Turtle's tour comes home?

Georgia and Connecticut clashed Monday in college basketball, when the

University of Connecticut swatted Georgia Tech in the NCAA men's basketball

championship.

The day before, a connection between the two states that goes back almost

230 years was the topic of conversation at the Augusta Museum of History.

And it just might be the start of getting recognition for an overlooked

historical figure.

Near midnight, Sept. 6, 1776, Sgt. Ezra Lee of the Continental Army piloted

a bizarre craft into the New York Harbor. The mission was to sneak up on the

HMS Eagle, the flagship of the blockading British fleet, and attach a bomb

underneath.

The attempt failed when the auger on top of Lee's craft hit metal on the

bottom of the Eagle. Spotted by British sailors as he aborted the attempt,

Lee jettisoned the bomb and paddled away. When the device exploded 30

minutes later, the British were alarmed enough to move their blockade

further from shore.

That was to be the limited success David Bushnell ever really enjoyed with

his "submarine bomb" and the craft that delivered it to the Eagle that

night in 1776: the Turtle.

Bushnell was a creative, prolific inventor, born in Saybrook, Conn., Aug.

30, 1740. He caught the revolutionary fever like many young men of his time,

and used his fertile imagination to first create a way to explode gunpowder

underwater; then develop a clockwork timing device to trigger it; and then

create the world's first working submarine to deliver it.

This was nearly 100 years before the Confederate sub The Hunley would become

the first submarine to sink a ship - and, unfortunately, itself - in combat.

Bushnell's ideas were so far ahead of their time that they ultimately were

impractical for a war fought with muskets and bayonets. He finished the war

as a captain in the Corps of Sappers and Miners - the predecessor of the

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - and many believe he was penniless perhaps

pursued by creditors when his former Yale classmate, Abraham Baldwin,

persuaded Bushnell to get a fresh start in Georgia.

In Columbia County.

Bushnell lived his remaining 30 years under the assumed name of Dr. David

Bush, operating what may have been one of Baldwin's state academies - the

predecessor of the University System of Georgia - and becoming a physician.

He died in 1824, and is buried in what is now the city of Warrenton. His

true identity was discovered when his will was read, reconnecting Bushnell

decades later to his forgotten family in Connecticut.

A graduate of the University of Georgia, professor Rick Brown of the

Massachusetts College of Art, and his wife and fellow professor Laura Brown,

recently built a full-sized working replica of Bushnell's Turtle. Their

efforts have been chronicled in a Discovery Channel documentary and in

National Geographic magazine - and it could one day be coming to a museum

near you.

The Browns were in Augusta Sunday to scout the Augusta Museum for a possible

exhibit of their incredible replica. Their Hands-House Studio in Norwell,

Mass., is working on a tour of the historic vessel, and Bushnell's final

resting place in Georgia is a logical stop.

It's really amazing that so few people in Georgia even know about our

connection to the creator of the first submarine. Hopefully that will

change, perhaps as early as this Aug. 30, 2004, 264 years after the day of

Bushnell's birth: thanks to state Reps. Ben Harbin, Barry Fleming and Sue

Burmeister, the Georgia House of Representatives designated Aug. 30 as David

Bushnell Day.

Cementing the Georgia connection for Bushnell may come as slowly as his

submarine's namesake. But maybe, just maybe, the centuries-old oversight

will finally be corrected.

(Barry L. Paschal is publisher of The Columbia County News-Times. E-mail

comments to bpaschal@newstimesonline.com.)