This article first appeared on Today in Alternate History as a variant mashup of two of Jeff Provine's contemporaneous fictional events: David Bushnell's hand-powered submarine sinks HMS Eagle in New York Harbour and Benedict Arnold is arrested before betraying West Point, where his subsequent execution inspires a Loyalist resurgence. Taken together, the successful submarine attack and Arnold's arrest transform the Revolution by giving Washington both a technological experiment worth preserving and a political argument for maintaining unconventional military research, creating the foundation for a distinctly American tradition of underwater warfare.
Historic Background
In our timeline, David Bushnell's Turtle attempted to attack the British warship HMS Eagle in New York Harbor on September 7, 1776. The small hand-powered submarine piloted by Sergeant Ezra Lee carried an explosive charge intended to be attached beneath the British vessel, but the operator was unable to penetrate the Eagle's hull to attach the explosive charge, apparently encountering an obstruction near the rudder. Bushnell nevertheless demonstrated that a submerged vessel could approach a heavily defended warship without being detected, even though the technology remained far too primitive for practical military use. Four years later, Major General Benedict Arnold attempted to betray the American fortress at West Point to the British, but his treason was discovered after John Andre was captured carrying incriminating documents. Arnold escaped to British lines, while Andre was executed as a spy. Arnold became one of the most notorious figures of the Revolution. Meanwhile, Lee was congratulated by Washington and General Israel Putnam and moved into the secret service/special forces. His headstone reads, "He was a Revolutionary Officer, and esteemed by Washington" (Wiki).Re-rerouted History
Whereas in our alternate history, the Turtle successfully attaches its explosive charge to HMS Eagle, badly damaging the British flagship and forcing its withdrawal from New York Harbor. The spectacular attack convinces Washington and Congress that Bushnell's ideas deserve further investigation, but nobody mistakes the Turtle for a practical fleet weapon. Washington authorizes Bushnell to investigate whether the principles behind the attack can be applied more practically. American engineers therefore concentrate initially on underwater mines, concealed explosives, diving equipment and small experimental craft. Its hand-powered propulsion, cramped interior, limited endurance, and difficulty operating beneath the surface make clear that similar vessels cannot simply be built and deployed in large numbers. Instead, Congress authorizes a small, closely guarded experimental program devoted to underwater mines, diving equipment, naval sabotage and improvements to Bushnell's basic mechanisms. The American Revolution therefore acquires an embryonic underwater warfare program rather than an operational submarine fleet.
The British response demonstrates the defensive possibilities as well as the limitations of the new technology. Royal Navy commanders increase patrols around important anchorages and experiment with chains, booms, small boats, and other measures intended to prevent underwater sabotage. American forces meanwhile discover that concealed explosives are considerably easier to deploy than manned submarines and can threaten ships without placing a crew inside a fragile experimental vessel. Bushnell's workshop consequently develops several forms of underwater and floating explosive charge intended for use against ships at anchor or in narrow channels. These weapons remain unreliable, but they give the Continental forces a primitive form of underwater warfare that does not depend entirely upon the Turtle's exhausting human propulsion.
The discovery of Benedict Arnold's treason in 1780 provides Washington with an additional argument for preserving small, tightly controlled specialist organizations whose work lies outside conventional military structures. Rather than allowing the underwater experiments to disappear with the war, the new United States maintains a small naval research establishment devoted to mines, diving, underwater demolition, and experimental craft. Bushnell and his successors continue investigating buoyancy, pressure, propulsion and underwater explosives while conventional naval officers remain responsible for surface warfare. The most important consequence is therefore institutional rather than technological: the United States develops a permanent willingness to investigate underwater warfare decades before the technology becomes mature enough for regular naval service.
After independence, progress remains slow because the fundamental technological obstacles cannot yet be overcome. Human-powered propulsion restricts speed and endurance, while no reliable compact engine exists that can provide sustained underwater propulsion. American experiments consequently concentrate on mines, diving bells, underwater demolition, and small submersible craft rather than long-range submarines. When Robert Fulton develops the Nautilus in France around 1800, his work provides an important new connection between the surviving American submarine program and European advances in naval engineering. When Fulton returns to the United States in 1806, his earlier submarine experiments allow American engineers to combine Bushnell's legacy with the rapidly developing technology of steam navigation.
