More than a century earlier, circa 1775, one of these vessels was patented by an American inventor, David Bushnell. He called the sub "TURTLE", and it was instead to be used as a weapon.
This, however, was no the first model. Going back as far as the 1500s were Da Vinci sketched out designs for a proto-submarine. Later that century, British mathematician William Bourne released a prototype plan for a wood and leather submergible boat.
Since then, there have been many designs that lead to the submarine we know today.