Cosme García Sáez

Biography

Cosme García Sáez was the eldest child of Andrés García and Andrea Saéz. When he was fifteen, his father passed away, leaving him to provide for his mother and younger brother. At nineteen, he married Úrsula Parres, whose father worked as a tanner, in Logroño’s Church of Santiago el Real on 30 October 1837.

Their son Vicente Benito arrived on 12 January 1838, followed by daughter Juana on 13 July 1839; both birth records note García’s trade as guitar maker. By 1845, the couple had two more boys, Sotero and Enrique. He served as a private in a grenadier company of the National Militia until at least 29 January 1843, never advancing in rank.

Formal education or engineering training likely never came his way. In Logroño, people called him El Pinche; after relocating to Madrid, he became known as García el Riojano. Despite this lack of schooling, he proved a gifted inventor. His creations included a mail-stamping machine, better methods for casting printing type, and a shotgun and breech-loading carbine meant for the Spanish Army.

On 16 May 1856, he patented the Relámpago shotgun, a multi-shot rapid-loader, but its prototype often backfired or discharged accidentally, leading the Spanish Military Commission to reject it as unsafe. That same day, he also patented a postal device for the Fábrica del Sello. Built from an iron frame, a plunger, and rollers that drew ink from a reservoir onto a bronze platen, it could postmark several letters at once, leaving a crisp, clean impression.

Commemoration

The Spanish Navy has named three submarines after García: an A-class submarine in commission from 1917 to 1931; the former USS Bang, in Spanish service as Cosme García (S-34) from 1972 to 1980; and the S-80 Plus-class submarine Cosme García (S-83), scheduled for commissioning in 2028. A secondary school named after him opened in Logroño in 1985. In 1993 a committee in La Rioja worked to revive his legacy. In January 2012 the Spanish Ministry of Defense identified him as one of the four fathers of the Spanish Navy Submarine Force.