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Beneath the Waves of Revolution: The Story of America's First Combat Submarine
Long before nuclear stealth, America's first military submersible debuted during the Revolution. In 1776, the hand-cranked, one-man Turtle attempted to bomb a British flagship in New York Harbor. Though the mission failed, this wooden marvel marked the audacious dawn of submarine warfare.
In the tense summer of 1776, the nascent United States was on the brink of collapse. The British Royal Navy, the most powerful fleet in the world, had seized control of New York Harbor, anchoring its massive ships with impunity. Against this overwhelming force, the Continental Army had few options. Yet, in the mind of a quiet Yale graduate, a secret weapon was taking shape—one that was as ingenious as it was improbable.
The Mind Behind the Machine
David Bushnell was not a soldier, but a scholar obsessed with the science of underwater explosions. While studying at Yale, he had proven that gunpowder could be detonated underwater, a revolutionary concept at the time. With the colonies now at war, he turned his inventive mind toward a practical application: a vessel that could deliver a bomb to an enemy ship undetected. The result was a craft so bizarre it looked more like something from a fantasy tale than a military asset. Christened the Turtle for its shape, which resembled two tortoise shells joined together, it was the world's first combat submersible.
A Glimpse Inside the Acorn
The Turtle was a marvel of 18th-century engineering, a cramped, egg-shaped vessel constructed of oak and sealed with tar. It was designed for a single operator who would be responsible for everything. Propulsion was entirely human-powered; the operator would crank one propeller for forward and backward movement and a second, vertical propeller to submerge or surface. To descend, the operator would let water into ballast tanks. To rise, he would use two hand pumps to expel the water. It was physically exhausting work requiring immense coordination.
Perhaps the most fascinating innovation was its internal lighting. In an era long before electricity, Bushnell needed a way for the pilot to read his compass and depth gauge in the pitch-black interior. His solution was foxfire, a bioluminescent fungus that grew on decaying wood. The faint, eerie glow of the fungus provided just enough light for navigation without creating an external flame that would consume the limited oxygen supply.
The Daring Mission
On the night of September 6, 1776, a volunteer from the Continental Army, Sergeant Ezra Lee, squeezed into the Turtle. His target was the 64-gun HMS Eagle, the flagship of Admiral Richard Howe. Under the cover of darkness, Lee was towed near the target before setting off on his own. He successfully navigated the treacherous harbor currents and reached the hull of the Eagle undetected. But then, the mission fell apart.
Lee’s primary task was to use a hand-cranked auger to drill into the ship's wooden hull and attach a 150-pound cask of gunpowder, known as a torpedo. He tried several spots but couldn't get the screw to bite. It's possible he hit an iron strap used to reinforce the hull, or perhaps the copper sheathing common on British warships of the era proved too difficult to penetrate. Exhausted and with his air supply dwindling, Lee had no choice but to abandon the attempt. He released the torpedo, which floated away and detonated harmlessly an hour later, causing confusion but no damage. The first submarine attack in history had failed.
The Legacy of a Glorious Failure
Despite the failure of its primary mission, the Turtle was not a complete loss. It had proven that a submersible vessel could approach a heavily armed warship undetected. Its existence was a profound psychological shock to the British and a testament to American ingenuity. George Washington himself, who had been skeptical of the project, later praised Bushnell's design, writing that it was an:
effort of genius.
The Turtle made a few more unsuccessful attempts before it was lost when the sloop transporting it was sunk by the British. Though it never sank a single ship, David Bushnell's creation sailed into the annals of history. It was a radical idea, centuries ahead of its time, that laid the conceptual groundwork for the silent, powerful submarines that would one day prowl the depths of the world's oceans.