Barry Parker's: The Physics of War; from arrows to atoms

While browsing on Amazon for something completely different (a layman’s guide to sonar signal processing to be precise) I came across the book in the title for this post. Looking at the "Look Inside" I noticed a section on American Civil War submarine, which I immediately scrolled down to. This comprised about 1 page of text which I found appallingly vague, inaccurate or banal. To be specific:

I will start with the first paragraph:
“The first submarines also saw action during the Civil War. Actually, the first submarine had been built many years before the war, in 1776 in England. It was a one-man , hand-cranked machine. And the American inventor Robert Fulton had constructed a submarine for the French navy.”

First sentence: The earliest recorded submarine was built by Corneilius Drebble for the Royal Navy in the1620’s to a design of 1559 by William Bourne. Allegedly, capable of staying submerged for 3 hours and was rowed from Westminster to Greenwich and back. Also James I is alleged to have been on-board for a test dive.

The first attempted use of a submarine in combat was with David Bushnell’s, an American "Patriot", Turtle. Allegedly used in 1776 to attack HMS Eagle, Lord Howes flagship, in New York harbour. This attack failed due to inability to attach the charge for disputed reasons. This event appears to be what Parker has garbled in the second sentence of the paragraph. The last sentence of the paragraph appears to be the only one with any resemblance to received history, and it was named Nautilus.

Second Paragraph:
More or less accurate, what is being referred to here are not true submarines being semi submersibles requiring the smoke stack and a low casing always above the water. They were not necessarily all called David, their generic name was Davids after the first of their type, records are sketchy so we do not know what they were actually named if at all.

Third Paragraph:
Hunley, Hunley Hunley …. Not Hurley (one typo is excusable, but please not repeated three times)

Summary
What we have here is basically poor research and possibly poor proof reading, and since this is one tiny section how can we have any confidence in the story being told in the rest of the work.

References:
If you are seeking references:
1. Google for “history of the submarine” and/or “Drebble”, “Bushnell”, “Fulton”, “David class torpedo boats”, “Hunley” etc.
2. Wikipedia has good pages on all of this.
3. My own talk on the history of underwater warfare for the BAE Systems internal Torpedo Engineering Course... but most of you will never have access to that :(

Post Script:
Having now read somewhat more of this work (2004-07-26) it seems that the historical parts are poorly researched, full of errors and half truths, but the physics is generally OK. For what that is worth.