David Bushnell, a patriot of the Revolutionary War, was born in Connecticut in 1740 and died in Georgia in 1826. He studied naval tactics at Yale from 1771 to 1775, designed a one-man wooden submarine called the Turtle, invented the propeller, and developed a way to explode gunpowder underwater with a timed igniter. The Turtle made its first attack against HMS Eagle in 1776 but was soon destroyed by the British. His floating mines were used against the British fleet in Philadelphia in the Battle of the Kegs in 1778. In 1781 he was made Captain of Miners and Sappers at the Battle of Yorktown and became the first commander of the Corps of Engineers. He moved to Georgia in 1795 under the name David Bush, taught at Citizens, Columbia County, and Warrenton academies, and practiced as a physician in Warrenton for 14 years. During his career he consulted with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Baldwin.