THIS is the man who spent four years and over £20k building his own submarine – which can dive 60ft underwater.
The three-tonne DIY submarine called Lake Defender is the crackpot home project of Steve, from upstate New York, who tackled the build without formal training.
Steve, 30, spent over 4,000 hours building the solid steel structure from scratch and now has a fully-functioning, coastguard-approved submarine to cruise around in.
He can’t share his surname because he gets stalked online after his “horrifying but impressive” content blew up on YouTube and TikTok.
Steve documented the later stages of his project and began uploading to his YouTube channel, Planes Boats and Submarines, which quickly took off – amassing over 40 million views.
Viewers have marvelled at his engineering skills and determination to complete the ambitious project.
One of his most popular videos tells the bizarre story of being pulled over by a police boat during the sub’s very first outing.
Steve tells The Sun: “The first time I ever put it on the water, for a surface trial, we had the police called on us.
“A woman called the police thinking that we were being attacked by North Korea.
“The thing that blows my mind is that we were in a lake – she thought it was another country invading a lake.”
Steve first entered the world of underwater activities as a scuba diver, which still comes in handy when he scopes out areas for his sub.
He also has 9 years experience building boats so knows his way around a hull, although admits that “boats and submarines are totally different”.
He was first inspired by watching a fellow submarine builder, and soon joined the “very small community” of the P-Subs (Personal Submersibles) Organisation.
“I don’t know the exact total but there’s probably only a couple dozen people in the States.”
Steve wanted to create something different, rather than copy someone else’s sub.
He designed Lake Defender entirely by himself, aided only by his submarine elders warning him of potential pitfalls: “They told me all the problems they ran into, the mistakes they made”
Steve has plans to take Lake Defender to the Finger Lakes to join one of the occasional P-Subs meet-ups, but currently she has only ever bobbed around the lake 20-minutes from his home.
He says the submarine “was not designed to be a research sub – it’s more of a toy. It’s very big, 26ft long, so it doesn’t turn easily.”
Despite being just a “toy”, Steve’s creation has a maximum dive-depth of 60ft, calculated by halving the crush depth shown by virtual pressure simulations.
The deepest he has so far dived in the sub is 20ft, but he declares: “We’re going to take it to 60ft this summer.
“We’ll do an unmanned dive first, and when it passes that I’ll get into it.”
He wouldn’t want to go further than 60ft because “beyond that, if something went wrong, you wouldn’t be able to swim out to the surface”.
And things can go wrong.
Last June, the world was rocked when an OceanGate submarine went missing whilst exploring the Titanic wreck, and it later became clear that the craft had imploded – tragically killing all five on board.
Steve “sadly knew people that had friends on board OceanGate”, and says it “certainly had a major impact on the submersible industry”.
“Although my submarine is not built or certified for commercial use, or to dive in the ocean, the biggest takeaway from the disaster is to stick to proven building methods used for personal submersibles.
He explains that “OceanGate was not built to these standards,” because the CEO Stockton Rush, among the dead, used untraditional carbon fibre for the hull.
Steve has only ever had one “hairy” moment: “I’ve never told this story before, but once during a surface trial one of the ballast tanks was leaking air, so the sub started to roll.
“The hatch was open – and came within inches of water flooding in.
“I had to jump out and use my body weight to keep it upright.”
There was also a major blip in the building process – a “pretty upsetting, £2,000 mistake” that made Steve take six months off.
He had been welding [X] when the heat warped the steel so that the sub wouldn’t seal properly.
But Steve was soon back at it, demonstrating the determination his followers so admire.
Although Steve has no formal training in submarine construction, he has always prioritised safety as “the number one thing”.
He has spent hundreds of hours researching, and the P-Subs community has links with designers and engineers for hobbyists to run their ideas by.
He has even spent hours sitting inside the capsule on land, to check the oxygen system is working properly.
Since his submarine content caused a stir online, Steve is managing the channels full-time.
But, he explains, content creation is a tricky world to navigate: “You’re not always sure what people will find interesting.
“We have a decent following but we’re trying to figure out how to take it to the next level.”
He has exciting plans for future videos, possibly involving “water cannons” and “model rockets launched off the sub” – which have been requested by his fans.
“A lot of the followers come from the stories we’re telling, so we’re focussing on finding more interesting ways to tell stories.”
The eye-catching vehicle understandably attracts a lot of attention, and Steve laughs: “People do still call the police, because they don’t know what they’re seeing, but the cops all know me by now.
“Everyone round here, including the sheriff and police, all know me as ‘the submarine guy’.”
