The Turtle - The World's First Submarine

In 1776, during the American Revolution, a Connecticut Yankee by the name of David Bushnell had a daring idea to break the British blockade of New York harbor: he would build a one-man submarine and somehow attach a bomb to the underside of the British ships and blow them up. Intrigued, Rick and Laura Brown of Handshouse Studio led the effort to re-create the building of a replica of this wooden submarine, nicknamed the “Turtle,” using only the tools and technologies of the day.

 

 

I have always been facinated with this machine and the technology that went into creating it. You can go HERE to learn more about the reconstruction. After thorough testing the new Turtle was declared to be sea worthy and COULD have done the job it was originally designed to do if the original hadn't sank first.

 

In 2004, the Discovery Channel, England’s Channel 4 and France’s Channel 5 will air a one-hour documentary film about the reconstruction of the Turtle and its historic undersea warfare mission during the American Revolution. The film, one in a series entitled “ Machines Lost in Time,” is programmed to be broadcast in the U. S., Great Britain, France and Canada. A National Geographic magazine article appeared on this same subject in their November 2003 issue.