David Bushnell

David Bushnell (August 30, 1740 – 1824 or 1826), of Westbrook, Connecticut, was an American inventor and a veteran of the Revolutionary War.

Bushnell was born near Saybrook, Connecticut into a farming family. He was the first of five children born to Nehemiah and Sarah Ingram Bushnell. Following the death of his father circa 1769, he sold his half interest in the family farm to his brother Ezra and entered Yale College in 1771 at the relatively old age of 31.

Bushnell is credited with creating the first submarine ever used in combat, while studying at Yale in 1775. He called it the Turtle because of its look in the water. His idea of using water as ballast for submerging and raising his submarine is still in use, as is the screw propeller, which was used in the Turtle.

While at Yale, Bushnell proved that gunpowder could be exploded under water. He also made the first time bomb. He combined these ideas by building the Turtle which was designed to attack ships by attaching a time bomb to their hulls, while using a hand powered drill and ship auger bit to penetrate the hulls.

On September 6, 1776, the Turtle, manned by Sergeant Ezra Lee of the Continental Army, was used to attack the British 64 gun ship of the line HMS Eagle which was moored in New York Harbor. His efforts failed every time because the Turtles boring device was unable to penetrate the copper sheeting lining on the Eagles hull.

The Turtle was lost while being transported aboard a sloop; the sloop was discovered, and sunk, by British frigates leaving Bloomingdale.

Realizing that the Turtle was impractical as a weapon, Bushnell turned his attention to torpedoes (as explosive devices were then called). In 1777 Bushnell attempted to use a floating mine to blow up the HMS Cerberus (1758) in Niantic Bay; the mine struck a small boat near the Cerberus and detonated killing four sailors [1] and destroying the vessel, but not the intended target. In 1778 he launched what became lauded as the Battle of the Kegs, in which a series of mines was floated down the Delaware River to attack British ships anchored there, killing two curious young boys [2] and alerting the British. The attack was ineffectual.

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