Art, History, or Security Risk?

One Man’s Art (a Submarine?) Runs Into Trouble

Excerpt:

Duke Riley, a heavily tattooed Brooklyn artist whose waterborne performance projects around the city have frequently landed him in trouble with authorities, spent the last five months building a makeshift submarine — a partial replica of what may be America’s earliest submarine, an oak sphere called the Turtle, which saw action (not particularly successful action) in New York Harbor during the Revolutionary War.

The Turtle

Excerpt:

Turtle was the world's first submarine used in battle. It was invented in Connecticut in 1775 by David Bushnell and was created as a means of attaching explosive charges to ships in a harbor.

Named for its shape, Turtle resembled a large clam as much as a turtle; it was 7.5 feet (2.3 m) long, 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, and about 3 feet (0.9 m) wide, consisting of two wooden shells covered with tar. It submerged by allowing water into the hull and ascended by pushing water out through a hand pump, similarly to the use of spear sack tanks in modern submarines, and was propelled vertically and horizontally by hand-cranked propellers, the first recorded use of the screw propeller for ships. It was manned and operated by only one person.

Comment: Because we live in such a sensitive era, a "head's up" from the artist would have spared him legal grief. Just let the guys go!