Instructions to Barlow regarding the “Drawings and Descriptions.” Fulton’s youth (1765–1782). Residence in England studying art (1786–1793). Change from art to engineering as a vocation (1793). Arrival in France (1798). “... I am now busy winding up everything and will leave London about the 23rd inst. for Falmouth from whence I shall sail in the packet the first week in October and be with you, I hope, in November, perhaps about the 14th, my birthday, so you must have a roast goose ready. The packet, being well manned and provided will be more commodious and safe for an autumn passage, and I think there will be little or no risk; at least I prefer taking all the risk there is to idling here a winter. But although there is not much risk, yet accidents may happen, and that the produce of my studies and experience may not be lost to my country, I have made out a complete set of drawings and descriptions of my whole system of submarine attack.... These with my _will_, I shall put in a tin cylinder, sealed and leave them in the care of General Lyman, not to be opened unless I am lost. Should such an event happen, I have left you the means to publish these works, with engravings, in a handsome manner, and to which you will add your own ideas—showing how the liberty of the seas may be gained by such means.” Thus Robert Fulton wrote to Joel Barlow who had been his close friend and faithful guide since his arrival in Paris in 1797. The letter of which the above is but an extract is dated London, September, 1806, and was written, as the context shows, on the eve of his final departure from England, after a residence abroad of nearly twenty years. General Lyman to whom he referred had been appointed American Consul in London in 1805, in which capacity he served until he died in 1811.