Delpeuch asks what were the reasons that prevented use being made of the Nautilus or at least from trying it, and in answering his own question says that it is a mystery that has been impossible to clear away. There was no mystery. All innovations, and perhaps particularly so in connection with ships, have been forced on the world against the opposition of those to be directly benefited. It was so with Fulton’s submarine, and later with his steamboat. The change from side wheels to propellers, the use of metal for hulls, the introduction of watertight bulkheads and the elimination of sails were all adopted only after long delay and strong antagonism, due to the same official and unreasoning opposition.
Realization of defeat came slowly to Fulton, and was all the more bitter because it came so. He returned to Paris from Brest elated by his success in demonstrating the value of the improvements to his previous design. He expected to be notified immediately that his offer had been accepted. As the days passed without word from Bonaparte, certainty of victory first gave way to doubt, then doubt to hope, and finally hope was changed to despair. In his impatience he wrote a personal letter to Bonaparte. This letter dated 19 Fructidor an IX (16 Sept., 1801) urging and begging favorable action is still preserved in the Archives Nationales at Paris.
Bonaparte made no reply.
He had made up his mind to travel the road that led to St. Helena. Although he gave Fulton no answer, it is reported that he spoke of Fulton as being a charlatan and a swindler, intent only on extorting money.
There is one piece of evidence showing that Bonaparte subsequently regretted his action and realized the value that Fulton and his inventions might have been to him. Desbrière in his book entitled “1793–1805, Projets et Tentatives de Débarquement aux Iles Britanniques,” quotes a letter written on July 21st to M. de Champagny, at that time Counsellor of State in the Marine department:[[4]]
I have just read the proposition of Citizen Fulton that you have sent to me much too late to permit it to change the face of the world. However I desire that you will immediately refer its examination to a commission composed of members chosen from the different classes of the Institute. It is there that the wisdom of Europe should seek judges to solve the problem in question. As soon as the report is made it will be transmitted to you and you will send it to me. Be sure that this will not take more than a week.
Desbrière states that the year when this letter was written is commonly put down as 1804. But he points out that in July of that year Fulton was in England and Champagny in Austria. The year was probably 1803, because in July, 1803, Fulton was exhibiting a steam-propelled boat on the Seine, concerning which innovation an official of the Navy department would undoubtedly have informed the First Consul.
During the agonizing period of waiting for an answer to his personal letter to Bonaparte, from which he had the right to expect some acknowledgment at least in view of the high standing of his introducers, Fulton still hoped. But when he heard that Bonaparte had characterized him as a swindler, he knew that all was ended, and that the door to further progress in France had been shut and finally barred. This was something much more to Fulton than a mere refusal of an inventor’s offer of an incomplete device. Such a refusal he could have endured with courage and some equanimity. He had gone through similar painful experiences with his canal schemes and his various excavating machines. Now he had to suffer that disappointment and in addition the still harder blow of having his altruistic offer of service and his views on political philosophy rejected with slanderous contempt to which he was powerless to reply. His writings show that his heart was as much set on his conception of liberty and freedom as on his mechanical contrivances.
After his defeat, one that Fulton recognized as final so far as France was concerned, he laid aside permanently his long cherished plans for constructing small canals, and temporarily his consideration of submarine warfare, to devote his attention to the development of a boat propelled by a steam engine. His only subsequent move to promote a system of canals coupled with his scheme to overcome differences in elevations by inclined planes was in a letter to Albert Gallatin, dated Washington, Dec. 8, 1807. Gallatin was then Secretary of the Treasury of the United States and was about to issue in pursuance of a resolution of the Senate a report upon “Public Roads and Canals.” Fulton in his long letter, that Gallatin made a part of his report, urged the construction of canals in preference to highways. Engrossed, however, in his steamboat to which, following the rejection of the Nautilus, he had thrown his impetuous energy, Fulton made no effort personally to carry his canal plans into execution either in France or the United States.
In 1801, Robert R. Livingston had arrived in France as American Minister to the French Government. He and Fulton met at the critical period in the latter’s career. The statesman, whose mind was sympathetic to the consideration of mechanical applications, soon became interested in his countryman’s projects. Stimulated by Livingston’s personal encouragement and supported by his financial aid, Fulton pushed his studies of a practical steam engine for navigation and entered into correspondence with Messrs. Boulton and Watt, then the most prominent builders of engines in England. The junior member of this firm was the famous James Watt (1736–1819), the discoverer of the principle that power could be produced from the elastic energy of steam, and the inventor of the steam condensing engine. Livingston as an individual with his own limited resources was about to accomplish in a few years a complete revolution of vessel propulsion that Napoleon with the almost unlimited resources of France could have done in much less time, certainly in time to offset England’s superiority on the high seas. Livingston with greater vision seized the opportunity that Napoleon rejected. But with this we are not concerned.