The cops all know me by now as 'the submarine guy'
In the lakes of upstate New York, a self-taught engineer named Steve has spent four years and four thousand hours constructing a fully functional, three-tonne submarine from steel and determination alone — a vessel he calls Lake Defender. Without formal training, guided only by a small community of fellow builders and nine years of boat-making experience, he has created something that confounds neighbours, attracts police, and has drawn forty million eyes online. His story sits at the intersection of obsessive craftsmanship and the modern hunger for spectacle, asking quietly what it means to build something real in an age that rewards the performance of building.
- A 26-foot, three-tonne homemade submarine capable of diving sixty feet is not a weekend project — it cost Steve four thousand hours, £20,000, a near-flooding crisis, and six months lost to a catastrophic welding mistake.
- The vessel's viral fame brought forty million YouTube views but also online stalkers, forcing Steve to withhold his own surname from the public.
- The shadow of OceanGate's fatal implosion looms over the project, sharpening Steve's insistence on proven personal submersible standards over the kind of unconventional shortcuts that killed five people at the Titanic wreck.
- Steve has only dived to twenty feet so far — his planned sixty-foot descent this summer will begin unmanned, a careful threshold he will not cross because beyond it, a failure means no swimming back.
- With fans now demanding water cannons and model rockets, Steve is navigating a new kind of pressure: turning a feat of solitary engineering into sustainable content without letting spectacle override the safety discipline that kept him alive.
Steve is thirty years old and lives upstate in New York, where the local sheriff knows him simply as "the submarine guy." Four years ago, with no engineering degree and no formal training, he began building a submarine from scratch. The result is Lake Defender — twenty-six feet long, three tonnes of steel, capable of descending sixty feet — and it took him four thousand hours and roughly £20,000 to complete.
The build was not without its scares. A leaking ballast tank during a surface trial sent water creeping toward an open hatch, and Steve had to throw himself onto the hull to keep it upright. A welding error warped the steel so badly it cost him six months of rework. He came back to it anyway. His background in scuba diving and nine years of boat-building gave him a foundation, but submarines, he discovered, are an entirely different discipline. He found his footing through the P-Subs Organisation, a small American community of personal submersible builders who shared their hard-won mistakes with him.
When Lake Defender first appeared on the water, a neighbour called the police, convinced that New York was under North Korean invasion. The officers arrived, found a homemade submarine, and now know Steve by name. He documented the later stages of the build on a YouTube channel called Planes Boats and Submarines, which has since accumulated forty million views — attention that also brought stalkers, forcing him to keep his surname private.
The OceanGate disaster last June, which killed five people when an unconventionally built submersible imploded near the Titanic wreck, cast a long shadow over the submersible community. Steve knew people connected to those aboard. It reinforced his commitment to the proven methods his community has developed over decades, and it sharpened the line he has drawn for himself: sixty feet maximum, because beyond that, a failure is unsurvivable.
He plans to reach that depth this summer — unmanned first, then crewed if it holds. In the meantime, he manages his channel full-time, fielding fan requests for water cannons and model rockets mounted to the hull. Lake Defender began as an act of pure obsession. It has become a platform, and the man who built it is now learning that navigating an audience requires its own particular kind of depth.
Steve is thirty years old, lives upstate in New York, and has spent the better part of a decade becoming the person the local sheriff knows as "the submarine guy." Four years ago, he decided to build a submarine from scratch. No formal training. No engineering degree. Just four thousand hours of labor, twenty thousand pounds sterling, and a three-tonne steel vessel he named Lake Defender, which can descend sixty feet below the surface of a lake twenty minutes from his home.
The submarine is twenty-six feet long and fully functional. It has ballast tanks, an oxygen system he tested for hours while sitting inside the capsule on dry land, and a hatch that once nearly flooded when a tank began leaking air during a surface trial. Steve had to jump out and use his own body weight to keep the vessel upright while water crept toward the opening. He has never told that story publicly before. There was also a two-thousand-pound welding mistake that cost him six months of work when heat warped the steel so badly the hull wouldn't seal. He came back to it anyway.
