‘The Defender’: Divers Discover Century-Old Submarine in Long Island Sound

Connecticut divers discovered the wreckage of a 92-foot long submarine, built more than 100 years ago and eventually scuttled in Long Island Sound, CBS News reported on Wednesday. 

Richard Simon, a commercial diver from Coventry, Connecticut, and his team found the “The Defender,” which was built in 1907, on Sunday. Simon said he spent months poring over underwater mapping surveys, known sonar, and government documents he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act to “identify any anomaly that fit the size of the sub,” according to the report. Before he began attempting to locate the submarine, he had long been interested in its origin story. 

Simon and his team ultimately found the Defender off the coast of Old Saybrook, more than 150 feet below the surface.

“It was legitimately hiding in plain sight,” he told the outlet. “It’s on the charts. It’s known about in Long Island Sound, just no one knew what it was.”

Millionaire Simon Lake and his Lake Torpedo Boat Company built the submarine, originally called the Lake, while vying for a U.S. Navy contract, according to the report. Lake was allegedly inspired by Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

“The Defender was [an] experimental vessel, with wheels to move along the sea bottom and a door that allowed divers to be released underwater…” the report states, and continues:

The company lost that competition and Lake then tried refitting the boat for minesweeping, salvage and rescue work, renaming it the Defender. But he never found a buyer. It was a well-known sub and was even visited by Amelia Earhart in 1929, Simon said, as evidenced by a photo of the aviator posted to Facebook.

After going unused for many years and remaining docked in New London, it was eventually abandoned on a mud flat near Old Saybrook. Simon told the outlet it was scuttled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1946, but its location remained undisclosed.

The report explains how Simon identified the vessel:

Simon said it was clear when his team found the wreckage that it was indeed the Defender. The length, the size and shape of protrusions on the submarine’s distinct keel, and the shape and location of diving planes characteristic of Lake-built vessels, all helped identify it…

Simon and his team plan to spend the summer diving on the sub, filming it and taking photographs. He said he and the company he and his wife own, Shoreline Diving, put up the money for the search. He said he hasn’t figured out how to monetize the find, but said that wasn’t the goal in looking for it.

Simon said he has already reached out to the Navy to see if it would like to preserve the wreckage.