98 Griswold on Submarine Explosion. 
the latter was immediately detached, and the clock com- 
menced going. ‘The clock was set for running twenty or 
thirty minutes, at the end of which time, the lock struck, 
and fired the powder, and in the mean time the adventurer 
effected his escape. 
But the most difficult point of all to be gained, was to 
fasten this magazine to the bottom of a ship. Here a difli- 
culty arose, which, and which alone, as will appear in the 
ensuing narrative, defeated the successful operations of this 
warlike apparatus. 
Mr. Bushnell’s contrivance was this—A very sharp iron 
screw was made to pass out from the top of the machine, 
communicating inside by a water joint; it was provided 
with a crank at its lower end, by which the engineer was 
to force it into the ship’s bottom: this screw was next to 
be disengaged from the machine, and left adhering to the | 
ship’s bottom. A line leading from this screw to the maga- 
zine, kept the latter m its destined position for blowing up 
the vessel. 
I shall now proceed to the account of the first attempt 
that was made to destroy a ship of war, all the facts of 
which, as already stated, I received from the bold adven- 
turer himself, 
It was in the month of August, 1776, when Admiral 
Howe lay with a formidable British fleet in New-York bay, 
a little above the Narrows, and a numerous British force 
upon Staten Island, commanded by General Howe, threat- 
ened annihilation to the troops under Washington, that Mr. 
Bushnell requested General Parsons of the American army, 
to furnish him with two or three men to learn the naviga- 
tion of his new machine, with a view of destroying some > of 
the enemy’s shipping. 
Gen. Parsons immediately sent for Lee, then a sergeant, 
and two others, who had offered their services to go on 
board of a fire ship ; and on Bushnell’s request being made 
known to them, they enlisted themselves under him for 
this novel piece of service. The party went up into Long 
island Sound with the machine, and made various experi- 
ments with it in the different harbors along shore, and after 
having become pretty thoroughly acquainted with the mode 
of navigating it, they returned through the Sound; but dur- 
