The Turtle was the first submarine ever deployed by Americans during the Revolutionary War.
The musket fire that rang out and broke the tension at Lexington on April 19, 1775, became the “shot heard round the world” and kicked off a revolution — The American Revolution. The famous war saw 13, ill-equipped and unprepared colonies take on the preeminent super-power of the day: the British Empire. The empire and its colonies stretched from India, the Caribbean, and North America.
The British occupation was small, with only 8,500 troops in North America at the time. It was the British Navy however that made the empire possible. Commanding a fleet of 270 warships led by the best-trained officers and sailors in the world, the British navy was the largest in the world and dominated the world’s oceans and seas. In comparison, the Continental Navy stood at 27 warships as of 1776 and had little hope of posing a threat. Something innovative and different was needed to give the colonists a chance at contesting British control of certain waterways. That something would prove to be David Bushnell and his ‘Turtle.’What was David Bushnell’s creation?
Connecticut-born and Yale-educated (he was actually in his final year of college when the Revolution started), David Bushnell had discovered that gunpowder could be used underwater with the right delivery system.
