George Garrett (inventor)

George William Littler Garrett (1852 to 1902) was a British clergyman and inventor who pioneered submarine design. Raised in Moss Side, Manchester, the son of an Irish-born curate, he studied at Owens College and Trinity College Dublin and became a curate himself in 1873. He invented a diving suit in 1877 and formed the Garrett Submarine Navigation and Pneumatophore Company, raising 10,000 pounds from Manchester businessmen. In 1878 he built a small hand-cranked submarine named Resurgam, followed in 1879 by a larger steam-powered Resurgam about 45 feet long, built by Cochran and Company in Birkenhead. It suffered from heat in the boiler and from poor longitudinal stability, and was lost under tow near Rhyl in 1880, but it impressed the Swedish industrialist Thorsten Nordenfelt, who financed further boats for Greece, Turkey and Russia. Garrett was commissioned in the Ottoman navy for trials. He later emigrated to the United States, joined the Army Corps of Engineers and died in New York in 1902. This entry rests on his English Wikipedia article alone and a second source pass is owed.