STetc ch 37 Masters of War edition: the fricken submarine / a brief meditation on the Whitehead factory

[Michael Bailey]

Why a ‘fricken’ submarine? Because it’s a fricken submarine, golly darn it!
How’s that spelled? M-c-G-u-f-f-i-n you say?
Yeah, you might have something there (or is "cheese" the McGuffin of ST?)


""Abandoned after the War, the old Whitehead factory, where the torpedo as we have come to know it was invented, has fallen into ruin, occupied these days by unhoused squatters and motorcyclists passing through. Few care to stay much longer than overnight, because it's said to be haunted by the ghosts of submarines long dismantled which feel compelled to return to their birthplace. More objects-with-souls gobbledeygook, Hicks figures. Hopefully."



Whitehead indeed was the inventor of the torpedo as we know it. What was a nice English guy doing in Rijeka (which was then called Fiume)?


Whitehead went to Mechanics' Institute, in Manchester England England
Ch 37 link 1
( https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/80zhkx028dsm35tscgugc/Shadow-Ticket-links.odt?rlkey=1f1cpcz7ncb2g68ja23rql07i&st=65c8zcis&dl=0 )

Apparently the arms trade even in the 1800s was multinational. His very first job was at a shipyard in Toulon, France, for Philip Taylor and Sons. Thence to Milan, Italy. Then to Trieste, where "his work...was noticed by the founders of Fonderia Metalli" (all this is from Wikipedia) in Fiume (now Rijeka), of which concern he became manager in 1856. Empowered with flex, he changed its name to "Stabilimento Tecnico di Fiume", producing marine steam boilers and engines for, among others, the Austrian Navy.

After meeting, in the early 1860s, Giovanni Luppis - a retiree from the Austrian Navy who'd made a primitive torpedo powered by compressed air & controlled from land by ropes - Whitehead partnered up with him to "perfect the torpedo as an effective weapon."

Along with his 12-year-old son John, and a workman called Annibale Ploech, Whitehead experimented. Austrian Navy purchases funded further improvements for the rest of the century, like a depth regulator and, in 1898, gyroscopic stabilization.

Bled the company dry by 1873, but used his Bitcoin stash & opened back up as "Torpedo-Fabrik von Robert Whitehead", later "Whitehead & Co., Societa in Azioni" - which had, at one point, plants in Fiume, Wyke Regis (England), and Livorno (Italy), and name changes over the years. Corporate shapeshifting (trying to avoid karma and so forth?) brought forth in 1915 a submarine subsidiary, the Ungarische Unterseebotsbau AG (UBAG) — "SM U-XX, SM U-XXI, SM U-XXII and SM U-XXIII Type diesel-electric submarines were produced by the UBAG Corporation in Fiume."

So, that's what "ghosts of submarines long dismantled which feel compelled to return to their birthplace" means. And that's where the beer joint is near, with Ernst Hauffnitz ensconced, already into a beer, & smoking "a smoldering pipeful of some Latakia blend."

And we'll probably learn eventually how come Hicksy is there...where he's coming from  — is it Hicks or some other character who's been riding around on a motorcycle? We shall see.

Seem to recall he's friends with Stuffy from way back in M'waukee, and didn't Hicks & Skeet see the sub in Lake Michigan?...and like listen to ham radio from it clandestinely under some overpass or other?  ...and wasn't Stuffy some kind of bootlegger before he got into the submarine business?

A lot to look forward to !