL was that blaming the Eastland disaster on a lost submarine would’ve been untenable from the start. But that’s only in Chicago. C.W. Parker, and the Leavenworth Post, felt no such qualms at all. To them, it was all just part of the tasty drama of the whole affair.
It’s also one that they weren’t totally consistent with; the next day, March 25th, the Leavenworth Post is reporting that:
A spotter at the amusement plant Wednesday picked up nothing but a page from the Chicago Tribune, showing that the Parker company had purchased the “Fool Killer,” the first submarine ever built and tried out. The fact that it rested at the bottom of the lake for a generation and contained the skeleton of the inventor does not detract from the interest. The spotter went away with more than an ordinary spy usually gets
No mention of the Eastland whatsoever. I have no idea what article in the Tribune they’re talking about, either; I presume that is one of those newspaper tidbits, typical of the era, that one is intended to take metaphorically.
That week’s issue of Billboard says that “Submarine” will appear on April 17th when Parker’s show debuts in Leavenworth; for unrelated reasons this was pushed to the 22nd, and finally to the 29th. So the story with which I began this piece (also on that date, remember) coincides with the start of Parker’s 1916 season. It’s their opening-day press-release.
To sum up: towards the end of March, we’re told that C.W. Parker has bought the Foolkiller and it’s en route; towards the end of April, it’s (apparently) ready for display. Now we get back from the world of the known into the realm of speculation. On May 4th, the Leavenworth Post had this to say (in an article headlined “C.W. PARKER PLEASED WITH BIG TURNOUT,” because I think they were basically an advertising arm of his carnival):
Record breaking crowds are expected to attend the remaining three days of the company’s stand in Leavenworth. The attractions, all new, are bound to attract huge crowds throughout the remainder of the week.
By 8 o’clock last night all of the shows were crowded […] The Bagdad girls, and they are pretty and provide good, wholesome entertainment of the musical comedy kind, also proved very popular and played to capacity. Other attractions that drew large crowds were Fairly’s World of Novelties, the Days of Forty-Nine, and the “Fool Killer,” the submarine which caused the great Eastland disaster in the Chicago river.
For a start, this gives you (probably unsurprisingly, I suppose) the kind of company that the Foolkiller was being kept in at the time. But, also, this is one of the very few unambiguous mentions of the Foolkiller being on display outside of its initial run at State Street. That is: not what is advertised as being shown, or a story that something will be shown, but somebody reporting on an actual exhibition.
After this, C.W. Parker decamped to Oelwein, Iowa, showing the Foolkiller from May 8th to May 13th. Next was Dubuque, then Rock Island, then Burlington, in all four cases both advertising and reporting on the people going to see it. Then there is a quiet period. In early June, Parker’s Greatest Shows were in Champaign, IL and Keokuk. There is no mention of the Foolkiller, although we do learn [c/w, racism]:
There will be twenty attractions and riding devices. A few attractions have been added since last week. A large animal show and a plantation show presenting colored people in the old slave days. This show carries twenty people and its own band and orchestra and presents its own version of Uncle Eph and Old Aunt Dizana. The wild animal show presenting the trained seals that do everything but talk and a show for ladies and gentlemen. The Parker Shows need no introduction to the people of Champaign. Every show carried is clean and moral.
Sure, Jan.
On May 21st, it was advertised as a coming attraction in the Quincy Whig as coming in June (this was their next stop after Keokuk), but reporting the week of June 13th in the Quincy Daily Herald doesn’t mention it (although it does, oddly, include an unsinkable lifeboat) so one presumes that it didn’t make it with Parker past Burlington. Towards the end of June, the Foolkiller was being advertised again, once more in Chicago, as part of the Riverview amusement park, alongside Those Funny Monkey Motorists:
And that’s it. The trail in terms of the public visibility of the Foolkiller, at this point, goes cold. The Riverview part of this story is going to have to be covered separately, because this is already running longer than I’d intended it to, but I think it’s important to set up the groundwork here for the course of its exhibition in 1916.
See, there’s an interesting catch to all this. That summer, the Foolkiller was advertised in the Billboard magazine classifieds. And this ad describes the Foolkiller as “exhibited on State Street, Chicago, for three months, drawing an average of 1,000 PEOPLE A DAY. Admission charged, 10c. Easy to handle.”
The timeline more or less adds up—it was on display from mid-January in Chicago, and then in late April it was in Leavenworth. What doesn’t add up is that the classified ad says nothing at all about its time with C.W. Parker. It’s consistently described as being a crowd-pleaser—you’d think if you were selling an “easy to handle” sideshow attraction you’d make mention of how it crossed the Midwest for a few months and drew continuous attention.
Right?
