14 November, 2022 by Diego Quevedo Carmona

The Submarine Boat of Inventor Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont

On September 8, 1888, at the Cádiz arsenal of La Carraca, in front of a good number of authorities and an enthusiastic crowd, Isaac Peral launched his submarine torpedo boat into the water, thus culminating what would be the germ of the modern submarine. PTo reach that historic moment, many other daring inventors of devices capable of submerging contributed their grain of sand, trying to design some apparatus that would allow them to do so in order to fulfill one of humanity's ancient dreams, which was to explore the depths of the sea.

Among these inventors, classified as true “pioneers of underwater navigation,” one of the first and least known was Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont, who lived four centuries ago.

Born on an indeterminate date in 1553 in the Navarrese lordship of Guenduláin, about 15 kilometers from the city of Pamplona, into an aristocratic family, he was the second male child of a total of four, from the marriage formed by Carlos de Ayanz, captain of the Pamplona garrison, and Catalina Beaumont.

In 1567, at just 14 years old, he would go to Madrid to serve as a page to King Philip II, receiving for this, at the court itself, and for four years, a meticulous academic and military training, studying not only letters and arts but also mathematics in practically all its branches, such as arithmetic, algebra, geometry, astronomy, cosmography, nautical science, and even engineering. That is to say, a thorough education for the time.

From 1571, he would begin a successful military career, participating in military campaigns in Tunisia, Lombardy, or Flanders, gaining fame in all those scenarios as an “exceptional soldier.” Returning to the Court in 1579, the important service record he already had earned him the appreciation and esteem of King Philip II, an appreciation that would increase when he thwarted a plot against the monarch in 1582, being awarded as a prize an annual remuneration of 200 ducats.

Shortly thereafter, and always in consideration of his merits, the monarch conferred upon him the habit of the Order of Calatrava, and from then on, his ascent to the higher echelons would be unstoppable and meteoric, being appointed in 1587 as “Perpetual Councilor of Murcia and General Administrator of the Mines of the Kingdom,” positions he would combine with that of governor of Martos (Jaén).

Precisely that appointment related to the city of Murcia, the fact that he married into an influential Murcian family (first with Blanca de Pagán Fajardo, and after her death, with her sister Luisa, with whom he would have four children who all died at a young age), and the affection he always showed in life for this land and its people, would be decisive for his family to decide to bury him in Murcia upon his death, which would occur in Madrid on March 23, 1613, at the young age of 60, first in the convent of San Antonio de Padua, from which he would later be exhumed and reburied in the Murcia Cathedral, specifically in the chapel known as “del Socorro or de los Dávalos.”

Today, in the General Archive of Simancas, there are preserved ¡¡up to 48 patents!!, corresponding to as many inventions, which made him one of the greatest geniuses of his time, having the tremendous privilege, among other things, that the fertile pen of Lope de Vega echoed his life when he wrote four years after his death the comedy “What Happens in an Afternoon” in which he has Marcelo, one of the protagonists, say, “This is the strength, sir of prudence, the bodily strength that reaches the body, like that which was seen by excellence in Don Gerónimo de Ayanz.”

Of that almost fifty patented inventions, which earned him the nickname “the Spanish Da Vinci,” one of the most notable is one of the first devices capable of submerging, which places him on the select list of “pioneers of the art of navigating underwater,” as he designed a couple of barges adapted to be able to submerge, both perfectly watertight, and equipped with a novel system for renewing interior air, connected by flexible tubes to the outside, an operation that was possible through large bellows and suction and escape valves that regulated the passage of air, both the clean air to the interior of the vessel and the expulsion of the stale air to the outside.

According to one of his biographers, “to such an extent did De Ayanz pamper the details that he added sponges soaked in rose water to the ventilation system, which perfumed the interior of the submarine,” on board of which there were two crew members, who were sufficiently capable of performing the maneuvers of diving and surfacing, through a system of ballast and counterweights operated from a winch, with which they regulated the depth to navigate, being able to see what was happening outside through several “glazed and gridded windows,” and moreover, the device was equipped with a kind of articulated arms to access and recover small objects from the seabed.

All this occurred in the early 17th century, in 1603, and according to the records in Simancas, it was Ayanz who created “the first device capable of submerging that was patented in the world,” for although there were other inventors who made some tests with other artifacts before him, even in the Middle Ages, none had the sufficient notoriety or reliability in their use to be patented.

Both this submersible boat and a system for supplying air to a submerged diver were tested by Ayanz in the Pisuerga River -Valladolid was the seat of the Court, where he had moved in 1601-, before the eyes of King Philip III himself, after whose demonstrations he would be so satisfied that the Monarch did not hesitate to publicly and effusively congratulate the Navarrese inventor, a character who marked a milestone in the then-nascent history of what would later become the Spanish Submarine Force.

To this day, the few tributes that this pioneer of underwater navigation in Spain has received have come from his compatriots, specifically from the Public University of Navarre, which named one of its dependencies after him, thus preventing this multifaceted inventor from falling into absolute obscurity, whose remains have been buried -and forgotten, it must be said- in a chapel surrounding the interior of the Cathedral of Murcia for over four centuries.