The agitated redcoats lined the banks and blazed away at every bit of drifting wreckage in the river, as described by a sarcastic Revolutionary poet in “The Battle of the Kegs.”
Gallants attend, and hear a friend Troll forth harmonious ditty, Strange things I’ll tell that once befell In Philadelphia city.
’Twas early day, as poets say, Just as the sun was rising, A soldier stood on a log of wood And saw a thing surprising.
As in amaze he stood to gaze, The truth can’t be denied, sir, He spied a score of kegs or more Come floating down the tide, sir.
These kegs, I’m told, the rebels hold Packed up like pickled herring, And they’re coming down to attack the town, In this new way of ferrying.
Therefore prepare for bloody war, The kegs must all be routed, Or surely we despised shall be And British valor doubted.
The royal band now ready stand All ranged in dread array, sir, With stomach stout to see it out And make a bloody day, sir.
The cannon roar from shore to shore, The small arms make a rattle, Since wars began, I’m sure no man E’er saw so strange a battle.
The kegs, ’tis said, though strongly made, Of rebel staves and hoops, sir, Could not oppose their powerful foes, The conquering British troops, sir.
David Bushnell was later captured by the British, who failed to recognize him and soon released him as a harmless civilian. After the Revolution he went to France, and then to Georgia, where disgusted with the Government’s neglect of himself and his invention he changed his name to “Dr. Bush.” He was eighty-four years old when he died in 1826. His identity was then revealed in his will.
Bushnell found the submarine boat a useless plaything and made it a formidable weapon. To him it owes the propellor, the conning-tower, and the first suggestion of the torpedo. The _Turtle_ was not only the first American submarine but the forerunner of the undersea destroyer of to-day.
“I thought and still think that it was an effort of genius,” declared George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, “but that too many things were necessary to be combined to expect much against an enemy who are always on guard.”
Robert Fulton was probably the first American who ever went to Paris for the purpose of selling war-supplies to the French government. Unlike his compatriots of to-day, he found anything but a ready market. For three years, beginning in 1797, Fulton tried constantly but vainly to interest the Directory in his plans for a submarine. Though a commission appointed to examine his designs reported favorably, the minister of marine would have nothing to do with them. Fulton built a beautiful little model submarine of mahogany and exhibited it, but with no results. He made an equally fruitless attempt to sell his invention to Holland, then called the Batavian Republic. Nobody seemed to have the slightest belief or interest in submarines.