" Mein Fuhrer!... I can _VALK_!"

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
They were always paranoid about it - but that didn't stop them from
sending them to sea. (Soviet SSBN patrols peaked in 1884 - US in
1968.)

Damn. We're lucky we weren't all speaking Russian by WWI then!

(I'm trying to imagine a Victorian era Steampunk SSBN.)

Don't knock it, the Russians got into the primitive sub business way
back before that; the first time they showed interest in it was in
_1718_, and the first one that got into the Czarist Navy was the the "Le
Diable Marin" ("The Sea Devil") which was built at St. Petersburg, and
was accepted into the Russian Navy on November 2, 1855:
http://www.geocities.com/gwmccue/Doc...goyne_027.html
Unlike the CSS Hunley, with its crew of damnable secessionist monsters
turning the crank of treason to drive it forward on its unholy and
murderous mission, the Sea Devil had its crew screwing forward while
running on a treadmill, a early incarnation of Pavlov and his dogs.
It's a pity that the crew running on that treadmill couldn't have been
_rebel_ dogs, or that no matter how much they salivated they would never
have been fed...like the Union saints who starved to death in
Andersonville, so that one day a mulatto could be President of the US.

But that's just one patriot's opinion.

Pat