90 THE SEA. 



He has given an interesting account of this experiment in a pamphlet which he published in 

 this country, under the title of " Torpedo "War." In a letter to Lord Castlereagh, of the 16th 

 October, 1805, he says, " Yesterday, about four o'clock, I made the intended experiment on the 

 brig, with a carcass of one hundred and seventy pounds of powder ; and I have the pleasure to 

 inform you that it succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectations. Exactly in fifteen minutes 

 from the time of drawing the peg and throwing the carcass into the water, the explosion 

 took place. It lifted the brig almost bodily, and broke her completely in two. The ends sunk 

 immediately, and in one minute nothing was to be seen of her but floating fragments. 

 Her mainmast and pumps were thrown in the sea ; her foremast was broken in three pieces ; 

 her beams and knees were thrown from her deck and sides, and her deck planks were rent to 

 fibres. In fact, her annihilation was complete, and the effect was most extraordinary. The 

 power, as I had calculated, passed in a right line through her body, that being the line 

 of least resistance, and carried all before it. At the time of her going up she did not 

 appear to make more resistance than a bag of feathers, and went to pieces like a shattered 

 egg-shell." 



Notwithstanding the complete success of the experiment, the British ministry seem 

 to have been but little disposed to have anything further to do with Mr. Fulton and his 

 projects. Indeed, the evidence it afforded of their efficiency may have been a reason for this. 

 However Mr. Pitt and Lord Melvillo may have thought on the subject, there had been a 

 change in the administration, and the new ministers probably agreed with the Earl St. 

 Vincent, that it was great folly in them to encourage a project which, if it succeeded, would 

 revolutionise all maritime questions. Lord Grenville and his Cabinet were not only 

 indisposed to encourage Mr. Fulton, but they were unwilling to fulfil the engagements which 

 their predecessors had made, and that inventor, after some further experiments, of which 

 we have no particular account, wearied with incessant applications, disappointments, and 

 neglect, at length embarked for his native country. 



But Fulton's greatest fame rests on his steam-boats. In his first attempt made in France, 

 where he was aided by Mr. Robert R. Livingston, a fellow-countryman, he was not successful. 

 Their experimental boat was completed early in the spring of 1803; they were on the point 

 of making an experiment with her, when one morning, as Mr. Fulton was rising from a 

 bed in which anxiety had given him but little rest, a messenger from the boat, whose precipi- 

 tation and apparent consternation announced that he was the bearer of bad tidings, presented 

 himself to him, and exclaimed in accents of despair, "Oh, sir, the boat has broken to 

 pieces and gone to the bottom !" Mr. Fulton, who himself related the anecdote, declared that 

 the news created a despondency which he had never felt on any other occasion ; but this was 

 only a momentary sensation. Upon examination, he found the boat had been too weakly 

 framed to bear the great weight of the machinery, and that, . in consequence of an agitation 

 of the river by wind the preceding night, what the messenger had represented had literally 

 happened. The boat had broken in two, and the weight of her machinery had carried her 

 fragments to the bottom. It appeared to him, as he said, that the fruits of so many months' 

 labour, and so much expense, were annihilated, and an opportunity of demonstrating the 

 efficiency of his plan was denied him at the moment he had promised it should be displayed. 

 His disappointment and feelings may easily be imagined, but they did not check his 



