|
 The year is 1824. The town is Warrenton, Georgia. Gentle Dr.
Bush has just died at the age of 82. He's lived here for 30 years. He practiced
medicine for the last 20 of those years. He also taught both religion and
science at the local Warrenton Academy.
Dr. Bush was respected, but he was a very private man. We
knew he was from New England and that he'd lived in France before he came here.
That's about all we knew.
Now his executors are in for a surprise. First they find
wooden pieces of a submarine prototype in Dr. Bush's workshop. His papers are
even more startling. They find that Dr. Bush wasn't really Dr. Bush at all. He
was Captain David Bushnell, once a member of the Continental Army's Corps of
Engineers.
This gentle doctor was the
first military submarine maker. Bushnell began as a bookish Connecticut
farmer. When he was 29, his father died. So he sold the farm and went to Yale.
For four years he studied science, and he built his man-powered sub to actually
make an attack on an enemy warship.
He called his boat the Turtle because he'd made
it from two hollowed-out wooden slabs. They looked like huge turtle shells.
David Bushnell's brother Ezra learned to pilot the submarine.
The scheme: be towed into the vicinity of the target; open a
foot-operated valve to let in enough water to sink, close the valve; move in
under the enemy by cranking the two propellers – one for forward and one for
vertical movement – turned by foot treadle "like a spinning wheel;" drill into
the hull to attach a 150-pound keg of gunpowder with a clockwork detonator;
crank to get away; operate a foot-pump to get the water out of the hull and thus
re-surface.
David readied the
Turtle for action against the English in 1776.
In early-morning darkness on September 7, 1776, "Turtle"
made an attack on a British ship in New York harbor, probably HMS Eagle.
He managed to get under the Eagle. But when he tried to
anchor the torpedo, his drill hit an iron fitting or maybe an iron strap, it
would not penetrate the hull.
(Contrary to most reports, the Eagle of 1776 had not been
fitted with a copper-sheathed bottom.)
Lee did the best he could and by dawn he was exhausted.
Lee became disoriented and soon bobbed to the surface where he was spotted by a
lookout. He dumped his warhead in the bay and managed to
get away. The charge went off harmlessly.
Still, the English fleet bolted and put to sea.
David readied the
Turtle for action against the English in 1776. Then Ezra fell ill.
David had to start from scratch.
He trained Ezra Lee, a gunnery sergeant, to sink the English
man-o-war, Eagle. Lee did the best he could. He managed to get
under the Eagle. But when he tried to anchor the torpedo, his drill
hit an iron fitting. Dawn found Lee exhausted. He dumped his warhead in the bay
and ran. The charge went off harmlessly. Still, the English fleet bolted. It put
to sea.
But that didn't satisfy David Bushnell. He turned his fury
and frustration on Lee. Lee fled back to his outfit, and Bushnell tried to
smuggle the Turtle away from the British on a sloop. An English
frigate spotted the sloop and sank it. So our first submarine came to rest at
the bottom of the sea.
Bushnell had used up his fortune by now. He finished the
Revolution designing mines. Then he went to France to sell his submarine design.
He also failed at that. By 1795, thoroughly disillusioned, Bushnell came back to
America, to Georgia, as Dr. Bush. He gave the rest of his life over to teaching
and healing.
It'd be another forty years before a submarine would sink a
ship -- ninety years before wholesale slaughter would begin. Gentle Dr. Bush
never had to see the fruit of David Bushnell's bold, visionary experiment.
Return to Top |
