Dearcán Media’s new documentary on John Philip Holland will be broadcast on TG4 on Tuesday the 22nd of November at 9.30 p.m.
Holland is recognised world-wide as the inventor of the first functioning submarine, built in the US in the 1890s, but he has largely been forgotten in his own country.
His first submarines were financed by the IRB – by Irish revolutionaries like John Devoy and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa – in New York in the early 1880s, yet fewer than twenty years later he designed what became the first US Navy submarine, as well as the first British, Russian, Japanese and Dutch submarine fleets.
The Clare born inventor was recognised as an equal by peers such as Edison and Diesel, and was a founding member of the giant US corporation The Electric Boat Company, still in existence to this day. Holland fell out with the ECB over safety issues, and was eventually sidelined by them – and this has contributed to the lack of awareness of his achievements.
Holland showed incredible grit and determination throughout his life, and fully earned the title bestowed upon him by the US Navy – the father of the modern submarine.
A Dearcán Media production for TG4 with support from the ILBF