a Bavarian inventor and engineer who built several hand-powered submarines. Wilhelm Bauer was born in Dillingen in the Kingdom of Bavaria. His father was a sergeant of a Bavarian cavalry regiment. Because of this, Wilhelm Bauer, after an apprenticeship as a wood turner, also joined the army. Working as an artillery engineer, he witnessed the German/Danish war for Schleswig-Holstein between 1848 and 1851. Seeing how the Prussian coast was easily blockaded by the Danish navy, Bauer quickly developed a plan to build a new type of submersible ship to help break the blockade.
