The great submarine adventure
The Plongeur had a propeller driven by a compressed air machine which could generate 80 horse power. Captain Bourgeois developed the Plongeur in France in 1863. This was the first submarine to function with compressed air. It also made the important transition from hand-driven to mechanical propulsion. The first successful submarine combat mission took place in America in 1864, when the Confederates managed to sink the Union warship Housatonic using the Hunley.
The Gymnote : A five-man crew, a steel hull 17 m long, an electric engine, though only rechargeable in port, and two self-propelled torpedoes. The Nautilus dreamed up by Jules Verne worked on electricity. In 1888, two French engineers, De Lôme and Zédé, adopted this method of propulsion for their Gymnote, the genuine ancestor of the nuclear submarine.
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