“This Week in 1776” is an ongoing almanac of events from that year in the American Revolution. Be sure to check out my novel HEARTLANDERS.
New York
Turtles? Under Things? In New York? What’s More American, I Ask You…
You guys have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this one. On the night of Sept. 6-7, 1776, the Patriots deployed their brand-new sooper-sekrit weapon against the Redcoats: a submarine called the Turtle. If you watched TURN: Washington’s Spies on AMC back in the day, you’ll recognize this gorgeous piece of machinery and the genius (if failed) tactics it attempted to carry out. The show put the machine to good use and rewrote history to make its mission as a success, which would have been really cool, but alas. The fact that they tried it is just awesome.
So what am I even talking about?
As early as spring of 1775, an American inventor named David Bushnell cooked this thing up in his brain and got to work. It was make of oak and iron, built juuuuust large enough to fit your average Colonial, and worked entirely off of handcrank power. You had a vertical screw to manage depth, a horizontal screw for propulsion, and a rudder to control direction. Extremely analog, and limited in its range by only three factors: the strength of the current, the stamina of its marine, and the air supply (roughly half an hour—less if homie is breathing hard.)
Tactically its purpose was to navigate under a British warship, peg a sticky bomb with a timed fuse under the hull, then slip away before the boom-boom box went off. The Americans could then gain a logistical and psychological advantage by 1) easily destroying British ships and 2) leaving them no idea as to how. The Colonials already had God on their side, at this point they were going for extra credit.
Bushnell pitched the idea to Washington, who was probably eager to get a W against the Brits after spending so many months fortifying New York, only to lose a huge chunk of it in a short time. He greenlit the Turtle’s mission. Bushnell’s brother Ezra was the trained pilot, but he was sick on the night of the intended mission, so they called up the 2nd string quarterback Ezra Lee, because All You Ezras Look Alike To Me. Ezra didn’t have as much XP in the saddle, and as I forewarned with my foreshadowing (I’m a talented writer), the current was a significant obstacle.
The Turtle was towed out by surface boats as far as they dared to go, lest the Brits shoot them with their cannons, and then cut loose. Ezra Lee fought the current by hand for hours until he got close enough to Admiral Howe’s flagship, the HMS Eagle, then he capped the top and went under, navigating practically blind to get below her keel. From there he tried to turn a screw against the hull that was designed to chew through wood, but it wouldn’t bite; either he was hitting iron, or there was a barnacle patch, or something else was in the way, but it wouldn’t penetrate. He tried a few more times before his air limit caught up to him, and he had to abandon the attempt. He surfaced and fled, ditching his payload along the way, and it blew up in the water. No British ships were harmed but it did give them a scare.
The Turtle had two more missions in the coming nights but none of them succeeded. Thus the first attempt at American submarine warfare was an unqualified failure—even if it was sound in concept and theory.
I can’t find clips of the Turtle scene from TURN anywhere on YouTube; they worked it into the show in S2E8, “Providence,” but they switched up its usage: the pilot was Caleb Brewster, not Ezra Lee, the bomb worked, and it was part of a mission to rescue Abraham Woodhull from prison. Just one of many sequences where the show tweaked a lot of history. It’s a good show but it annoys me at the same time.
Anyway, enough of about the Turtle. It’s cool that Bushnell took the initiative and put his talents to work to make it, and that the Americans were willing to try unconventional things in their pursuit of liberty.
Philly
On Sept 6, Congress appoints Franklin, Adams, and Edward Rutledge to meet with Howe. They are instructed strictly to hear his propositions but not surrender their independence. Two days later on Sept 9, Congress officially declares “United States” to be the name for their cluster of governing bodies, and that “United Colonies” is out.
On Sept 11, Howe meets with the aforementioned Congressmen but does not acknowledge them as such, only as gentlemen. He insists on a renunciation of independence and what is, politely, surrender. They might make it out with some pardons. The delegation very diplomatically tells Howe to get bent, and they move to the next phase of their interaction: warfare. The record of “Greatest Offense Against America in New York on Sept. 11” would stand for 225 years.
The South
Not much to report; there are movements in the Cherokee War but they mostly amount to pieces rearranging on the board. There’s a bigger conflict coming next week.
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I was hoping not. Haha!
Side note: did that guy really dress like that while piloting a mini-sub?