Steve came to submarines through scuba diving, which taught him to read underwater terrain. He had nine years of boat-building experience before he started, though he quickly learned that boats and submarines are entirely different animals. He joined a small community called the P-Subs Organisation—Personal Submersibles—where he found maybe two dozen people in the entire United States doing similar work. They shared their mistakes with him. They warned him of pitfalls. He designed Lake Defender entirely by himself, taking their counsel but building something original rather than copying someone else's design.
When he first put the submarine on the water for a surface trial, a woman called the police. She thought they were being invaded by North Korea. The absurdity of it still strikes him: a lake in upstate New York, and someone genuinely believed a foreign military had arrived. The police came. They found a homemade submarine. Now, years later, the cops know him by name. They still get called sometimes. People still don't know what they're seeing.
Steve documented the later stages of his build and uploaded videos to a YouTube channel called Planes Boats and Submarines. The channel now has forty million views. His followers have marveled at his engineering and his willingness to spend four thousand hours on something most people would abandon after a weekend. He cannot share his last name because the attention brought stalkers. The content is, as he describes it, "horrifying but impressive," and it blew up across YouTube and TikTok in ways he did not entirely anticipate.
The deepest he has actually dived is twenty feet. He plans to take Lake Defender to sixty feet this summer—an unmanned dive first, then, if it passes, he will get inside. He will not go deeper than sixty feet because beyond that, if something failed, he would not be able to swim to the surface. He knows this because he has spent hundreds of hours researching. He also knows it because last June, an OceanGate submarine imploded while exploring the Titanic wreck, killing five people aboard. Steve knew people who knew people on that vessel. The disaster shook the submersible community. OceanGate had not followed proven building methods. Its CEO had used unconventional carbon fiber for the hull. Lake Defender was built differently—using the standards that the personal submersible community has developed and tested over decades.
Now Steve manages his YouTube channel full-time. Content creation is harder than he expected. You are never quite sure what people will find interesting. He has a decent following, but he is trying to figure out how to take it further. His fans have requested water cannons. They have asked for model rockets launched off the submarine. He is considering both. The stories are what draw people in, he thinks, so he needs to find more interesting ways to tell them. Lake Defender, it turns out, is not just a toy anymore. It is a platform. And the man who built it without formal training is now learning to navigate an entirely different kind of depth.
Citações Notáveis
The first time I ever put it on the water, a woman called the police thinking we were being attacked by North Korea. We were in a lake.— Steve
Safety is the number one thing. OceanGate was not built to proven standards—I made sure mine was.— Steve, on the OceanGate disaster's influence on his design choices
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why did you decide to build a submarine instead of, say, a boat or a plane?
I'd been diving for years, and I got inspired watching another submarine builder. Once I saw it was possible, I wanted to create something of my own rather than just copy what someone else had done. It became an obsession.
Four thousand hours is a staggering amount of time. Did you ever want to quit?
There was a moment—a welding mistake that warped the whole hull. Two thousand pounds down the drain. I took six months off. But I came back to it. Once you're that deep into something, you can't really walk away.
The OceanGate disaster happened while you were building. Did that change anything for you?
It absolutely did. It made me more careful about which methods I used. OceanGate ignored proven standards. I made sure I didn't. Safety has always been number one, but that disaster reinforced why.
You've never had formal training. How did you learn what you needed to know?
The P-Subs community—the people who've been doing this for years—they shared their mistakes with me. I researched obsessively. I tested everything on land before I ever put it in water. You can teach yourself if you're willing to be methodical.
Your YouTube channel has forty million views. Did you expect that?
No. I was just documenting what I was doing. But people connected with the story—the determination, the absurdity of it all. Now I'm trying to figure out how to keep that momentum without compromising what made it interesting in the first place.
Water cannons and rockets seem like a departure from pure engineering. Why add those?
My followers asked for them. But it's also about storytelling. The submarine itself is the story, but we need to find new ways to tell it. Those additions are part of that.