below is a pic of myself in front of a 19th century wooden submarine, on show at the Maritime museum of Barcelona, Spain.

Obviously, here the planks were spilled (spiled ?), but there was a lot of effort put into keeping the shape concentric and bending the wood only in one direction. Note that no plank is full lenghth, it´s more like a planked barrel with a planked cap and another solid cap.

For a strip built version, I would most likely plan the stripping pattern from the tip, probably by fitting a small cap, onto which you can fit 4 or 6 full lenght strips that "neatly" divide he hull into footballs, which can then be filled.

If the pic don´t work, try pasting this and/or hit the reload button:
http://www.geocities.com/pmatzler/sub.jpg