"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men… [no] controls on government would be necessary." — James Madison

Trying to Defeat the British with a Turtle

David Bushnell was a quiet, introspective man. Born on August 30, 1740, Bushnell—a resident of Westbrook, Connecticut, and a 1775 graduate of Yale College—possessed a scientific mind, studying medicine, advanced mathematics, and physical science. He was also an inventor with a particular interest in the effects of gunpowder explosions. Eager to use his knowledge to break the British chokehold on the Thirteen Colonies, Bushnell (along with his younger brother, Ezra) worked on and perfected his design for the first military submarine, the Turtle.

There are no surviving drawings made by Bushnell of the craft; only his written description remains. This leaves its actual construction open to interpretation. Bushnell himself wrote that the vessel "bore some resemblance to two upper tortoise shells of equal size, joined together." Bushnell also notes that the vessel was first "projected" in the year 1771 but not completed until 1775 (while he was still attending Yale). The replica of the Turtle at the Connecticut River Museum in Essex interprets Bushnell's final version of the craft as having tarred-oak planks banded with iron, forming an elliptical shape.

All interpreters agree that the Turtle was powered by human effort: a pilot would use a treadle-operated mechanism to activate the screw propellers and pumps. Attached on the outside of the Turtle's hull was a cask containing gunpowder. Ideally, this cask would be screwed to an enemy ship. The crude bomb would then be set off by a time fuse after the Turtle, completely submerged and hidden, was a safe distance away. Inside the submarine was a compass fixed with glowing "fox fire," or rotting phosphorescent wood. This natural illumination allowed the pilot to see inside the craft's dark interior. There would be enough air inside the Turtle for about 30 minutes. The operator could raise the submarine by releasing water ballast and return to the surface at any time to replenish the air supply.

Bushnell obtained financing for the submarine from Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull's Council of Safety. It was Trumbull who, along with General Israel Putnam, convinced General George Washington to allow Bushnell to bring his invention to New York and assist the Patriots there. Ezra Bushnell became ill and was unable to pilot his brother's Turtle after training for nearly a year. The submarine's navigation was then turned over to Ezra Lee, a sergeant in the 10th Connecticut Regiment, who volunteered to pilot the Turtle and attack the British on the night of September 6, 1776. The HMS Eagle, a sixty-four gun ship, was anchored just below Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island) in New York Harbor.

The following is an account from 1820 of Ezra Lee's attempt to use the submarine:

At 11 o'clock a party embarked in two or three whale boats, with Bushnell's machine in tow. They rowed down as near the fleet as they dared, when Sergeant Lee entered the machine, was cast off, and the boats returned.

Lee now found the ebb tide rather too strong and, before he was aware, had drifted him down past the men of war. He however immediately got the machine about, and by hard labour at the crank for the space of five glasses by the ship's bells, or two and a half hours, he arrived under the stern of one of the ships at about slack water. Day had now dawned, and by the light of the moon he could see the people on board, and heard their conversation. This was the moment for diving: he accordingly closed up overhead, let in water, and descended under the ship's bottom.

He now applied the screw, and did all in his power to make it enter, but owing probably in part to the ship's copper, and the want of an adequate pressure, to enable the screw to get a hold upon the bottom, his attempts all failed; at each essay the machine rebounded from the ship's bottom, not having sufficient power to resist the impulse thus given to it.

He next paddled along to a different part of her bottom, but in this manoeuvre he made a deviation, and instantly arose to the water's surface on the east side of the ship, exposed to the increasing light of the morning, and in imminent hazard of being discovered. He immediately made another descent, with a view of making one more trial, but the fast approach of day, which would expose him to the enemy's boats and render his escape difficult, if not impossible, deterred him; and he concluded that the best generalship would be to commence an immediate retreat.

He now had before him a distance of more than four miles to traverse, but the tide was favourable. At Governor's-Island great danger awaited him, for hiscompass having got out of order, he was under the necessity of looking out from the top of the machine very frequently to ascertain his course, and at best made a very irregular zigzag track.

