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Wood barrel
was first
submarine
Great Discoveries
-By WILLIAM JOY
. A British fleet blockading the
Delaware River fell into confusion
one day in 1777 when kegs of gun-
powder bumped among them.
^pHIS puzzled and annoyed Brit-
ish commanders, for none knew
how the American rebels, then
fighting their War of Independence,
got the primitive mines unseen into
midstream.
The Battle of the Kegs was well
advanced before they realised that
the rebels had found a way at
last to give a death sting to their
newest weapon - the world's
first practicable submarine.
The submarine had taken the
mines pickaback beneath the sur-
face and released them unseen
to sew terror among the enemy.
The first practicable submarine
bore no resemblance to the sleek
atom-powered monsters that roam
the seas today.
Nor had it much in common
with earlier devices, such as the
submarine craft which Queen Eliza-
beth I was assured would "readily
overcome the Spanish Amada," or
the "great leathern shippe" in
which King Charles II was said
to have been rowed down the
Thames 12ft. beneath the surface.
Operator locked in
The first practicable submarine
was a 7ft. oaken "egg" with just
enough room for a man to sit and
work its primitive mechanism.
Called the Turtle, it was used
in a desperate bid by the rebels
to break the British blockade which
cut them from outside help while
assuring constant supplies to the
vengeful redcoats.
Most rebel chiefs scoffed, how-
ever, when a sickly Yale Uni-
versity scientist, David Bushnell,
told them he had built a ship which
would attack the enemy under-
water.
They were even less impressed
whan they saw his ship. The
Turtle looked just like an outsize
barrel hooped with iron and daubed
with tar.
The metal hatch at the top had
eight small windows. The operator
had to be locked in, with the
certainty that in emergency the
"ship" would be his coffin.
The rebels found a volunteer in
middle-aged, slow-moving Ezra
Lee, a sergeant of musketry with
DIAGRAM of The Turtle showing
how the operator propelled lt by
winding the handle of a screw with
one hand while he steered it with
the other.
a rabid hatred of British tyranny
and taxation.
Bushnell explained the mechan-
ism to him. To submerge, Lee
pressed a foot spring which let
water into an already weighted
lower compartment.
Air for 30 minutes
Underwater, Lee had just
enough air to last 30 minutes. When
his burstling lungs told him he
needed more, he worked feverishly
at two handpumps which ejected
the water and brought him to the
surface, where air was admitted
through two tubes.
To propel his craft Lee wound
a crank which turned a worm
screw outside the barrel and edged
him along at little more than one
mile an hour.
In his other hand Lee grasped
the tiller of a rudder. Another
crank and worm screw helped him
to the surface.
The sting in the Turtle was a
driver crank at the top. This oper-
ated a long detachable screw which
was roped to a detachable mine
containing 1501b. of gunpowder
mounted on the hull above the
rudder and fused to go off 20
minutes after release.
Lee's job was to edge submerged
against an enemy ship, drive the
screw into her hull, release the
gunpowder mine, and crank furi-
ously to safety.
Lee's first raid failed. Like the
hero he was, he decided to attack
the British admiral Lord Howe
in his flagship Eagle (64 guns),
then blockading New York.
One September night in 1776
Lee cranked his way unseen under
Eagle, but turn as he would he
could not drive the screw into her
hull. He did not know that Eagle's
timbers had been sheathed with
copper as protection against para-
sites.
At dawn, after several attempts
to drive the screw home, he gave up.
none Help
British marines spotted Turtle as
he brought her up for air on his
way back. He drove them off by
releasing his mine.
Lee had his first modest succès;
in the Battle of the Kegs. He
survived the war and was pro-
claimed by General George Wash-
ington a national hero.
The next practicable submari:
more in line with modern designs,
was also built by an American, Rob-
ert Fulton.
Fulton planned his ship, the
Nautillus, in London, then offered
it to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon ordered him to build
Nautillus, which was launched on
the River Seine in 1800.
Fulton built his "plunging ship''
of wood sheathed with copper.
Nautillus was 21ft. long, with
conning tower, crude periscope,
ballast tanks, and a folding mast
for sailing on the surface.
Method "ungallant"
Submerged it was propelled at
the then-incredible speed of four
knots by a unique screw, forerunner
of the propeller, hand-operated by
two sweating sailors.
Its sting was in a sharp detach-
able spike, attached to a torpedo,
to be driven in the hull of an
enemy ship.
In tests at Brest Fulton blew a
hulk sky high with a bomb
clamped to its hull by Nautillus.
He offered to do the same to a
British frigate lying offshore and
was angry when the French turned
down his offer as an "ungallant
way of killing enemies."
The furious Fulton promptly
took Nautillus to London. Prime
Minister Pitt was most impressed
when he blew up a derelict brig
in the Thames by underwater
attack, but the Nautillus was
scrapped before being used in
battle.
The submarine became a mass
killer when Englishman Thomas
Whitehead invented the self-pro-
pelling torpedo in 1866.
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