Its probably not known but I heard on the history channel that the "Turtle" submarine from the Revolutionary war used the first practical form of a propellor.

A difficult question. The first person to patent the screw propeller for use with ships was John Patch in 1833; but the invention of propeller-like devices happened earlier than this. In America's War of Independence (Revolutionary War), David Bushnell developed a submersible for use by the Americans which he named the Turtle; this ungainly craft used a hand-cranked, screw-like propeller for movement. The Turtle saw action in September of 1776 in New York harbor when pilot Ezra Lee attempted to sink the HMS Asia by attaching explosives to her hull; but was not successful. Another attempt to sink British shipping a month later also failed, and the Turtle was abandoned as a weapon of war. If we expand the definition of propeller to include anything that moves in a circular motion to push against air or water, then you might credit its invention to Archimedes. The Archimedes screw (essentially a screw in a cylinder) was developed some time in the third century B.C. to pump water from a lower level to a higher one. There is some debate whether Archimedes actually invented the device that bears his name; but its development inarguably occurred over 2,000 years ago.