Fulton's inventive genius directed toward a submarine took tangible shape in 1800 when the French Government built the _Nautilus_ in accordance with his plans. Both France and the United States carried on experimental work with Fulton's designs, under his personal supervision, but there is no record of any marked achievement. The first submarine within the memory of men living to-day, the first practical, albeit crude, undersea boat, was the _H. L. Hunley_, built at Mobile, Ala., under the auspices of the Confederate Navy and brought from that port to Charleston on flat cars for the purpose of trying to break the blockade of that port by Federal war-ships. The _Hunley_ was about forty feet long, six in diameter, and shaped like a cigar. Its motive power came from seven men turning cranks attached to the propeller-shaft. When working their hardest these men could drive the boat at a speed of about four miles an hour. Several attempts to use the _Hunley_ were unsuccessful, each time it sank, drowning its crew of from eight to ten men. These experiments, which were carried on in shallow water at Charleston, mark one of the bright pages in our seafaring annals, as crew after crew went into the boat facing practically certain death to the end that the craft might be made effective. Each time the vessel sank she was raised, the dead crew taken out, and a new experiment with a new crew made. In all thirty-three men were sacrificed before it was finally decided that the boat could make her way out to the blockading line. It was on the night of February 17, 1864, that the _Hunley_ set out on her last journey. The vessel submerged, reached the side of the United States steamship _Housatonic_, and successfully exploded a mine against the hull of the Federal war-ship, sending her to the bottom. But in the explosion the submersible herself was sunk and all on board were lost. The commander of the expedition was Lieutenant George E. Dixon, of Alabama, who with his crew well appreciated their danger. It is supposed that the _Hunley_ was drawn down in the suction of the sinking war-ship; she could not arise from the vortex, and that was the last of her and of her brave crew. The North was tremendously excited over the incident and the South elated, but no other ship was attacked from beneath the water in the course of the war.