Attack of the Turtle

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

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                I’m working on a book involving submarines and I’m reminded that this week is the 248th anniversary of the launching of the first American sub. Yes, 248 years ago, on September 6, 1776. Here is the story, some of which can also be found in Valley Forge by Bob Drury and yours truly.

In America, the idea that an underwater vessel was possible – and even better, be used as a military weapon -- was the brainchild of the inventor David Bushnell, a thin, stern-faced Connecticut Yankee with a knack for gadgetry.

He was the eldest son of a farming family who, when he was 31 and after his parents died, sold his share of the homestead to his brother and enrolled at Yale University. While studying the natural sciences he experimented with detonating gunpowder packed into water-proof kegs beneath the surface of the Connecticut River. With the help of two New Haven clockmakers, Bushnell managed to create a crude timing device attached to a musket’s gunlock to explode his “torpedoes,” as he named them.

Four years later, the gunsmoke had barely cleared from the fields of Lexington and Concord before he offered his services to the Continental Army. After Benjamin Franklin, another famous tinkerer, informed General George Washington of Bushnell’s peculiar talents, the commander in chief immediately sensed the potential of these underwater time bombs to wreak havoc on the mighty British navy. But the question hung – how to deliver them with any accuracy? Bushnell’s response was the world’s first documented use of a submarine in warfare.

Bushnell constructed the frame of his one-man submersible by joining two tortoise-shell-shaped oaken slabs in an upright position. A windowed hatch large enough for a man’s head was affixed to the top of the craft, with two snorkels inserted into the crude conning tower that automatically closed upon submersion. The watertight gaskets were then slathered with tar before the entire contraption was bound with wrought-iron staves. For assistance with the ship’s mechanics, he once again turned to the clockmakers, who helped him devise a valve-controlled chamber which could fill with or flush seawater to control the ship’s depth. Two screw propellers – one to maintain propulsion and one projecting upward to assist in ascents – were operated by foot pedals and hand cranks.

Because its tiny compartment held only so much air, the vessel Bushnell dubbed the Turtle could only remain submerged for minutes, meaning the vessel was limited to night operations. The ingenious Bushnell solved the problem of operating the machinery in the murky depths by coating his instrument panel and compass needles with bioluminescent foxfire, a species of fungus found in decaying wood that glows in the dark.

The Turtle was deemed fit for operation in the late summer of 1776. Its first target was none other than Admiral Richard Howe’s 64-gun flagship of the line HMS Eagle, at the time engaged in blockading New York Harbor.

The almond-shaped Turtle was transported overland to the Hudson River, armed with a torpedo over two feet long that was packed with 150 pounds of gunpowder. On September 6, it was towed by whaleboats under cover of darkness to as near to the British moorings as the Americans dared. During trials on the Connecticut River and the Long Island Sound, the vessel’s volunteer pilot, Sgt. Ezra Lee of Connecticut’s 10^th Regiment, had been trained to submerge when he neared an enemy ship and bore a hole into its hull with a large screw controlled by the hand cranks. Lee would then guide the torpedo into the opening and set the explosive’s timer. Like so many of the Continentals’ best-laid military plans, the Turtle’s initial mission fell apart almost immediately.

Bushnell and his accomplices had not anticipated the Hudson River’s mighty currents. After being cut loose from the whaleboats it took Sgt. Lee over three hours of furious peddling to reach the Eagle. Nor was anyone aware of the copper plating only recently installed across the Eagle’s hull to protect against shipworms. Most likely, the Turtle’s screw failed to penetrate this metal sheathing. Lee, running out of air, exhausted, and possibly suffering from carbon dioxide poisoning, abandoned the scene.

As he made for the New Jersey riverbank at dawn he was spotted by enemy sentries on Governor’s Island, who launched an oared guard boat in pursuit of the floating walnut-like vessel. Lee managed to frighten them off by exploding his torpedo. But with the element of surprise eliminated, the Turtle’s future effectiveness was compromised. Although the British maintained that no such thing as a submarine had attacked them, they subsequently increased their lookouts for any bizarre little boats toting what they referred to as exploding “infernals.”

Within the month Bushnell tried again. Sailing with the tide this time, Sgt. Lee pedaled the Turtle toward a British frigate anchored off Manhattan. But he was spotted by the ship’s night watch and forced to retreat under a salvo of flintlock fire. A few days later the Turtle’s tender vessel, with the submarine on it, was sunk by enemy cannon fire off New Jersey’s Fort Lee. The Turtle may have been gone but not Bushnell’s tenacity.

In early January 1778 he approached General Washington with a plan to prepare a fresh batch of torpedoes and float them down the Delaware River toward Philadelphia’s harbor. Instead of using a timing device, the triggers on these bombs would be set to detonate on contact with the hull of a ship. The city’s moorings were then so crowded with enemy vessels that Admiral Howe had been forced to calve 100 empty transports from his armada and sail them north to winter over in Rhode Island out of fear that a wharf fire would engulf his entire fleet. Bushnell proposed that his torpedoes might do just the same to the remainder. Washington concurred.

But it was not to be. Two boys walking the riverbank north of the city spotted one of the first kegs approaching on the ebb tide. When they secured a small boat to investigate, the “infernal” blew them to pieces. This alerted sentinels who had been posted to spot floating ice chunks. Within moments British sailors manning warships unleashed a broadside of cannon at the remaining torpedoes while soldiers on shore poured shot into the river. The barrage sank the floating bombs before they could do any damage.

          Although years later Washington hailed Bushnell as “a man of Great Mechanical Powers, fertile of invention and master in execution,” he also admitted that “he labored for some time ineffectually, and though the advocates for his scheme continued sanguine, he never did succeed.”

          Bushnell was not finished with the American fight for independence, however. When Washington formed the Corps of Sappers and Miners, the inventor was given command with the rank of captain-lieutenant. Alas, on May 6, 1779, he was taken prisoner in Middlesex Parish. In June 1781, having been exchanged for a British prisoner, he was commissioned as a captain in the Continental Army and participated in the victorious siege of Yorktown that autumn.

By the way: A full-sized model of the Turtle is on display at the U.S. Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton, Connecticut. The submarine tender USS Bushnell was commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1915, and 26 years later it survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books, including the just-published trade paperback edition of The Last Outlaws. Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com to order a copy.