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David Bushnell left no drawings of his design of the Turtle, but many details have been reconstructed from a long letter he sent Thomas Jefferson in 1787 regarding his submarine. There are also contemporary accounts by others and a number of physical reconstructions of it over the years by naval buffs. The Turtle was operated almost completely by the hands and feet of the pilot. Working the propellers alone over any distance required a strength and stamina that the rather frail Bushnell did not have. Aboard the craft itself, there were so many different tasks to be performed, sometimes simultaneously, that the pilot often needed the dexterity and concentration of a kind of one-man band.

The Turtle was driven through the water by two hand-cranked screw propellers. One was for vertical movement when the vessel was submerged, the other for movement forward, either on or below the surface. The forward propeller was supplemented by a rudder and tiller. Each propeller, vertical and horizontal, had a set of four blades, two on each side. They resembled the blades of a windmill and functioned like oars in the water. There might also have been a foot treadle to peddle the craft, similar to the action of a spinning wheel. The submarine had a top speed of four knots.

The second system essential to the Turtle's operation involved the use of pumps, valves, and air vents. The submarine submerged by drawing water into the cabin, and it ascended by pumping the water out with two hand pumps. The amount of water let in determined how deep the craft could go--about twenty feet being the maximum. Acork barometer devised by Bushnell registered the depth at any point.

During the process of submersion, water must at times have reached almost to the knees of the pilot seated on his bench. Foot-operated valves and water pumps located at the lower front and back of the cabin were designed to drain the water out when it was time to resurface. In an emergency, a ballast of two hundred pounds of sand at the bottom of the cabin could be released. Finally, the Turtle had an air supply of thirty minutes maximum. It could be replenished by surfacing far enough to allow a snorkel-like device at the top of the cabin to take in air through three small sealable air vents.

Such features, along with others noted earlier, combine to make the Turtle a remarkable achievement and a benchmark event in the history of submarines.

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