excerpted from the Weird Chicago book Phillips appears to have designed at least four submarines in his lifetime – according to his descendants, his third model, built in 1851 and known as the Marine Cigar, was stable enough that he was able to take his family on fantastic underwater picnics (this was probably the one…
Tag: foolkiller submarine
The Fool Killer Submarine – Part 2!
excerpted from the Weird Chicago book Inititially, the Tribune reported that the ship had been first launched in 1870 as a floating craft and sank to the bottom of the lake the first time it was submerged. According to their first article on the sub’s re-discovery, it was believed to have been bought and raised…
The Fool Killer Submarine – Part 1!
excerpted from the Weird Chicago book. In the days following the Eastland Disaster, a diver named William “Frenchy” Deneau was responsible for recovering around 250 bodies from the murky water. Four months later, in November, he was back in the river, working to lay cables beneath the Rush Street bridge. While he worked, his shovel…
The Fool Killer Submarine – more evidence
The best guess anyone has put forth on the origin of the Fool Killer Submarine is that it was built by Lodner Phillips around 1849 – and had presumably been in the water ever since when it was dredged up from the Chicago river in 1915 for display on South State street. Most of the…
The Fool Killer Submarine ad
One of our favorite topics around here is The Foolkiller, the submarine found in the river in late 1915 that contained the skulls of a dead man and his dog. How old the sub was, who the guy was, and what became of the thing, are some of the city’s enduring mysteries. People tend to…
Foolkiller Clue?
When the Fool Killer submarine was discovered in the river in late 1915, there were conflicting reports as to how old it was. Most newspaper reports said it had first appeared in the lake/river around the early 1870s, though no reference to it from those days has been found yet. Many then said it had…
The Foolkiller Submarine
NOTE: the post below is from the very early days of the blog. We now have a FAR MORE DETAILED POST ON THE FOOLKILLER HERE original post: For all our talk of ghosts and murderers, my favorite thing to talk about may be The Foolkiller Submarine that was found in the Chicago River…