The soldiers at Governor's-Island espied the machine, and curiosity drew several hundreds upon the parapet to watch its motions. At last a party came down to the beach, shoved off a barge, and rowed towards it. At that moment, Sergeant Lee thought he saw his certain destruction, and as a last act of defence [sic], let go the magazine, expecting that they would seize that likewise, and thus all would be blown to atoms together.

Providence however otherwise directed it: the enemy, after approaching within fifty or sixty yards of the machine, and seeing the magazine detached, began to suspect a yankee trick, took alarm and returned to the island.

Approaching the city, he soon made a signal, the boats came to him and brought him safe and sound to the shore. The magazine in the mean time had drifted past Governor's-Island into the East River, where it exploded with tremendous violence, throwing large columns of water and pieces of wood that composed it high into the air. Gen. [Israel] Putnam, with many officers, stood on the shore spectators of this explosion.

In a few days the American army evacuated New-York, and the machine was taken up the North River. Another attempt was afterwards made by Lee upon a frigate that lay opposite Bloomingdale. His object now was to fasten the magazine to the stern of the ship, close at the water's edge. But while attempting this, the watch discovered him, raised an alarm and compelled him to abandon his enterprise. He then endeavoured to get under the frigate's bottom, but in this he failed, having descended too deep. This terminated his experiments.

During the week after the explosion, a soldier patrolling the East River beaches found the "watchwork timer" still attached to a shard of wood. This artifact is now at the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford.

After Washington retreated, three English frigates sailed to where the American ships lay at Yonkers, New York. According to a report, these ships sank the sloop with the Turtle aboard. Bushnell, however, claims that he recovered the Turtle to further improve its design. No independent testimony exists that Bushnell did indeed salvage the craft. Its fate remains unknown.

Bushnell tried once more to cripple English ships when, in 1777, he designed free-floating, or towed, mines. His plan was to float the explosives toward a British man-of-war, the HMS Cerberus, docked east of Saybrook, Connecticut. The British had captured an American schooner docking it behind the Cerberus. Unfortunately, the American sailors attached the floating mine to the American schooner instead of the man-of-war. When the British sailors found the unidentifiable object and tried to examine it, they succeeded in setting off the bomb, destroying the schooner and killing all but one who was thrown overboard by the force of the explosion.

Another Bushnell invention, the keg mine, was a variation of the floating mine idea. This time, Bushnell's plan was to float the mines downstream at Bordentown, New Jersey, to rest among the British war vessels and merchant ships anchored off Philadelphia in the Delaware River. This plan met with no success as ice or "frost" in the river prevented the kegs from reaching the ships.

Bushnell had used all available money building the submarine and mines for the American cause. Following the "Battle of the Kegs," Bushnell was appointed by an appreciative General Washington to a captaincy in the new Corps of Sappers and Miners (today's Army Corps of Engineers).

In 1787, Bushnell moved to Warrenton, Georgia, where he became "Dr. Bush." Although dying a wealthy man—he taught school, practiced medicine thanks to his Yale training, and he bought and sold land—he became reclusive, suffering illnesses and depression. He died, unmarried, in 1824. His true identity as David Bushnell, inventor of the Turtle, was only discovered at the reading of his will.

The fate of the original Turtle may be unknown, but its legacy continues. Bushnell's Turtle was the first submersible to use water as ballast, a screw propeller, and a snorkel. Bushnell also proved that one could detonate gunpowder bombs underwater. Today's submarines owe their existence to the experiments and dreams of this Yankee Patriot.

Janice Pruchnicki is the author of Divine Soldier: A Biography of Samuel Wheelock Fiske/From Pastor to Civil War Soldier. The research for her recently completed biography of Cornelius Scranton Bushnell (instrumental in the building of the ironclad USS Monitor) led her to discover Bushnell's ancestor and inspiration: David Bushnell. Ms. Pruchnicki lives in Madison, Connecticut, not far from where David Bushnell built the Turtle.

Editor's Note: the Connecticut River Museum is the center of Turtle research, and proudly displays the original 1977 operational replica, a new and fully interactive Turtle, and an interactive kiosk which allows visitors to explore everything known about the Turtle. You can learn more about the submarine and the Connecticut River Museum at http://www.ctrivermuseum.org. Also, be on the lookout for a new book by Roy Manstan, which promises to be the definitive book on the Turtle.