Why there is no single “first submarine”
The title of this article is a convenient phrase, but historians generally do not name one definitive first submarine. It depends on what you count. A boat that merely travels just under the surface, a craft that can dive and surface at will, a vessel that carries its own power, and a warship that sinks an enemy are all different milestones, and different machines reached each of them. What follows is the well-documented outline, with the uncertain parts marked.
Ideas and early experiments
An English mathematician, William Bourne, described a submersible boat in 1578 in a book on inventions, and his idea of a hull that could change its volume to sink and rise is often cited as an early written concept. There is no evidence that he built it.
The best-known early working attempt is usually credited to the Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel, who is reported to have demonstrated a rowed, leather-covered boat on the River Thames in the early 1620s. Accounts of it are fragmentary and were written later, so the details, including how deep it went and how long it stayed down, are uncertain. It is still treated as an important early step because it suggests that a rowed craft could operate below the surface.
The American Turtle and the first attacks
In 1775 David Bushnell began work on a one-person craft that came to be known as the Turtle, built to attach an explosive charge to a ship’s hull during the American Revolution. It was hand-powered and used water ballast to sink. Its attempted attack in 1776 failed, but it showed that a single operator could control depth and direction under the surface.
Early in the next century Robert Fulton built a craft called the Nautilus for the French government around 1800, and demonstrated it in the water. Naval authorities were not convinced that it had much value, and the project did not lead to a fleet. Meanwhile in Germany, Wilhelm Bauer’s Brandtaucher sank in Kiel harbor in 1850 during a trial, and its crew escaped, an early lesson in how dangerous the work was.
The problem of power and air
Almost every early design depended on human muscle, which meant low speed, short range and a limited supply of breathable air. Progress came in pieces:
- Steam. The Resurgam, built by the Rev. George Garrett in the late 1870s, used steam power, but a boiler is hard to run in a sealed hull, and the boat was lost while under tow in 1880.
- Electricity. Batteries gave a way to run motors without burning air. The lead-acid battery and electric motors made quiet underwater running practical, although only for a limited time before recharging.
- Internal combustion. Combining a gasoline engine for surface travel with battery power underwater became the dominant arrangement around 1900.
Hull control was the other half. Designers had to manage ballast tanks, trim and horizontal rudders (hydroplanes) so that a craft could hold a depth instead of bobbing up and down.
From experiment to naval boat
The Hunley, a hand-cranked Confederate craft, sank the Union ship USS Housatonic in February 1864 and is widely described as the first submarine to sink a warship in combat. It was lost shortly afterward with its crew. It was raised in 2000, and research on it continues.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, John P. Holland’s designs, and similar boats built in France and elsewhere, became the first submarines that navies bought as standard equipment. By then, the torpedo was becoming a practical weapon, which gave a small underwater boat a reason to exist. Diesel engines then replaced gasoline in most navies during the early twentieth century, because diesel fuel is less likely to ignite.
Two world wars
Both world wars showed what submarines could do and how limited the early types were. Most were really submersible surface ships that spent much of their time on the surface and dived to attack or hide. Detecting them led to advances in sonar, and later in radar detection of boats that surfaced.
Nuclear propulsion and later boats
The biggest design change after 1900 came in the 1950s with the nuclear reactor. A reactor does not need air, so a submarine could stay submerged for very long periods, limited mainly by supplies and the crew. The USS Nautilus, commissioned in 1954 by the US Navy, is usually identified as the first nuclear-powered submarine. Later boats gained a streamlined teardrop hull for efficient submerged travel and the ability to carry long-range missiles.
Smaller conventional boats remain in service, and today unmanned underwater vehicles perform survey and inspection jobs without a crew at all.
What the history shows
The submarine was not invented in a single moment. Buoyancy control, propulsion, air supply, navigation and a purpose all had to arrive, and they did so over roughly three centuries. When you see a claim that one named person built “the first submarine”, it is worth asking which of those problems that person solved.