Submarine Turtle Reconstruction

Through an Education Partnership Agreement between Naval Underwater Warfare Center (NUWC) and Old Saybrook High School, students built a working replica of David Bushnell's submarine Turtle which was launched in 2007. The original Turtle, piloted by Ezra Lee, made three attempts to attack the British fleet at New York City in 1776. A series of operational tests performed with the replica at Mystic Seaport Museum provided valuable insights into the capabilities of the original.

This collection will discuss the 18th-century educational, scientific, and technological context for Bushnell's "sub-marine vessel" - which included innovations such as the screw propeller - and the 21st-century educational rewards of the challenging replication project.

The following images and associated text are taken from a PowerPoint presentation on the Turtle effort and the book written by Roy Manstan, FOSA member and former engineer at the NUWC, and Fred Frese, project director, Old Saybrook High School.

Click on any icon to see its page, and to "walk" through the collection from that point. On each page, click on its image to see a larger view of it.

Excerpts and images are all presented with permission.

For additional reading material on the Turtle Reconstruction project on this web site, please see below.

Additional Reading Material

During the course of the Turtle Reconstruction project, several articles were written for inclusion in the FOSA Newsletters on the progress of the effort. These articles have been included in the Newsletter Reprints page.


You can access them directly here:   Spring, 2007 article    Spring, 2008 article    Spring, 2010 article.