“These oars,” noted Judge Griswold on the letter before forwarding it to General Humphrey, “were fixed on the end of a shaft like windmill arms projected out forward, and turned at right angles with the course of the machine; and upon the same principles that wind-mill arms are turned by the wind, these oars, when put in motion as the writer describes, draw the machine slowly after it. This moving power is small, and every attendant circumstance must coöperate with it to answer the purpose--calm waters and no current.” “With hard labor,” said Lee, “the machine might be impelled at the rate of ‘3 nots’ an hour for a short time.” Sergeant Lee volunteered “to learn the ways and mystery of this new machine” because the original operator, Bushnell’s brother, “was taken sick in the campaign of 1776 at New York before he had an opportunity to make use of his skill, and never recovered his health sufficiently afterwards.” While Lee was still struggling with the “mystery” in practice trips on Long Island Sound, the British fleet entered New York Harbor. The submarine was at once hurried to New Rochelle, carted overland to the Hudson, and towed down to the city. At slack tide on the first calm night after his arrival, Lee screwed down the conning-tower of the _Turtle_ above his head and set out to attack the British fleet.[6] Two whaleboats towed him as near as they dared and then cast off. Running awash, with not more than six or seven inches of the conning-tower exposed, the submarine crept, silent and unseen, down the bay and up under the towering stern of his Britannic Majesty’s 64-gun frigate _Eagle_. “When I rowed under the stern of the ship,” wrote Sergeant Lee in after years, “I could see the men on deck and hear them talk. I then shut down all the doors, sunk down and came under the bottom of the ship.” Up through the top of the submarine ran a long sharp gimlet, not for boring a hole through the bottom of a ship, but to be screwed into the wooden hull and left there, to serve as an anchor for a mine. Tied to the screw and carried on the after-deck of the _Turtle_ was an egg-shaped “magazine,” made of two hollowed-out pieces of oak and containing one hundred and fifty pounds of gunpowder, with a clockwork time-fuse that would begin to run as soon as the operator cast off the magazine after making fast the screw. Everything seemed ready for Sergeant Lee to anticipate Lieutenant Commander Von Weddigen by one hundred and thirty-eight years. But no matter how hard the strong-wristed sergeant turned the handle, he could not drive the screw into the frigate’s hull. The _Eagle_ was copper-sheathed![7]