Maury was not overly discouraged, but returned to Richmond to continue his experiments so as to perfect an apparatus which would be more successful next time. These experiments were made possible through the assistance of the Richmond Medical College, which furnished batteries and offered the use of its laboratory, and by the help of the Tredegar Iron Works as well as those of Talbot and Son. Maury carried on these experiments at the house of his cousin Robert H. Maury in Richmond at 1105 East Clay Street, which was marked in 1910 by the Confederate Memorial Society with this commemorative inscription: “In this house, Matthew Fontaine Maury, LL. D., U. S. N., C. S. N., invented the submarine Electrical Torpedo, 1861–62”. While engaged in this work, Maury set forth his hopes of success in the following letter: “I am experimenting upon my deep sea batteries and so far, as difficulties have presented themselves, they have one by one been overcome. I shall be ready for demonstration next week I hope.... Then if I can get the powder, I will launch in the Potomac, the Chesapeake, and its tributaries hundreds of these things in pairs, each pair connected by a line several hundred feet in length and in such a manner that if the line fouls the vessel while she is at anchor, or any vessel crosses the line while she is under weigh, the tightening of the line will pull a trigger and let the things off. I think I can drive the enemy out of the Chesapeake. This is a business, this thing of blowing up men while they are asleep, that I don’t glory in.... I shall endeavor to pick up and save the crews from drowning”. Maury was not given an opportunity to demonstrate his improved mine, until late in July or early in August, 1861, when the Secretary of the Navy, the Governor of Virginia, and the Chairman of the Committee of Naval Affairs consented to witness a trial on the James River at Rocketts, where the James River Steamboat Company’s wharf is now located. Maury thus describes the trial: “I made a pair of submarine batteries. Your man Mallory pronounced them humbugs. I got him and Conrad (Chairman of Naval Affairs Committee, House of Representatives) to go and see them blow up the James River. I put them adrift aiming them at a buoy. They caught, drifted down, tightened the rope, pulled the trigger, and off they went blowing the river, or some of it, sky high and killing innumerable fish. So Mallory after that asked for an appropriation of $50,000 to enable me to go ahead”.