I am reminded that the Korean people invented the ironclad ship, called the turtle boat.
World of difference. The Brits had ironclad barges in the Crimea, but even they were not steam powered propeller driven, and certainly didn't have John Ericsson's rotating turret.
This kind of thing should remind us that it is not "invention" per se that advances societies but freedom of millions of small innovations. Germans had a steam powered car before Ford popularized the internal combustion engine; Hiram Maxim had an airplane (without human control) before the Wrights; and John Fitch invented a steamboat but had no business sense of how to make it profitable, hence Robert Fulton.