page_title: Brutus de Villeroi
section_title: The Alligator (1862)
hierarchical_section_title: Brutus de Villeroi / United States career / The Alligator (1862)
context_page_description: Brutus de Villeroi was a French engineer of the 19th century, born Brutus Amédée Villeroi in the city of Tours and soon moved to Nantes, who developed some of the first operational submarines, and the first submarine of the United States Navy, the Alligator, in 1862.
context_section_description: De Villeroi proposed a submarine design to the United States Navy, to counter the threat of Confederate States Navy ironclad warships. The Navy signed a contract with him in autumn 1861, for the submarine to be built in 40 days, for a sum of $14,000. The ship became the US Navy's first submarine, the Alligator. It was never officially commissioned and therefore does not have the "USS" prefix.
  De Villeroi supervised the first phases of the construction in Philadelphia, but was progressively evicted from the project as he opposed some modifications to his design.
  It was the first submarine to be ordered and built for the US Navy, the first to have a diver's lockout chamber, the first to have on-board air compressors for air renewal and diver support, the first to have an air-purifying system, and the first to have electrically detonated limpet mines. It was designed primarily to launch divers, who could then plant bombs under surface ships or perform operations underwater.
caption: Plan of his submarine, by Brutus de Villeroi, describing the oar arrangement.
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