They had submarines during the Civil War.

People were still going to the barber to get bled and dying of papercuts because they bathed once a week.

But they had submarines.

The term David was used by Confederates in reference to the Biblical legend. The Confederacy was the underdog. Guess who Goliath was.

By then submarines were an old invention, created by the Ukrainians in the seventeenth century. Some species of diving beetles and water spiders carry air pockets with them when they dive, exploiting the principles of surface tension and the lightness of air. Ukranians built a cossack riverboat which could be flipped and submerged, maintaining a pocket of air for the sailors, with an opening below where legs could extend and walk on the water's bottom. Something Wile E. Coyote might have come up with.

We were a bit more sophisticated by the 1850s.

The Union was the first to build a working submarine — the legendary 47-foot Alligator. The Alligator had a pressurized air supply, an air filtration system, the works. She could move undetected through the cold waters of the Atlantic and fell enemy ships with electric mines attached by men in diver locks.

The Confederacy responded with the twenty-foot David. It could not submerge completely.

The David's hold on the term "Submarine" is tenuous. "Submersible" is better applied. She was really more of a low-riding torpedo boat whose smokestack and breathing tube broke the water's surface.

Designed under the eye of General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard commanding the Confederate forces at Charleston, David was a steam-powered, cigar-shaped craft. She carried 134-pound spar torpedoes fitted with percussion detonators that exploded on contact with enemy craft. A crew of six could fit inside her homely frame.

"Spar torpedo" sounds impressive, doesn't it?

Think about what "spar" means. Close fight. Spar torpedoes never left the craft. They were long poles tipped with explosive charges. The Rebs would steer the vessel close enough for the spars to make contact and hope to sustain less damage than the enemy.

David was swamped by a passing steamer during her first attempt at warfare, taking three of her crew to the sea floor. The Rebs fished her out and tried again.

On the night of October 5 1863 the David made a run at the Union ironclad New Ironsides. The crew took out an ensign with a shotgun blast and detonated a spar torpedo below the waterline. The explosion sprayed moisture into the David's steam engine and the crew found themselves evacuating under a hail of rifle and grapeshot fire. Two Confederate men were captured. After the gunfire stopped the remaining two regained control of the submarine and floated her back to her moorings.

It was the first successful torpedo attack in history.

New Ironside, marred by leaky seams, steamed south to the Federal blockade base at Port Royal for minor repairs. She was back in service quickly.

The South built twenty more Davids. None of them sank a single ship.

americancivilwar.com
http://americancivilwar.com/tcwn/civil_war/naval_submarine.htm

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/submarine

AT&T
http://home.att.net/~bh1861/subs.htm

Yahoo! geocities
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6262/civilwar/civilware.htm

Son of the South
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/Confederate_Submarine.htm

Lienard, John H. "Civil War Submarine"
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi381.htm

Goebel, Greg. "The Invention of the Submarine."
http://www.vectorsite.net/twsub1.htm