On April 19, 1775, the battles of Concord and Lexington essentially started the American Revolutionary War. During those early months of chaos and violence, an inventor named David Bushnell developed two revolutionary ideas: an effective method to detonate gunpowder underwater, and the Turtle, a spherical submarine for a single crew member made of wood, brass, bronze, and pitch.
The objective of the Turtle was to attack ships of the Royal Navy that occupied American ports, and although it was unsuccessful, today it holds a privileged place as the first active submarine in wartime.
The Wooden Submarine
Imagine a man inside a giant wooden capsule, moving underwater with the intention of approaching a ship and placing explosive charges next to it. Without additional information, the first two questions would inevitably be "Why a wooden capsule?" and "Why no torpedoes?"
The answer to both questions comes down to the fact that it was the year 1776, in the middle of the American Revolutionary War. History tells us that the pilot was Sergeant Ezra Lee. His target was the HMS Eagle, a powerful British ship of the line with 64 cannons. And the submarine bore the name Turtle, also known as "the clam", or better yet, "the infernal machine".
The Turtle was a design by inventor David Bushnell, who had already taken an important step in the development of underwater combat by creating a kind of bomb made from a barrel of gunpowder, and a detonation system based on the firing mechanism of a musket. Between 1775 and 1776, Bushnell received assistance from clockmaker Isaac Doolittle, who was responsible for manufacturing the most complex parts of the submarine.
The Turtle had an approximate diameter of 2.1 meters, and the pilot sat in the middle of the sphere. The amount of air available allowed him to breathe for a maximum of 30 minutes, and the only way to recharge was through a pair of bronze tubes once it reached the surface. Beyond the technical difficulties, Bushnell's main problem was financing the construction of the Turtle. The intervention of Connecticut governor Jonathan Trumbull convinced George Washington to release the funds.
With only two weeks of training (inevitable due to the complexity of the controls, a nightmare of levers and pedals), Sergeant Lee, who served as a replacement for Bushnell's brother (also named Ezra, who had fallen ill a couple of weeks earlier), launched into the waters on the dark night of September 6, 1776.
The darkness, the speed of the currents, the controls, and the fact of having started the mission with only 20 minutes of air made the mission almost impossible, but the final blow came when Lee was unable to drive the bomb into the ship's hull, because the drill hit an iron plate (other sources suggest it was a copper sheet, although they were as thin as paper at that time).
Finally, the sergeant aborted the mission, and abandoned the charge halfway, hoping that the British would approach the object and blow up. However, on the British side, they say that the HMS Eagle never reported an attack, and that everything was fabricated to raise the morale of the revolutionary army.
The fate of the submarine is very confusing: sources suggest it ended up sunk along with its transport ship, that the British captured it, or that it was destroyed before that could happen. Luckily, today there are several replicas and this excellent story remains.
