Morse now decided to bring his invention to the attention of Congress. He was permitted to set up his apparatus in the room of the House Committee on Commerce at the Capitol. There he gave an exhibition to the committee, but most of them doubted if his plans for sending long-distance messages were really feasible. On February 21, 1838, he worked his telegraph through ten miles of wire contained on a reel, with President Van Buren and his cabinet as an audience. Then he asked that Congress appropriate sufficient money to enable him to construct a telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. The chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Francis O. J. Smith, of Maine, was very much interested by now, and drafted a bill appropriating $30,000 for this purpose. But the bill did not come to a vote, and the matter was allowed to drop. [Illustration: MORSE AND THE FIRST TELEGRAPH] Meantime rival claimants to the invention were appearing on all sides. Morse decided that he must try to secure European patents, and went abroad for that purpose. His claim was opposed in England, and in France it was finally decided that in the case of such an invention the government must be the owner. He was well received, and given the fullest credit for his achievements, but the patents were refused, and he had to return home with his small capital much depleted and business prospects at a low ebb. Moreover, the United States government now seemed to have lost interest in the subject, and his partners, the Vails, were having financial difficulties of their own. While he waited he continued to experiment. He believed that the electric current could be sent under water as easily as through the air, and to try this he insulated a wire two miles long with hempen threads that were saturated with pitch-tar and wrapped with India-rubber. He unreeled this cable from a small rowboat between Castle Garden and Governor’s Island in New York Harbor on the night of October 18, 1842. At daybreak Morse was at the station at the Battery, and began to send a message through his submarine cable. He had succeeded in sending three or four characters when the communication suddenly stopped, and although he waited and kept on with his trials no further letters could be transmitted. On investigation it appeared that no less than seven ships were lying along the line of Morse’s cable, and that one of these, in getting under way, had lifted the cable on her anchor. The sailors hauled two hundred feet of it on deck, and, seeing no end to it, cut it, and carried part of it away with them. But the test had proved Morse’s theory, and he became convinced that in time messages could be sent across the ocean as easily as over land.