Fulton subsequently proposes submarine designs that use steam power for surface navigation while relying upon a separate mechanism for short submerged journeys. Rather than attempting the technologically premature task of operating a steam engine inside a sealed submarine, the concept allows a vessel to travel conventionally on the surface before shutting down its engine and diving to conduct a brief underwater operation. Fulton's successful steamboat experiments strengthen American interest in this hybrid approach, although neither his submarine designs nor the surviving Bushnell program is yet capable of producing a practical naval weapon. The concept nevertheless establishes an important technological bridge between the hand-powered Turtle and the mechanically powered submarines that later become possible.
The War of 1812 provides the next practical test. American engineers construct or propose several experimental submersible devices, but none can operate effectively enough to challenge Britain's battle fleet in open water. Underwater mines, floating explosives, and harbor obstructions therefore become the principal American contribution to underwater warfare. British commanders entering confined American waters must increasingly consider the possibility of concealed explosives and employ small boats and other precautions around important anchorages. The months-long "Battle" of Tangier Island, more often known as the "Siege of the Chesapeake," prevented British ships from getting into the Potomac River and upper Chesapeake Bay in force, protecting Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The conflict reinforces an important strategic lesson: underwater weapons do not need to sink large numbers of ships to impose costs upon a superior navy. The possibility of an unseen attack can itself alter how an enemy operates.
The decisive technological advances come later, when industrialization begins solving the problems that defeated Bushnell's generation. Improved metallurgy produces stronger pressure-resistant hulls, while developments in steam engineering, electrical storage, mechanical propulsion, and eventually internal-combustion engines provide new solutions to the separate problems of surface travel, submerged propulsion and endurance. American engineers repeatedly return to Bushnell's surviving designs for inspiration, but the submarines of the nineteenth century bear little physical resemblance to the Turtle. Its importance has become institutional and intellectual rather than mechanical: the Revolutionary experiment has established a tradition of investigating underwater warfare whenever new technology makes further progress possible.
The American Civil War provides the next major test of that tradition. Ironclads, steam propulsion, submarine mines, and Confederate experiments such as the Hunley give naval engineers unprecedented opportunities to revisit Bushnell's original problem. The Union Navy establishes a small experimental underwater warfare section, drawing upon generations of accumulated American research while studying Confederate submarine operations. The sinking of USS Housatonic by the Hunley demonstrates that a small submersible can inflict serious damage upon a major warship, even though the weapon itself remains extremely dangerous to its crew. The Civil War therefore confirms the basic strategic principle first demonstrated by the Turtle while also showing that practical submarine warfare requires much greater reliability, propulsion and crew survivability.
By the late 1870s, John Philip Holland's experimental designs attract attention from the established American underwater warfare establishment. Unlike the historically cautious response to submarine inventors, American naval engineers already have generations of experience evaluating submersible craft and provide Holland with access to workshops, testing facilities, and limited government support. His early boats remain small and unreliable, but they can repeatedly dive, maneuver underwater, and conduct controlled weapons trials. By the early 1880s, an American Holland-type submarine is therefore demonstrating capabilities that in conventional history would take longer to achieve. The submarine has crossed the crucial boundary between an ingenious experiment and a potentially practical naval weapon used extensively in the Spanish-American War.
The consequences extend into the twentieth century. The original Turtle is remembered not because it created an operational submarine force in 1776 but because its successful attack established the principle that a small submerged craft could threaten a much larger surface warship. American naval engineers repeatedly cite Bushnell's experiment when developing submarines, mines and methods of underwater detection. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States possesses both a powerful surface fleet and an established submarine service whose institutional traditions can be traced through Bushnell, Fulton, the Civil War experiments, and Holland. The Royal Navy remains a dominant force, but British and American planners increasingly recognize that submarines have changed the relationship between large surface warships and smaller underwater vessels.
