9/20/2006

Turtle revolutionizes naval warfare
By Tom Range, Sr.

The First Submarine

By early September 1776 the Continental Army was holed up on the island of Manhattan surrounded by British naval and army forces, which controlled the rivers, harbor and neighboring islands in New York Bay.  One night, enemy lookouts spotted a strange-looking vessel bobbing in the bay.  It was the first submersible watercraft ever used in combat, named Turtle.  Controlling it was a one-man crew, American army sergeant Ezra Lee.

Turtle was the invention of David Bushnell, a native of Saybrook, Connecticut.  This recent graduate of Yale had demonstrated that gunpowder could be made to explode in an underwater container.  This naval mine consisted of a watertight wooden keg holding a packed charge of gunpowder, a fuse and a clock-timer devise.  What was lacking was a delivery system to get the explosive devise to an enemy ship.

Bushnell had conceived a submersible boat while still a student at Yale.  After graduation in 1775, he began building his craft in Saybrook.  The result would be another watertight container, this one large enough to hold its operator, 900 pounds of lead ballast, a man-powered propulsion system and a few basic controls. 

The strange wooden craft was six feet in height, just over seven feet in length, and looked like the shells of giant beached turtles fused together when completed and displayed.  Thus Bushnell named his invention Turtle.  In an upright position it resembled a giant inverted egg standing on its narrower end, which was weighted down by the ballast.  The one-man crew had to manage a hand-cranked propulsion system of two windmill-like paddles, the rudder, the valves controlling ascent and descent, and machinery to attach the mine that was affixed to the Turtle, to the underside of an enemy ship.  He then had to make his escape before the mine went off.  All of these maneuvers had to take place within a half hour period before the air in the submersible was depleted.

Trials were successful on a hulk donated to the Cause by a local shipbuilder in Saybrook.  The crewman was able to maneuver Turtle under the ship, screw the cask containing the explosive to the wooden hull of the target ship and escape before detonation.  The interior of Turtle, crowded with its crude 18th century instrumentation, had a work area of little more than a telephone booth.

General George Washington was enthused with the invention and gave Bushnell his support.  The vessel was transported to Manhattan.  Its target was chosen - the flagship of British Admiral Richard Howe, the 64-gun HMS Eagle.  Sergeant Lee maneuvered the submersible under Eagle but could not attach the mine to the hull.  While the screw, basically a drill bit, could penetrate wood and even the copper sheathing that protected the hulls of many British warships, it could not penetrate the iron fittings around Eagle's rudder under which Turtle had unfortunately surfaced.  Sergeant Lee had no time to reposition his ship.  He had to jettison his mine to float free and paddle away to save Turtle and himself.

He jettisoned the mine after setting it to explode in 60 minutes, and paddled back to the safety of Manhattan Island.  The mine, now floating freely, exploded on schedule but caused no damage to British ships.  As the Continental Army evacuated New York City and Manhattan Island, Bushnell and his invention were brought along with the withdrawing patriot forces.  Turtle never again was launched although Bushnell did have limited success with naval mines later in the Revolutionary War.  The vessel may have been scuttled to keep it from enemy hands.  The young inventor served in action at Morristown, Peekskill, Dobbs Ferry and West Point.

David Bushnell, the "Father of Submarine Warfare" as he is known today, achieved the rank of captain in the Continental Army but passed his post-Revolutionary life in obscurity.  While he may have thought his invention had failed, he in fact fathered both the submarine and the naval mine as offensive weapons of war on that early morning of September 7, 1776.

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