Submarine

A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation while fully submerged underwater, traditionally called a boat rather than a ship regardless of its size. The Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel built the earliest submersible for which reliable construction details survive, an oar-propelled vessel completed around 1620 while he served England's King James I, and David Bushnell's hand-powered, acorn-shaped Turtle of 1775 is recognized as the first verified submarine capable of independent underwater movement and the first to use a screw for propulsion. Robert Fulton built the human-powered Nautilus for France in 1800, Wilhelm Bauer's 1850 Brandtaucher survives today as the oldest known submarine in the world, and the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley became the first military submarine to sink an enemy warship when it destroyed the USS Housatonic in 1864, though it was lost immediately afterward.