American divers have found more than 100 years old submarine

The discovery is important evidence of submarine development in the United States decades before the first major submarine battles, US broadcaster NBC News quoted Simon as saying in a report Wednesday. The Defender’s inventor, Simon Lake, responded to a U.S. Navy tender in 1893 and submitted several designs for submersible vehicle construction, all of which were initially rejected, according to the Connecticut Submarine Library and Museum Society. With his prototype, Lake also implemented ideas inspired by the “Nautilus”, the submarine from Jule Verne’s novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.

Divers have spent years investigating where the U-boat might be
“The Defender had wheels, it could drive on the floor. It had a door where you could let divers out,” Simon told NBC. The son of a professional diver in Connecticut, he grew up hearing stories about the submarine and eventually went with a team to find its likely resting place. of research preceded the success of finally finding the approximately eleven meter long boat with extremely poor visibility.

For the United States Navy, the Defender remained an experiment, never being used for military purposes or mass-produced as designed. In 1946 the boat sank in the estuary that leads from the metropolis of New York to the North Atlantic Ocean. The USS Holland, named after its inventor John Philip Holland, was the first modern submarine in the US.

Simon told NBC he didn’t want to reveal the exact location of his discovery, about 50 feet below sea level, to protect it from treasure hunters. But he does wish the Defender could one day be raised to be on display for all to enjoy.