1. Joseph Belton, a native of Groton, Conn., who graduated from the College of Rhode Island in 1769, submitted to the Pennsylvania committee of safety during the summer of 1775 a plan for building a submersible vessel capable of attacking British warships. “I will,” he wrote the committee on 4 Sept. 1775, “make a Machine by the help of which, I will carry a loaded cannon, two or three miles up or down any of our harbours without any other assistance, and all the way there should nothing appear above the surface much larger than a man’s hat, and by attracting [contracting] my Machine, would wholely descend under warter for some time, and by expanding, would rise to the surface at pleasure, and by this means, to avoid any discovery when I had arrived within an hundred and fifty, or two hundred yards of a Ship, I could descend under the surface, and go along side of her bottom against which, I could discharge the Cannon, that should be prov’d large enough to send a ball through any ships side. . . . As experiments will speak plainer than words, and being conscious of my own abillities, I will engage to shew experimental all that I have herein asserted, and upon my non performance, I will become obligated to reimburse all that you may advance; so that the whole expence should then fall upon myself, and not the publick. And if I performed according to what is asserted, then I should be intitled to such, as you thought my ingenuity and plan merrited, though at the same time Gentlemen, I can assure you, that I am not excited so much with the view of incuring premiums, as that of sarving my country in so glorious a cause. And would readily engage, after making a few experiments, to sink, or destroy, the admirals ship now in Boston, or any other ever so difficultly situated” (Pa. Archives, 1st ser., 4:650–52; see also Belton to the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, 11 Sept. 1775, ibid., 654).

Although GW agreed to aid Belton’s efforts (see GW to Franklin, 30 July), there is no evidence that the young inventor ever conducted any experiments with an underwater vessel. David Bushnell’s development of a successful submarine about this time may have discouraged Belton from pursuing his project. In any event, Belton soon turned his attention to a scheme to make rapid-fire muskets for the Continental army. “I have discover’d,” he wrote Congress on 11 April 1777, “an improvement, in the use of Small Armes, wherein a common small arm, may be maid to discharge eight balls one after another, in eight, five or three seconds of time” (DNA:PCC, item 41). On 3 May 1777 Congress authorized Belton to make or alter one hundred muskets on his new model, but when he subsequently sought exorbitant compensation for his work, the delegates rejected his proposals (JCC, 7:324, 361; 8:542, 566; see also Belton to Congress, 7 May, 14 June 1777, and Belton to Hancock, 8 May 1777, DNA:PCC, item 78, and Belton to Congress, 10 July 1777, DNA:PCC, item 42).