CHAPTER XI
Experiments with a Submarine
Lord Hawksbury wrote Fulton, “If you should be disposed to accept active employment from the British government, you may rely on the most liberal treatment and recompense proportioned to your efficient service.” No wonder that Fulton departed happily from France.
Arriving in London, he established himself in lodgings and tried once more to order the engine for the American boat; he also tried to induce the British Ministry to accept his submarine torpedo. As his work in France had been publicly known, he signed his letters to the English statesmen “Robert Francis,” an assumed name which was no secret to the English but served to protect the torpedo project from the notice of French spies, should there be any.
At Boulogne, Napoleon was gathering his army for a possible invasion of England. France, enriched fifteen million dollars by the American purchase of Louisiana, was prepared to strike a new blow. History made rapidly during those days; maps and ruling powers were changing. Fulton swung his energies to a fresh scene of action at a crucial time.
He was indeed “playing with fire.” Fulton’s danger during his submarine experiments in the harbor of Brest, was small compared with the risk he would run should he fall into the hands of the French while using torpedoes against them. Fulton had been told by Napoleon’s commission that any one employing such weapons of destruction would certainly be hung if captured by the enemy; how much greater the likelihood now if France found the spurned machines effectively turned against Napoleon’s troops.
For so it was. Fulton was in England only two days when he proposed to the Ministry a practical trial of his plunging vessel, describing it as thirty-five feet long, having power to sail like an ordinary fishing-boat, with a capacity for machinery and provisions for six persons for twenty days at sea, capable of plunging and remaining three hours under water without aid. When necessary to renew air, the boat need not appear above the water, but approaching the surface, could project two tubes, one to discharge the foul air already breathed, the other to take in fresh air, accomplishing the change in two minutes, when the boat could plunge again to remain another three hours below.
In this manner he promised that a crew could conceal themselves under water during a day of twelve hours, on renewing the air three times, and could remain many days in the neighborhood of an enemy without detection.
He proposed a submarine expedition to destroy the French fleets at Boulogne and Brest “as they now lie.” It was a daring plan, but Fulton admitted no possibility of defeat and offered personally to conduct the siege. He asked the aid of a good machinist to assist in fitting out the vessels, and an active sea-officer with power to choose one hundred hardy seamen from the fleet who were good swimmers,—also about forty tons of powder and seven thousand pounds, English money, to fit out the expedition.
But the British halted their judgment. Delay was irksome and Fulton urged the appointment of a committee to consider his plan.
Lord Sidmouth, who had sent Dr. Gregory to call upon Fulton in Paris, was no longer in power; but had been succeeded by the Right Honourable William Pitt, a relative of Lord Stanhope. The latter, with Lord Viscount Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, finally drew up a contract, which was witnessed by Sir Home Popham, and was signed by Fulton in his own name.