Turtle Captured In New York Harbor
And this is not an "Animal Uprising™" story. The second I saw the picture of this thing they caught in New York Harbor, I thought of the Turtle, a submarine built and used (unsuccessfully) in the American Revolutionary War. (The report notes the same thing, I found as I read it). Three men have been taken into custody along with the submarine they were operating near the Queen Mary II.
(CBS) NEW YORK A strange-looking submarine was spotted Friday near the docked Queen Mary II, and NYPD Harbor and SCUBA units arrested three people for questioning.
The vessel, with one person inside, and an inflatable boat carrying two people, were spotted near a security zone around the luxury ocean liner docked at the cruise ship terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
It was not clear what the people were doing in the vessels, but police said there was no indication that the incident was related to terrorism.
The sub, piloted by a Greenpoint man, came within 100 feet of the luxury cruise liner.
A detective from the New York Police Department Intelligence Division noticed the vessels at around 10:30 a.m. and summoned the Harbor Unit.
The mysterious vessel was partly submerged and “appeared to be designed for underwater navigation,” the NYPD said in a statement.
The vessel bears a striking resemblance to the "Bushnell Turtle," the first American submarine, invented around 1775 in Connecticut by David Bushnell. That sub was designed as a naval weapon, and it was meant to drill into a ship's hull and plant a keg of powder, which would be detonated by a time fuse.
The authorities are downplaying any talk of this being terrorism related at this point. There are very few details and I had to search pretty hard to find even this much information. More as information becomes available.
