Sergeant Lee grips the controls with determination as he works
his way towards the enemy. Tired and stressed, perspiration pouring down his face...if taken
prisoner, he can expect no quarter from those he's set out to destroy. He's an American soldier, on his own, deep within treacherous
territory. Sergeant Lee has a new type of weapon at his command, one that
can deal his country’s enemies a blow of revolutionary proportions...
Physically exhausted, he tightens his grip and pushes on…
1776
On the night of September 6th, Sergeant Lee slipped into New York harbor at the helm of a “new fangled” American made submarine intent on destroying a British flagship, The H.M.S. Eagle. Eagle served as headquarters to Admiral Richard Howe, brother of General William Howe, the nautical half of a duo sent to quell America’s revolt against the Crown. As overall commander of British Forces in America, Admiral Howe and his flagship proved a tempting target for General Washington--a target, if destroyed, might very well break the naval stranglehold England held over the thirteen colonies.
Gripping and furiously turning the propeller crank, sweat constantly dripping into his eyes due to the humid environment of the little submarine. Lee slowly made his way towards Eagle. His mission seemed simple...dive his submarine beneath the warship, attach the bomb, set the clockwork timer and make his way back to safety...
An Effort
of Genius...
As the United States was striving for nationhood, revolutionary and gifted individuals stepped forward to bring new ideas, new weapons and invention into the fight for independence. David Bushnell was one of these, a man who took an idea, developed a design, built a machine, and went on to become the father of American submarine warfare.
He was born and raised in colonial Connecticut. The son of a Saybrook farmer, he attended
Yale University at the rather advanced age of 31. As a student, Bushnell became interested in
the concept of gunpowder exploding underwater.
Despite academia’s contrary position, he set out to prove it could be
done. With experimentation, he made that
theory a reality. Not only would it explode
under the sea, Bushnell proved that water’s density made for even more
destruction when submerged. In 1775, he
graduated college determined to lend his talents to the Patriot cause. Bushnell and his brother Ezra offered the
Continental forces a one-man, hand-powered submarine they had built. This vessel would become known as the "Turtle", America's first
submarine. Designed to place a full keg of
gunpowder against the hull of an unsuspecting British warship, she was roughly 6
feet high by 7 feet long. She was the
technological wonder of her day, from the propeller, to the pumps, to the
clockwork time-delay device inside the gunpowder-laden keg. It was innovative,
but temperamental and difficult to operate.
Powered and controlled exclusively by one man, the whole thing was centered
on the detachable explosive keg or mine; the submarine was merely a delivery
system. With a time-delay clockwork that triggered a modified flintlock
mechanism, the keg would be set to explode after the submarine operator had screwed
it into the underside of the enemy warship and silently departed.
David’s brother Ezra was the original pilot of the Turtle, but because of sickness, he became incapacitated and was unable to operate the submarine. In his place, an army sergeant named Ezra Lee was chosen as the new submariner. Receiving only the most rudimentary of training on how the Turtle worked, and given only a few practice sessions in the craft, Lee was sent forth to meet the floating British foe....
Submarines were not a new concept at the close of the 18th
century. Both "inventions" can
trace their genesis back centuries. Like
Bushnell, the inventors of America's first "smart" gun took an
existing idea, and made it their own, just as the Turtle was an updated version of an earlier submarine constructed
and tested in the 1690’s by Denis Papin, a member of the British Royal
Society. In so doing, both have demonstrated
the uniquely American trait of taking an idea or design and revolutionizing it.
David Bushnell's Turtle Submarine
Ezra Lee
Bushnell went on to become a captain in the Continental Army’s Corps of Sappers and Miners. He died some years later in relative obscurity, but the Turtle had not been forgotten, as a post-war letter to Thomas Jefferson, describing the submarine in detail, suggests. He never viewed the submarine as a real triumph...the clockwork, time-delayed keg bomb (or mine) is what Bushnell was most proud of...which is understandable because it actually worked and was successful. It would be up to later inventors to perfect the submarine, and while never fulfilling the intent of its inventor, the Turtle paved the way for subsequent submersibles, culminating in the U.S. Navy's first official submarine, U.S.S. Holland, a little over a hundred years later. Nevertheless, George Washington himself gave Turtle the highest of compliments, stating, “It was an effort of genius.”