Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

SEA OF SHADOWS 53
invention of the torpedo to a sixteenth-century Italian inventor named
Zambelli, who used a drifting boatload of explosives with a delayed fuse
to destroy a bridge in 1585.
But the actual word torpedo was first applied to naval warfare in the
late eighteenth century by a young colonial American named David
Bushnell. Graduating from Yale University at the dawn of the American
Revolution, Bushnell was inspired to use his engineering expertise to
support the fight for American Independence. With the help of fellow
Yale graduate Phineas Pratt, Bushnell designed an underwater bomb with
a clockwork-delayed flintlock detonator. By modern standards, the device
would be more properly classified as a limpet mine, but Bushnell chose the
name torpedo—in reference to the harm-less-looking (but dangerous)
torpedo ray. A member of the electric ray family (Torpedinidae), the
torpedo ray can deliver a crippling electrical shock to its prey and its
enemies alike. Bushnell hoped to emulate the torpedo ray’s nasty
underwater surprise by attaching his clockwork bomb to the bottom of one
of the British warships that were currently blockading New York harbor.
The blockade gave the British control of the Hudson River Valley,
allowing them to effectively split the colonial forces in two. The situation
was becoming increasingly desperate for the Americans. If the blockade
remained unbroken, the revolution would likely fail.
Without a navy of their own, the colonials could not challenge the
blockade. Although generally unrecognized by scholars and students of
history, Bushnell’s torpedo—as crazy and as unproven as it must have
seemed—held the only real hope for American independence.
Shortly after midnight on September 7, 1776, a young Army sergeant
named Ezra Lee climbed into a tiny one-man submarine, pulled the hatch
shut over his head, and submerged beneath the waters of New York
harbor. His target was HMS Eagle, a sixty-four–gun man-of-war that
served as the flagship of the British fleet. (In a tiny stroke of irony, the
British Admiral Lord Howe had anchored Eagle within a few hundred
yards of Bedloe’s Island, which would one day be renamed Liberty
Island—the site for the Statue of Liberty.)
The submarine used in the attack was another of David Bushnell’s
inventions. Constructed from curved oaken planks and strengthened with
iron bands, the little one-passenger craft was shaped very much like a
peach. Bushnell called his submarine the Turtle, and he equipped it with
hand-operated propellers, ballast tanks, and a pair of hand-pumps that
enabled the vessel to submerge or surface.
The torpedo was carried near the top of the little submarine, just above
the rudder. Built into the top of the submarine was a vertically mounted