First Submarine
6 SEPTEMBER 1776
FIRST SUBMARINE
The world’s first operational submarine was the brainchild of physician and inventor David Bushnell while a student at Yale College in 1771. During the 1775 British blockade of Boston, he and his brother Ezra gave the idea physical form. Their efforts produced a one-man craft that was able to fully submerge and surface by flooding or pumping her bilges. Forward motion was accomplished with a forward-mounted propeller connected to a manual crank inside. The pilot navigated through glass portholes in a short conning tower. By virtue of her egg-shaped hull, Bushnell named her Turtle. She carried a single “torpedo,” a 100# gunpowder charge that floated externally tethered to a bolt. That bolt could be screwed into the underside of an enemy vessel by means of a hand crank. A timer would trigger detonation after one hour, hopefully enough time for the sub to retire.
By TURTLE’s launch, the British had vacated Boston for New York, where the sub made her debut late this night north of Staten Island. Ezra Bushnell had fallen ill, and ironically it was a SGT in the Continental Army, Ezra Lee, who became the world’s first submariner. Lee departed the dock about 2230, moving toward the largest warship in the British anchorage, HMS EAGLE, 64, the flagship of ADM Richard “Black Dick” Howe. The novel craft proved surprisingly stable as Lee approached from the stern. He was able to glide undetected to within earshot, where he opened the cocks and submerged as planned. But as Lee rose under EAGLE’s hull he encountered a problem. Copper sheathing (or perhaps marine fouling) prevented the bolt from penetrating. Following a lengthy second attempt Lee, who was still new at the controls, accidentally broached beside the warship. Luckily, he remained undetected, but the approach of dawn broke off Lee’s attack.
The speed of the little craft left much to be desired, and by sunrise Lee was still within sight of the British fort on Governor’s Island, cranking steadily. A few curious British, unaware of what they were seeing, set out in a launch to investigate. And as they rowed nearer, Lee imagined his capture to be inevitable. In a last act of sacrifice he released the torpedo, hoping to destroy both his sub and the British launch.
His pursuers, however, lost interest and returned to shore. The torpedo drifted with the tide and detonated harmlessly inside the enemy anchorage. The explosion did startle Howe however, who slipped his cables and moved the fleet to the south of Staten Island. Lee safely regained the dock. He made two equally futile later attempts at enemy warships before TURTLE was lost in the Hudson River while escaping a British incursion.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 12-13 SEP 24
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 7 “T-V”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, pp. 354-55.
Friedman, Norman. U.S. Submarines through 1945: An Illustrated Design History. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1995, pp. 11-12.
Wagner, Frederick. Submarine Fighter of the American Revolution: The Story of David Bushnell. New York, NY: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1963.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Only one week earlier, on the night of 29-30 August, GEN George Washington had escaped certain capture in the Brooklyn Heights when John Glover’s “Marbleheaders” ferried Washington, his troops, their horses, and their cannon across the East River in a stunning 9-hour night evolution. Miraculously, the British fleet of “Black Dick” Howe had been prevented from blocking the East River by contrary winds.
TURTLE stood seven feet high and was constructed of wooden staves, much like a barrel. Some texts refer to this craft as American Turtle. As above, TURTLE rose and sank simply by flooding her bilges, then hand-pumping them dry. The same system was used in the later Civil War submarine H.L. HUNLEY.
History commonly credits inventor John Ericsson of Civil War fame with the innovation of the screw propeller. But in truth the propeller on TURTLE, though spindly and underpowered, looks much like a modern propulsion screw.
Underwater pumpkin carving contests are popular with sport diving clubs in October. And as anyone who has attempted to carve a pumpkin underwater will attest, the effort above to screw a bolt into an enemy hull was doomed to fail. At neutral buoyancy one is “weightless” underwater, and any force applied to the carving knife against the pumpkin simply results in your weightless body being pushed backward.
