Long before Turtles gathered for drinks, riddles and questionable answers, one particularly determined Turtle was sneaking beneath British warships in the middle of the night.
On September 6–7, 1776, while the American Revolution was still young, Sergeant Ezra Lee climbed into one of the strangest fighting machines ever built.
It was wooden.
It held exactly one person.
It was powered by human muscle.
It carried a bomb.
And, naturally, it was called the Turtle.
Bloop! Bloop! This is our kind of history.
Meet David Bushnell, a Man With a Very Interesting Idea
The Turtle was the creation of Connecticut inventor David Bushnell, who began working on the concept while studying at Yale.
America had a problem. Britain possessed the most powerful navy in the world. The colonies were not going to solve that problem by simply building a bigger fleet overnight.
Bushnell had another idea:
What if you could sneak underneath a British warship and blow it up from below?
This was an astonishing concept in the 1770s.
Bushnell experimented with detonating gunpowder underwater and eventually developed a small submersible that could carry a man beneath the surface along with an explosive charge.
And because the strange wooden contraption resembled two tortoise shells joined together, it became known as the Turtle.
We approve of the name.
Imagine Climbing Into This Thing
Forget nuclear reactors, sonar and climate control.
The Turtle was essentially an underwater exercise machine with explosives attached.
One man had to operate nearly everything himself.
He had to propel the craft.
He had to steer it.
He had to control its depth.
He had to pump water in and out to dive and surface.
He had to navigate in darkness.
And after accomplishing all of that, he was expected to maneuver beneath an enemy warship and attach an explosive to its hull.
The craft used manually operated propulsion, ballast and pumps. Its operator had only a limited supply of air inside that little wooden shell.
George Washington later summed up one of the project’s biggest challenges: finding somebody brave—or crazy—enough to operate it.
That brings us to Sergeant Ezra Lee.
One Turtle. One Man. One Very Large British Warship.
The intended target was no fishing boat.
It was HMS Eagle, a 64-gun British warship and flagship of Admiral Richard Howe.
Late on September 6, 1776, Lee squeezed through the Turtle’s hatch and headed toward the British fleet near New York.
Picture the situation.
It is dark.
You are alone.
You are sitting inside a cramped wooden vessel mostly beneath the water.
There is no engine.
There is no GPS.
There is no radio.
And somewhere above you is a Royal Navy warship carrying hundreds of sailors and enough cannon to ruin your evening.
Lee nevertheless managed to get the Turtle beneath the Eagle.
Now came the really difficult part.
All He Had to Do Was Screw a Bomb Into the Ship
Bushnell’s plan called for the Turtle’s pilot to use a screw-like device to attach an explosive charge to the underside of the enemy vessel.
Attach it.
Set the timer.
Get away.
Boom.
Simple enough on paper.
Reality was less cooperative.
Lee tried to drive the screw into the bottom of the Eagle but couldn’t get it to penetrate. In his later account, he described getting beneath the ship, pushing the screw against the hull and discovering that it simply would not enter.
Whether he encountered metal hardware, particularly difficult timber or another obstruction has been debated ever since.
Whatever the cause, the bomb was not going onto the Eagle.
Lee eventually abandoned the attempt and made his escape.
At one point he released the explosive charge.
And then…
BOOM.
It detonated harmlessly in the water.
The British flagship survived.
Ezra Lee survived.
The Turtle survived the evening.
And the history of warfare had changed anyway.
A Failure That Was Actually a Pretty Big Success
Technically, the mission failed.
No British ship was sunk.
But judging the Turtle only by whether HMS Eagle went to the bottom misses what Bushnell had accomplished.
A man had taken a controllable vessel underwater and attempted to use it offensively against an enemy warship.
The U.S. Navy regards the Turtle as an important early milestone in submarine warfare and describes its 1776 mission as the first attack on an enemy vessel by the craft.
There would be additional unsuccessful attempts to use the Turtle against British shipping. Its eventual fate remains uncertain, although the vessel transporting it was attacked and sunk in October 1776 and Bushnell later said the Turtle had been recovered.
The idea, however, wasn’t going away.
Nearly a century later, submarines would demonstrate that they could actually sink enemy ships.
Eventually they would become one of the most powerful weapons ever put to sea.
And way back near the beginning of that story was a little wooden contraption with one exhausted guy inside…
called Turtle.
George Washington Was Impressed
Bushnell’s invention attracted the attention of some fairly recognizable Americans, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
Years later, Washington still remembered the attempt.
Writing to Jefferson in 1785, he called Bushnell’s submarine “an effort of genius.”
That’s not a bad review.
Especially considering the customer was George Washington.
Turtles Have Apparently Been Causing Trouble for 250 Years
There is something wonderfully American about the whole story.
The British had a mighty navy.
David Bushnell had some wood, iron, pumps, propellers, gunpowder and an idea that sounded completely nuts.
So he built it anyway.
Then Sergeant Ezra Lee climbed inside.
The Turtle didn’t sink HMS Eagle.
It didn’t win the Revolution.
But it demonstrated an entirely new way of thinking about warfare.
And nearly 250 years later, we’re still talking about it.
So this September, when someone asks whether Turtles have contributed anything important to history, you now have an answer.
Before there were Turtle gatherings…
Before there were Turtle membership cards…
Before anyone was challenged with the password…
A Turtle was already sneaking around after dark, carrying explosives and causing trouble.
Some traditions apparently run very deep.
Bloop! Bloop!
You Bet Your Sweet Ass I Am!
