Brit-hating Irish revolutionaries can be credited with causing the invention of the modern submarine. They financed John Phillip Holland in his quest to build an undersea warship and he made them the Fenian Ram.
However, a dispute about money occurred which led to the revolutionaries stealing the ship. Fortunately or not depending on one’s politics, the Fenians didn’t know how to work the ship and Holland wouldn’t tell them.
Holland would eventually build the U.S. Navy’s first modern sub, the USS Holland, and ironically, the Royal Navy’s first sub.