“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 throwing a machine against her side by means of a line. The machine was loaded with powder to be exploded by a gun-lock, 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 the frost; they advanced in the daytime 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.’ The above vessel, magazine, etc., were projected in the year 1771, but not completed until the year 1775. “D. BUSHNELL.” The man who handled the submarine boat in New York harbor was Sergeant Ezra Lee, and the ship mentioned was the sixty-four-gun liner _Eagle_. It is a great pity that a full record of Bushnell’s experiments and of the experiences of Sergeant Ezra Lee, who handled the strange craft, was not made for the benefit of subsequent inventors, because much useless labor would have been saved. For instance, every inventor who has since worked on the idea has had to learn for himself that it is utterly impossible to see through the water after he has been once submerged, while other matters of little less importance have been worked out over and again. The attack on the _Cerberus_ mentioned above was described by the British captain as follows: