The Devil's Clamshell: A Morning with Sergeant Lee

Phineas Caldwell: This is Phineas Caldwell, reporting for the Chrono-Gazette. The date is September 7th, 1776. I am standing on a salt-slicked wharf at the tip of Manhattan Island. The air here is thick—a heavy, briny soup of morning fog, burning pine tar, and the lingering, sulfurous scent of black powder. The sun is just beginning to bleed through the gray mist over the East River, revealing the silhouette of a city holding its breath. General Washington’s army is weary, backed against a wall, and the British fleet, a forest of masts and cannon, looms just across the harbor off Governors Island.

But I am not here to speak of generals or regiments. I am crouching beside a pile of damp rigging, looking down at a contraption that defies all natural law. It looks like two giant tortoise shells, clamped together with iron bands and coated in black pitch, bobbing awkwardly in the oily swells. Sitting on a crate nearby, wrapped in a coarse wool blanket and shivering despite the mild temperature, is Sergeant Ezra Lee of the Continental Army. He has just returned from a place no man has ever gone before: the bottom of New York Harbor.

Sergeant Lee, if you can manage a word... you look like a man who has shaken hands with a ghost.

Ezra Lee: [Coughing, voice raspy and exhausted] A ghost would have been better company, Mr. Caldwell. At least a ghost doesn’t breathe up all your air.

Phineas Caldwell: You’ve just spent the last six hours inside that... wooden egg. The "Turtle," as Mr. Bushnell calls it. Can you describe what it feels like to be sealed inside?

Ezra Lee: Feels like being buried alive in a wine barrel, sir. It’s oak, six inches thick, bound in iron. You climb in through the brass hatch at the top, and once they screw it down... the silence is the first thing that hits you. It’s heavy. You’re sitting on a little bench, your knees against your chest. There’s a treadle for your feet to work the vertical propeller—that’s how you go down—and a hand crank in front of you to drive the screw that pushes you forward. It’s a dance, sir. A desperate, sweating dance. Left hand on the rudder, right hand cranking the screw, feet pumping the treadle... all while trying not to think about the megatons of water pressing in on the hull.

Phineas Caldwell: And the darkness? Surely you couldn't light a candle in there. The oxygen...

Ezra Lee: [Short, dry laugh] A candle? Lord no. A candle would burn the air in five minutes. We have twenty, maybe thirty minutes of good air before the headache starts. No, the light... that’s the strangest part. Mr. Bushnell, he’s a genius, but he’s got a touch of the madman. He went into the woods and found foxfire. You know it? That glowing fungus that grows on rotting logs?

Phineas Caldwell: Bioluminescence?

Ezra Lee: Aye, that’s the fancy word. We call it "punk wood." He crumbled it up and smeared it on the corks of the depth gauge and the needle of the compass. So there I am, fifty feet under the Admiral’s keel, pitch black, and the only thing I can see is this eerie, blue-green glowing moss telling me which way is North. It felt like steering by the light of the devil’s own eyes.

Phineas Caldwell: Amazing. So, you navigated this vessel, by the light of rotting wood, all the way to the HMS Eagle. The British flagship. What happened when you got there?

Ezra Lee: The tide was the real enemy. It swept me past the fleet twice. I had to crank that handle until my shoulder felt like it was grinding glass just to fight the current. But I got there. I came up right under the Eagle’s stern. I could hear them, Mr. Caldwell. I could hear the British sailors walking the decks above me. The water carries the sound right through the oak. I reached for the auger—the great screw we mounted on the top to bore into their hull and plant the magazine.

Phineas Caldwell: And?

Ezra Lee: I pushed the auger up. I felt it hit the wood. I started to crank. But then... Clang. Iron. Or copper. I don’t know. I hit a metal plate. Maybe the rudder hinge, maybe sheathing. The auger just skittered across it. I tried again, shifted position, but the buoyancy was tricky. Every time I pushed up, the Turtle pushed down. And the air... the air was getting stale. My chest was burning. The foxfire was starting to dim—or maybe my eyes were just failing.

Phineas Caldwell: You had to abort.

Ezra Lee: I didn't want to. I wanted to blow that tyrant’s ship to splinters. But I was getting dizzy. I surfaced, just for a breath, and they saw me. A guard boat rowing out from Governors Island. They didn’t know what I was—thought I was a sea monster or a drifting buoy. I knew I couldn't outrun them, not with my arms spent. So I pulled the pin on the torpedo—the floating mine—and released it. I hoped they’d be curious enough to pick it up.

Phineas Caldwell: We heard the explosion an hour ago. It shook the windows in the Battery.

Ezra Lee: [Quietly] It drifted into the East River before the clockwork timer ran out. Blew a column of water and wood clear over the mastheads. The British didn't chase me after that. I think they were too busy praying.

Phineas Caldwell: Sergeant, you didn't sink the Eagle today. But looking at this small, tarred vessel... do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve changed the nature of the sea.

Ezra Lee: I don’t know about changing the sea, Mr. Caldwell. I just know I’m never eating clams again. The shell reminds me too much of the coffin I just climbed out of.

Phineas Caldwell: Spoken like a true infantryman. Go get some rest, Sergeant.

This is Phineas Caldwell. The sun has fully risen now, burning off the fog. The Turtle is being hoisted onto a cart to be hidden away before the British patrols get closer. It is a primitive thing—oak, iron, and fungus—but standing here, smelling the ozone of that distant explosion, I can't help but feel I've seen the birth of a new and terrible kind of war. One that happens in the silence and the dark. From the docks of New York, September 1776, this is Phineas Caldwell for the Chrono-Gazette.