The Turtle
I felt a surge of local pride when the news broke today that a replica Revolutionary War submarine was found bobbing in Buttermilk Channel, between Red Hook, Brooklyn and Governor's Island -- right outside my living room windows. It's an extraodinary looking thing: a kind of wooden egg, even cuter than a tugboat. The submarine drifted up the channel towards the Brooklyn Cruise Ship Terminal, in the direction of the Queen Mary 2, the huge floating skyscraper that blots out the sun when it docks here every ten days or so. Soon the police were swarming the waterfront, perhaps fearing al-Qaida naval incursion. Instead, they they fished out a guy called Duke Riley, an extravagantly tattooed Brooklyn artist with an interest in "populist myths and reinvented historical obscurities." Riley has a history of nautical stunts: he's circumnavigated the island of Manhattan in a plywood boat, "reclaimed" Belmont Island in the East River during the Republican National Convention, and bum-rushed Robert Smithson's Floating Island. He's also got a great looking website, with examples of his mosaics and drawings, including this fantastic image of a merman getting tattooed by an octopus, with help from a pair of electric eels:
(I wonder: can one order up this octopus at the tattoo parlor that Riley co-owns?)
The Turtle has a fascinating history. It was the world's first military submarine, the brainchild of a Connecticut inventor named David Bushnell. It was operated by hand-turned propellers, and designed to surreptitiously attach explosives to the hulls of enemy ships. In the summer of 1776, the sub launched a gallant but failed attack on the HMS Eagle, the flagship of a fleet of British gunships blockading New York Harbor, a delicious David and Goliath story that ended with the slapstick explosion of a mine in the waters off of...Governor's Island. It seems Duke Riley's stunt was pretty historically high-concept.
Turns out, Riley is only the most recent Turtle revivalist. A replica was built in 1976 on the occasion of the Bicentennial - it's on display at the high school in Bushnell's hometown, Old Saybrook, Connecticut. And in 2003, a totally gorgeous replica was made by the Massachusetts-based Handshouse Studio, whose website has tons of interesting historical information and great pictures. I love this top view of the Handshouse Studio Turtle:
There's also a Flickr gallery of Duke Riley's Turtle, taken a couple of weeks ago, evidently during an earlier aborted attempt to rendezvous with the Queen Mary 2.
*Later*: The Times now has video.
