In the year 1777 I made an attempt from a whale-boat against the _Cerberus_ frigate, then lying at anchor between Connecticut River and New London, by drawing a machine against her side by means of a line. The machine was loaded with powder, to be exploded by a gunlock, which was to be unpinioned by an apparatus to be turned by being brought alongside of the frigate. This machine fell in with a schooner at anchor astern of the frigate, and concealed from my sight. By some means or other it was fired, and demolished the schooner and three men, and blew the only one left alive overboard, who was taken up very much hurt. After this I fixed several kegs under water, charged with powder, to explode upon touching anything as they floated along with the tide. I set them afloat in the Delaware, above the English shipping at Philadelphia, in December, 1777. I was unacquainted with the river, and obliged to depend upon a gentleman very imperfectly acquainted with that part of it, as I afterwards found. We went as near the shipping as we durst venture; I believe the darkness of the night greatly deceived him, as it did me. We set them adrift to fall with the ebb upon the shipping. Had we been within sixty rods I believe they must have fallen in with them immediately, as I designed; but, as I afterwards found, they were set adrift much too far distant, and did not arrive until, after being detained some time by frost, they advanced in the day-time in a dispersed situation, and under great disadvantages. One of them blew up a boat with several persons in it who imprudently handled it too freely, and thus gave the British that alarm which brought on the battle of the kegs. [Illustration: BUSHNELL’S SUBMARINE. A A. Oars. B. Rudder. C. Seat. D. Immersion tank. E. Pipe. F. Conning tower. G. Safety weight. H. Torpedo. ] The above vessel, magazine, &c., were projected in the year 1771, but not completed until the year 1775. The above account appears in the fourth volume of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, and also in the fourth volume of Nicholson’s Journal of Natural Philosophy (1801). Disappointed in the failure of his submarine boat to accomplish the things of which he felt sure it was capable, Bushnell went to France, and finally settled in Georgia, where he lived under the pseudonym of Dr. Bush until the year 1826, when he died at the ripe age of ninety. General Washington, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson dated September 26, 1775, described Bushnell as “a man of great mechanical powers, fertile in inventions, and master of execution.” With regard to the submarine vessel he says, “I thought, and still think, that it was an effort of genius, but that too many things were necessary to be combined to expect much from the issue against an enemy who are always upon guard.”