Among eccentricities of design in steamboats may be mentioned cigar ships, vessels shaped like birds, early submarines, double-hulled boats, and numerous other extravagances. One of the earliest submarines was contrived by a Dutchman named Hollar, about 1653, but whether this wonderful vessel ever got beyond the imaginative or paper stage is unknown. There is a picture of it in the British Museum. This singular craft was to be 72 feet in length, 12 feet high, and 8 feet beam, with a wheel in the centre where it “hath its motion.” The description says it was built at Rotterdam. The inventor undertook in one day to destroy 100 ships. “It can go from London to Rotterdam and back in one day, and in six days can go to the East Indies, and can also run as fast as bird can fly.” “No fire, no storm, no bullets can harm her unless it please God.” There is no further trace of her. The first submarine which achieved any measure of success was that of David Bushnell, an American, who devised it in the hope of blowing up a British warship and failed egregiously. Bushnell, who was born at Saybrook, Conn., in 1742, devoted a large amount of attention to submarine warfare. His idea was to fix a small powder magazine to the bottom of a vessel and explode it by means of a clockwork apparatus. He constructed a tortoise-shaped diving boat, made of iron, and containing sufficient air to support a man for half an hour. This boat, called the _American Turtle_, was propelled by a sort of screw or oar worked from inside. It could be immersed by admitting water through a valve in the bottom, and lightened by pumping the water out again. She was tried, without success, against the British warship _Eagle_ in New York harbour, and a later attack on the _Cerberus_ left that frigate unharmed, but blew up an American schooner and some of her crew.