The Turtle: The Hand-Cranked Submarine That Tried to Sink the British Navy in 1776
On a dark night in New York Harbor in 1776, a single volunteer sealed himself inside a wooden sphere the size of a barrel, sank beneath the waves, and hand-cranked his way toward the flagship of the most powerful navy on Earth. His mission: to screw a keg of gunpowder into the hull of a British warship. The machine was called the Turtle, and it was the first submarine ever taken into battle.