By James Heinz
Some of my best stories come from what I find in the files of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society when I am looking for something else. When I found there was a file with the title “FOOL KILLER” on it, I knew I had to write a story about it, whatever it might turn out to be.
In November 1916, four months after the EASTLAND disaster in which 800 people died on a ship in the Chicago River that never left the dock, one of the divers who helped recover the bodies from the EASTLAND was once again at the bottom of the Chicago River.
William “Frenchy” Deneau an EASTLAND rescue diver.
Photo courtesy of Todd Gordon.
His name was William “Frenchy” Deneau and this time he was trying to lay cables across the bottom of the River under the Rush Street bridge.
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The salvage of Fool Killer, November 24, 1915. Courtesy of Chicagology.com
He discovered a 40 foot long tubular metal object with a pointed end. On This Day, the object was pulled out of the River, as the accompanying photograph shows. The object became known as “The Fool Killer Submarine.”
What the object was, who built it, and how it ended up in the River is still debated. The object has become the Roswell, New Mexico, of Chicago, Illinois. So now I, your Shipwreck Sherlock, will try to uncover the truth.
Photo at top of page: The salvage of Fool Killer, November 24, 1915. Courtesy of Chicagology.com
Much of what is in the WMHS file on the Fool Killer comes from the web site mysteriouschicago.com by Chicago author, tour guide, and historian Adam Selzer, who has written twenty books.
The first explanation is that the whole thing was a publicity stunt by Frenchy Deneau. He was a sort of showman who did not always stick to the facts. It was Frenchy that declared the object to be “an ancient, primitive submarine”.
This might seem the simplest explanation, especially because when the object was examined on shore, the bones of a man and a dog were found inside. This might indicate that the object was a genuine submarine of some kind that went down with someone inside it.
However, no one had ever reported anyone or any dog having gone missing in a submarine in the Chicago River. As Adam Selzer says: “Who the heck was the dead guy inside of it, and what in the world possessed him to take his dog out on a submarine trip in the river?”
Part of the problem was that most of what we now know about the object comes from the Chicago newspapers and this was not American journalism’s finest hour. Their accounts are full of conflicting and erroneous details that don’t make sense, including three different locations as to where it was found.
Peter Nissen. Courtesy of Chicagology.com
The second explanation was that the object was the invention of that most unlikely of people: a bookkeeper turned daredevil. His name was Peter Nissen. He actually built three craft he himself named Fool Killer (FK). FK1 and FK2 were boats he rode through the rapids and whirlpool of the Niagara River, although he almost drowned doing it.
Nissen entered Great Lakes lore with FK3, which can best be described a large watermelon shaped balloon which he intended to somehow roll across Lake Michigan with himself inside. The balloon and his dead body later drifted ashore separately. However, Nissen never built submarines and nothing links him to the Chicago River object.
The most accepted story is that the object was built by another unlikely person: a shoemaker from Michigan City, Indiana who designed submarines named Lodner Darvantis Phillips. Before you think a shoemaker from Indiana designing a submarine makes no sense, remember that two bicycle mechanics from Ohio invented the airplane.
According to Lodner family lore and the book GREAT LAKES FIRST SUBMARINE by Patricia Harris (available from the Milwaukee Public Library), the Chicago River object was the second of four submarines Phillips designed. He supposedly built it around 1847 and it sank on a test run, partly because it had no means of propulsion. Drawings of later Phillips submarines show a tubular object with a pointed snout similar to the Chicago River object with a square conning tower near the pointed end.
Phillips supposedly sold the sunken sub to a William Nissen in 1871, who raised it and experimented with it before it sank or was sunk a second time. If so, no one in Chicago seems to have noticed an experimental submarine tooling around in the Chicago River either in 1847 or 1871.
When the object was recovered in 1916, Frenchy Deneau and the newspapers may have confused William Nissen with Peter Nissen and assigned Peter Nissen’s moniker of Fool Killer to it because, as Adam Selzer speculates, designing something like the object seemed like something Peter Nissen would do.
But wait, before you think the mystery is solved, there is still another explanation. Mark Chrisler, producer of the podcast website https://www.constantpodcast.com/the-foolkiller.html has yet another theory. According to him, the Chicago River object wasn’t a submarine at all.
Motorized rescue boat of 1906. Courtesy of Chicagology.com
Instead, it was a type of motorized rescue boat featured in the 1906 issue of POWER BOAT NEWS. Photos and patent drawings of the boat show it had many features similar to the Chicago object, including portholes, and a square cabin like structure at the pointy end. Postcards show the boat tied to a dock in the Chicago River near the spot where the object was found.
Exhibition Poster. Courtesy of Chicagology.com
And what about the bones found inside the object? According to Adam Selzer, only the two skulls were found, not complete skeletons of a man and a dog. And they were reportedly recovered by would be showman Frenchy Deneau, who put the object on display in a Skee Ball parlor in Chicago and charged people a dime to see it. “Come for the Fool Killer, stay for the Skee Ball” was his advertising slogan. Frenchy may have planted the bones to make a good story better.
The object was sent on tour to the Iowa State Fair, where it was surpassed in popularity by a performing monkey. It later returned to Chicago and disappeared, possibly into a World War I scrap drive.
So which story is true? No photographs of the stern of the object, or any photos or drawings of it taken on land are available. Lodner Phillips died in 1869, not surprisingly in poverty, and could not have sold the supposed sub to someone in 1871, three years after he died. And if someone did raise the supposed sub in 1871, who would get in it again after it had laid on the bottom of the Chicago River for 24 years?
The object is almost certainly the motorized rescue boat that was abandoned after the company that made it went bankrupt. Which leaves us with one more mystery: If Phillips family lore is correct, is the 1847 Phillips submarine still sitting on the bottom of the Chicago River?
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James Heinz is the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s acquisitions director. He became interested in maritime history as a kid watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures on TV. He was a Great Lakes wreck diver until three episodes of the bends forced him to retire from diving. He was a University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee police officer for thirty years. He regularly flies either a Cessna 152 or 172.
