Submarines in the Civil War The american civil war was the start of a shift in innovation in war, tactics, and technology. One big shift in technology was the advancement in the submarine. In 1771 in the midst of the american revolution David Bushnell, a student at Yale University made designs for the first ever submarine, the USS Turtle. During the war the british had blockaded the coast of the united stated and the americans needed to find a way to disrupt the blockade. That's when Bushell came up with a wooden enclosed circle with a small port hole going to the top above the water. The pilot of this small underwater boat would peddle out toward the boat and manually screw a charge into the base of the boat and peddle away. No attempt was successful in taking out a boat, this was because the british covered the base of their boats with a copper sheeting and the pilot was not able to manually screw the charge through this sheeting. This was the last time anyone attempted to create a submarine until the Civil War nearly 78 years later.…show more content… During the war the Union had a complete superiority over the Confederacy, especially on the water. The Union had started blockading the confederates and they were in desperate need to break the blockade. So the confederate started on the secret construction and development of submarines and underwater warfare. The north never made any attempt to create any type of submarine, but when the cough word of the confederacy’s attempts at construction of subs they started creating anti-sub precautions on their ships. They did this by hanging nets and chains outstretched from the boat under the water, and this was very successful. There was no effective sub created by the confederacy, they all got stopped by the Unions defenses and sank. The first effective sub was the CSS
