Aarva

Smithsonian Magazine ·Smart escape

To Defeat the Royal Navy During the American Revolution, a Rebel Inventor Designed a Secret Weapon: a Bomb-Carrying Submarine

Published 2026-09-03 11:45:00+00:00

How do you fight the world's greatest navy from inside a hand-cranked wooden shell?

0:00 / 10:39 · Narrator Rasalgethi

Context

During the American Revolution, a Connecticut inventor tried to sink a British warship using an acorn-shaped wooden box operated by a hand crank. Published on 3 September 2026 in Smithsonian Magazine, the story of the Turtle—the world's first combat-ready submarine—is ultimately about a classic military problem. When a rebellion realizes it can never match an imperial navy ship for ship, how does it fight back? The answer was a crude, desperate experiment in asymmetric warfare.

Show notes

An account of the Turtle, a one-person wooden submarine built by American rebels in 1776 to attack the British Navy. The text details the vessel's mechanics, including its pedal-operated propeller and glowing gauges, before tracking its failed mission against a warship in New York harbor. Naval historians conclude by explaining how the craft served as an early model for asymmetric warfare.

Read on Smithsonian Magazine →