An electron-beam accelerator based on spiral water pulse forming line which consists of a primary storage capacitor system, an air core spiral strip transformer, a spiral pulse forming line of water dielectric, and a field-emission diode, is described. The experimental results showed that the diode voltage is more than 500 kV, the electron beam current of diode is about 24 kA, and the pulse duration is about 200 ns. The main parameters of the accelerator were calculated theoretically. The distributions for electrical field in the pulse forming line were obtained by the simulations. In addition, the process of the accelerator charging a spiral pulse forming line was simulated through the Pspice software to get the waveforms of charging voltage of pulse forming line, the diode voltage and diode current of accelerator. The theoretical and simulated results agree with the experimental results. This accelerator is very compact and works stably and reliably.