The First World War provides the most important test yet of the American submarine tradition. When Germany begins using U-boats against Allied shipping, American naval officers immediately recognize the strategic significance of the campaign. Generations of American engineers and naval officers have already studied submarines, mines, underwater detection, and methods of protecting ships from submerged attack, so German U-boat warfare is regarded not as an unfamiliar innovation but as the mature development of a technology that Americans have been investigating since the Revolution. The sinking of passenger and merchant ships consequently produces an intense American debate over neutral rights, unrestricted submarine warfare and the vulnerability of commercial shipping. When Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, American naval planners already possess an unusually developed understanding of both the offensive potential of U-boats and the measures required to counter them.
Submarines are understood not simply as smaller warships that happen to travel underwater, but as weapons whose greatest advantages are concealment, surprise and the ability to attack vessels that cannot easily fight back. The Navy therefore expands its submarine-hunting forces while accelerating research into underwater detection, depth charges, patrol craft, and convoy protection. At the same time, American submariners study German methods of submerged attack, battery endurance, and stealth. The United States consequently enters the First World War with a more mature institutional understanding of submarine and anti-submarine warfare than it possessed in conventional history, preventing many ships from being sunk and, those that are sunk, come at great cost to the German fleet.
German U-boat warfare gives the Turtle's legacy a new significance. American naval officers recognize that the problem first demonstrated in miniature beneath HMS Eagle has become a central feature of modern naval strategy: a relatively small submerged vessel can impose disproportionate costs upon a much larger naval and commercial system. The submarine does not have to defeat a battleship in a conventional engagement to transform naval warfare; it can instead threaten the communications and commerce upon which a fleet depends. The American experience of 1917 therefore strengthens both the offensive submarine service and the country's anti-submarine establishment, ensuring that underwater warfare is treated as a permanent field of naval science rather than an eccentric branch of experimentation.
The interwar period produces a still more developed American submarine establishment. Naval planners debate the appropriate balance between battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers and submarines, while engineers continue improving sonar, torpedoes, batteries, diesel-electric propulsion, and underwater communications. The original Revolutionary program does not give the United States miraculous technological superiority, but it has created an institutional culture in which submarine warfare is regarded as a legitimate component of naval strategy. American officers approach future naval conflicts with an understanding that underwater warfare will involve both attacking enemy fleets and commerce and protecting their own shipping from the same threat.
When the Second World War begins, the United States therefore possesses a submarine service supported by more than a century of accumulated institutional experience. German U-boat operations in the Atlantic are viewed through the additional lens of the American experience of 1917, while American submariners apply the same principles of concealment, surprise and commerce warfare against enemy shipping. The conflict confirms that the submarine has become one of the defining weapons of modern naval warfare. The American tradition that began with Bushnell consequently reaches its fullest expression not in a fleet of Turtle-like vessels, but in technologically sophisticated submarines supported by an equally sophisticated anti-submarine establishment.
The original Turtle itself survives and is eventually placed at a special submarine museum and academy complex at West Point, where the story of Bushnell's experiments is preserved alongside the memory of Arnold's betrayal. The operational Submarine Academy, however, is established at Annapolis as a specialized institution within the expanding United States Navy. West Point remains the symbolic birthplace of the American submarine tradition, while Annapolis becomes its professional home. Enclosed beneath a vast glass canopy, the battered little craft becomes the centerpiece of a national museum devoted to the history of underwater warfare, with its original hull, propeller and attack mechanism carefully preserved. Millions of Americans and foreign visitors pass through the museum each year to see the vessel that inspired the American submarine tradition, while generations of sailors make the pilgrimage before receiving their submariner insignia. Standing proudly beside a statue of Sergeant Ezra Lee, the Turtle consequently becomes more than an obsolete machine; it is treated as a national symbol of American ingenuity, remembered as the tiny experimental craft that demonstrated a possibility that engineers would spend more than a century learning how to make practical.