But, see… here’s the Oelwein Daily Register, on the 13th of May:
The Beautiful Bagdad Girls drew the largest houses of the week. Prince Napoleon shows were crowded at an early hour, the little fellow being a great entertainer and making hosts of friends. The Submarine or Fool Killer, is another attractive spot and is attracting more than usual attention, it being the first submarine ever built. Fairly’s World of Novelties held large crowds the entire evening. This is really a wonderful show and is enjoyed by all who witness it. The Southern Entertainers were crowded at an early hour, and the southern songs and melodies were thoroughly enjoyable.
And here’s the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, on the 18th of May:
The Bagdad Girls drew full houses all the evening and the bright comedy and charming girls were more popular than ever. Prince Napoleon show was very attractive and the little fellow was kept busy making many new friends and greeting old ones. The Submarine Fool Killer, having an ever increasing attendance as all wish to see the first submarine ever built. The Southern Entertainers, with their plantation scenes, songs, and dances, pleased large crowds.
The Rock Island Argus on the 22nd:
Among the attractions that drew particular attention were the Beautiful Bagdad Girls, a clean musical comedy, with attractive girls, handsome costumes, and elegant scenery, Prince Napoleon shows, with the little fellow himself, who was busy the entire evening making new and greeting old friends: Fairly’s World of Novelties, with many curious people from all climes: ski ball, the new fun device: Days of Forty-Nine, the Submarine Fool Killer, the Southern Entertainers, the ferris wheel, and Parker’s carry-us-all.
And the Burlington Hawk-Eye, on the 31st:
The Submarine Fool Killer attracted more than usual attention, much curiosity being aroused to see the first submarine ever built.
The wording is always very similar—in many cases the orders of the shows mentioned is the same. I’m going to suggest, I hope uncontroversially, that I don’t think the person who wrote this got within a hundred feet of any of those exhibits. I think these are notes put out by C.W. Parker himself and printed with minor edits by newspaper editors who probably appreciated that this was never going to be front-page news and not worth sending someone to do actual reporting.
Which means, I would argue, that we don’t actually know how well the Foolkiller performed with C.W. Parker, and I suspect implies that it didn’t perform very well at all. I would, indeed, go so far as to argue that if we can’t trust those reports, I don’t think we can know that the Foolkiller actually traveled with Parker in the first place.
The alternative is that it was not very popular, kind of bulky, and a pain to move. And so Parker left it behind, but it appeared on their handbills and in the marketing material they distributed to the press until the first time they retooled the entire show (adding in the Creation exhibit, I believe) and thus the marketing copy. A fortuitous picture or a trustworthy account could make that clearer, but right now we don’t have that.
Billboard was a widely read trade publication; they don’t mention the submarine with Parker outside of a very brief article in early May that summarizes Parker’s key talking points about it. But, because it was widely read, people would’ve known the classified was a lie if it tried to represent the Foolkiller was a success on the traveling show circuit, and it actually wasn’t.
This is all inference, of course, but I think the evidence is that Parker’s Foolkiller was a flop.
I have wondered why it didn’t do well; it’s occurred to me that, perhaps, it just wasn’t a very interesting attraction. If you can either see the Beautiful Bagdad Girls or you can see a story of local interest to Chicagoans and basically nobody else, maybe you decide to take in the wholesome, moral entertainment (for the elegant scenery, of course).
On the other hand, C.W. Parker tries hard to draw connections between the Foolkiller and then-contemporary submarines, and I wonder, too, if that was a bet that didn’t play out: this all happened after the Lusitania was torpedoed, and the yellow press was eager to print stories of U-boat depravities and depredations. Playing up the American version, complete with its own tragedy, might’ve seemed… ghoulish.
Of course, a recurring theme in Billboard advertisements is newsreel photographs straight from the front:
“EXTRA! EXTRA! SOMEWHERE, people are dying. Would you like to know more?” In that milieu, perhaps it’s the opposite—that American crowds were all about the ghoulishness, and that they weren’t happy to be promised a submarine and get: a mud-covered metal pipe made of rust and impact damage, and the saddest version of a dog.
Perhaps, then, the earliest version of the Foolkiller saga was the better one—crafted by a more skilled storyteller, who knew how to lay it on just thick enough without all the eye-rolling melodrama. After all, it’s those early bits—not Parker’s “bitter rivalry and dark plotting” nonsense—that’ve stuck for more than a century. They had some skill, right?
In other words, I already said—
One might, indeed, be forgiven for thinking that the whole “first submarine,” “bones,” “unfortunate inventor” story was the invention of a carnival showman, were it not that it’s there from the very beginning and Deneau, while a self-aggrandizer, was not a carnival showman.
—so… what if Deneau is just a red herring? What if the Foolkiller was never his idea to begin with?
See y’all next week! :D
