"An old story, popular in the state of Connecticut after the American Revolution (1776-81), was revealed in 1928 when a piece of metal, said to have been a fragment of the first submarine used in America as a weapon in warfare, was presented to the Met Museum in New York...” Summerside Journal, 26 March 1928.

“The story credits the operation of the first submarine used in America to a Connecticut army sergeant. As the Britisha fleet neared New York in June, 1776, after being delayed in Halifax awaiting reinforcements from England, the sergeant was asked to sink the warship, the Eagle.”

“ In a shipyard at Saybrook, CT, a queer kind of boat had been completed. It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. Davis Bushnell of Saybrook had designed the craft for submarine navigation. And tests showed that it would perform as Bushnell said it would.”

“The sole occupant that could be accomodated was both captain and crew. The power was what the occupant could provide by hand as he rowed under the water at any desired depth, rising and sinking at will. The weapon on board this freak water craft was one powder magazine which today would appear and have the function of a mine. This magazine was so designed that it could be fastened to the bottom of a ship as the submarine passed beneath it. It was provided with a driving screw which operated in such a way that the stroke which disengaged it from the submarine, fastened it into the ‘enemy’, and would set in motion a clock-work time fuse to explode the charge.”

“The night chosen for the ‘attack’ on the Eagle found the inventor ill and unable to make the hazardous trip. An army sergeant was asked to make the trip and he accepted. He set out late at night and got to the Eagle, aboard which was Lord Howe, admiral of the British fleet. In rising into position under the 64-gun warship, however, the screw hit an iron plate and could not penetrate the bottom. With daylight approaching, a second attempt was abandoned, however the powder magazine had been set loose.”

“The sergeant made shore and had just stepped out of his craft when a column of water, accompanied by a loud report, rose near the side of the Eagle. The inventor thereafter found much amusement in the wonder of the people on shore who tried to explain the explosion by calling it a meteor, a waterspout, the result of an earthquake and various others things.”

“Circumstances arose which prevented another try on the part of the intrepid sergeant and the submarine craft never set out on such a mission again.”