Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Turtle : David Bushnell's Revolutionary Vessel - Roy R. Manstan

Turtle

David Bushnell's Revolutionary Vessel

By: Roy R. Manstan, Frederic J. Frese

Hardcover | 5 May 2010

At a Glance

Hardcover


$57.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $14.44 with

 or 

Ships in 5 to 10 business days

“Built at the dawn of the American Revolution, the one-man wooden submersible, its creation, and its attacks on the Royal Navy in New York harbor is a story still surrounded in mystery. In this much anticipated book, Roy Manstan and Frederic Frese bring the story of Bushnell’s revolutionary underwater machine to life.” - JERRY ROBERTS, Director, Connecticut River Museum

At the onset of the American Revolution, the British expected to quell the rebellion quickly with a show of overwhelming force. In an experiment in asymmetric warfare, David Bushnell created the first submarine vessel designed specifically “for the destruction of vessels of war.” On a quiet September night in 1776, sergeant Ezra Lee maneuvered Bushnell’s strange little craft out from Manhattan and into the midst of the greatest naval fleet ever assembled in the Americas. Lee’s goal was to sink the British flagship HMS Eagle by attaching a powerful explosive to its hull. Although the mission was unsuccessful, Bushnell’s concept of submarine warfare was considered by George Washington to have been “an effort of genius.”

David Bushnell was raised in the town of Saybrook at the mouth of the Connecticut River. More than two centuries later, another Turtle would be launched into the same river within sight of Bushnell’s first forays with his vessel during the summer of 1775. Under the direction of technical arts teacher Frederic J. Frese, students at Old Saybrook High School created a working replica of Bushnell’s submarine, facilitated through an education partnership with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island, where Roy R. Manstan was a mechanical engineer and Navy trained diver. With twenty-first century submariners at the helm, the Turtle replica was subjected to a series of operational tests at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut.

In Turtle: David Bushnell’s Revolutionary Vessel, the authors provide new insight into Bushnell’s “engine of devastation,” tracing the history of undersea warfare before Bushnell and the origin of the many innovations Bushnell understood would be necessary for conducting a covert submarine attack. The knowledge gained from testing the Turtle replica enabled the authors to speculate as to what America’s first submariner Ezra Lee experienced that September night and what may have caused the attack to fail.

More in Naval Forces & Warfare

Spithead : An Informal History - Michael Lewis
Armada : The Spanish Enterprise and England's Deliverance in 1588 - Colin Martin
Dive! : Australian Submariners at War - Mike Carlton

RRP $45.00

$35.75

21%
OFF
2034 : A Novel of the Next World War - Elliot Ackerman

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Sword : D-Day - Trial by Battle - Max Hastings

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
Battleship : The Greatest Fighting Ships in History - Richard Hough
Cruiser : The Life and Loss of HMAS Perth and Her Crew - Mike Carlton
The Wager - David Grann

Paperback

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Battle of the Arctic : The Maritime Epic of World War Two - Hugh Sebag Montefiore
Beyond the Sea : A Wren at War - Christian Lamb

RRP $19.99

$18.75

Operation Pedestal : The Fleet that Battled to Malta 1942 - Max Hastings
Rock and Tempest : Surviving Cyclone Tracy and its Aftermath - Patricia Collins