David Bushnell’s Turtle
In 1776, the Continental Army deployed an underwater vessel designed by David Bushnell. “The Turtle” was the first submarine used in military combat.
Bushnell was born in 1749 in Saybrook, CT (today’s Westbrook). He became interested in science and, while a student at Yale, he experimented with building a submarine that could deliver explosives underwater. In April 1775, the outbreak of war at Lexington and Concord led the school to close; Bushnell returned home and continued to work on the invention with his brother Ezra. They soon completed a working model – which came to be known as the Turtle – and the Continental Army launched it in New York Harbor on September 7, 1776.
The submarine failed in its first mission. Nonetheless, the Turtle heralded a major innovation in military technology. Reflecting later on the invention in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, George Washington wrote, “Bushnell is a man of great mechanical powers, fertile of invention and master of execution…I then thought, and still think, that [the submarine] was an effort of genius.”
F. M. Barber, a Navy lieutenant, published this diagram of “Bushnell’s submarine boat” in 1875.
Credits
David Bushnell’s submarine diagram is in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.