I’ve just finished reading Julian Stockwin’sInvasion, the tenth of his Kydd series, which features among its cast of characters, Robert Fulton and his Nautilus of 1800. While the Nautilus is often called the first “practical” submarine, it was not the first.  It was preceded by Bushnell’s  Turtle of 1775 and, perhaps the most remarkable of all, by Cornelis Drebbel‘s submarine of 1620, a wooden craft covered with greased leather and propelled by oars (!)

A replica of Drebbel’s remarkable craft will be on display at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport in the UK, with a special presentation on June 3rd, in which actors from the Portsmouth theatre group, Groundlings, will play Dutch inventor Cornelius Van Drebbel and his assistant in a comical sketch using the actual replica Drebbel submarine.

World’s First Submarine Comes to Life in Half Term

The replica of the “Drebbel” which will be on show at the Submarine Museum was built for a BBC TV programme “Building the Impossible” in 2002. It is a scale working model of the original and was built using tools and construction methods common in 17th century boat building and was successfully tested on the rowing lake at Eton Dorney in Windsor, diving beneath the surface and being rowed underwater for 10minutes.