In the mid 1770's David Bushnell, an inventive guy, created the world's
first attack submarine. Using whiskey barrel technology, he made a
watertight clamshell-shaped vehicle with barely enough room for one man.
The
thing, nicknamed the Turtle, was placed in New York Harbor one night
containing Sgt. Ezra Lee, a 45-year-old man who was stronger than the
frail
inventor. He had two hand-operated propeller vanes, one for forward
travel,
the other for directional control.
Sgt. Lee cranked his way toward the British flag****p of Admiral Richard
Howe, called the Eagle. David Bushnell provided for instrument guidance in
the underwater darkness, even though it was 1776 and electric lighting was
still 100 years into the future. Inventor Bushnell's solution was
ingenious.
He lit the primitive instruments, a compass and a depth gauge, with
foxfire,
a moss that glows in the dark. Still, navigation was difficult, because it
was cold in the Turtle, and therefore the foxfire was dim. Ezra Lee missed
the battle****p entirely and cranked himself out to sea. Realizing his
error
just in time, he cranked furiously against the tide and finally arrived
under the ****p. Now it was time to do his dirty work.
The plan was to turn a crank mounted in the ceiling of the Turtle, which
would screw an eye-hook into the underside of the Eagle. Attached to the
hook was a bomb. After several attempts at attaching the bomb, Ezra
finally
realized it couldn't be done. The ****p was probably coated in copper
plating
to keep barnacles from growing on the ****p, and the hook wouldn't drill
into
the ****p. (Historians are not sure about why the bomb couldn't be
attached,
this is their theory.)
Dawn was coming, and Sgt. Lee had to get away quickly before he would be
discovered. Again, he cranked furiously, but some sailors on the ****p saw
him. Realizing he was in trouble, he released the bomb, which floated to
the
surface and blew up harmlessly. But it saved his life. The ****p's men had
never seen anything like the Turtle and weren't even sure it was a
human-invented thing. It might be a monster, or a monster's creation.
After
the little explosion, they were truly afraid. And Ezra Lee sailed to
harbor,
his submarine was opened, and he was safe.
This was the first and last submarine voyage of the 18th century. David
Bushnell was quite fascinated with inventions and explosive things in
particular. He devoted his mental efforts to the war, but his creations
never made any serious contributions. Once, some soldiers found a strange
barrel floating in the water. They rowed out to it in a little boat and
pulled it out of the water. On the contraption they found gears turning.
This would be unusual by today's standards, but truly weird back in 1776.
At
about the time they made this observation, the time bomb exploded, killing
three of the men and injuring some others. It was supposed to have floated
up to a place where several enemy ****ps were docked and blow them up, but
the men intercepted it. This was the only one of Mr. Bushnell's inventions
that came anywhere close to working right.
- from the American History section of www.odd-info.com - Enjoy!
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