My first serious attempt to acquire a large ocean going submarine was around 1999/2000. Initially I thought buying a used diesel electric military submarine would be the best idea. It seemed the quickest way to get a finished submarine, then strip out the parts I don’t need and it’s ready for some adventure.
At the time I had several options available for purchase in the $500K to $1M range. Most of these where either American or Russian WWII submarines. Some early cold war Russian submarines, like the Whiskey class, also a Juliett class (famous for showing up on ebay a couple of times).
First thing to do was check out some local military submarines that are open to the public. The USS Pampanito (SS-383) is docked in San Francisco, so it seemed like a good start. I spent about 15 minutes on the Pampanito before realizing buying and refitting a military submarine was not an option.
Military submarines are built for one reason, effectively deploying their weapons. Humans come last on military sub. After 15 minutes on board the Pampanito I had bruises on my legs and a bump on head – it’s uncomfortable and hazardous in there.
I see a military sub as like a giant hand gun, with people living in it. When the gun is to be fired, some people must climb down to the magazine, lift out a bullet and carry it up to the barrel, slide it into the breech, lock the bullet in place, pull back the firing pin. When the gun fires, the people must keep out of the way of moving parts or they get squished.
Military submarines where not going to be a a cheap and quick solution to getting the submarine I wanted, so I continued to look at the used submarine market for large tourist submarines. These where slightly better suited, being there constructed purpose was to entertain people and look at interesting things outside. Tourist submarines are ABS certified as well which is nice.
Unfortunately the initial cost of a tourist submarine (24 to 50 person) is very high $1M to many million. ABS certification definitely increase the value a lot. Also, they would require extensive refitting for my purpose. They are not very stream line, or open ocean worthy, so the exterior would require extensive modification and additions to meet open ocean requirements. The interior would need a great deal of modification, remove the “airliner” style interior and make it more habitable for longer journeys, bigger main diesel and generators. Remove the need for surface support vessels.
Buying a used military or used tourist submarine was not going to be cheaper than building my own large ocean going submarine from scratch. Building the submarine from scratch also means that it’s built for my purpose.
Building my own submarine, or finding somebody to build one, for me was the path I chose.