In the year 1806 Fulton returned to New York and made overtures to the United States Government. Receiving some encouragement he succeeded, after many unsuccessful efforts, in blowing up a vessel which had been prepared for the purpose. Admiral Porter in 1878 wrote, “A Midshipman nowadays at our Torpedo School at Newport, would consider himself disgraced if he failed to destroy a ship of the line in ten minutes with less explosive powder, especially if the ship lay at anchor and gave him every opportunity to operate upon her.” The admiral seems to forget that Fulton was a pioneer, and laboured under every possible disadvantage in prosecuting his work. In 1810 Congress appropriated 5,000 dollars to assist Fulton in developing his ideas. After many trials, most of which were failures, the United States brig _Argus_ was prepared for Fulton’s final experiment. By order of Commodore Rodgers, the vessel had been so protected with spars and netting reaching to the bottom as to be practically unassailable, and the attempt to blow her up by a submarine torpedo was unsuccessful, as Fulton himself acknowledged, though he could not refrain from adding that “a system then in its infancy, which compelled a hostile vessel to guard herself by such extraordinary means, could not fail of becoming a most important mode of warfare.” Could Fulton have foreseen the manner in which his crude devices were to develop into the Whitehead torpedo and submarine boat of to-day, he would have had something to cheer him in his hours of depression. After the failure of the _Argus_ experiment, Fulton devoted his attention to steam navigation, and was more successful in this line than in his efforts to introduce torpedo warfare, though he considered the latter a matter of greater moment than the former. In a letter to Joel Barlow, dated New York, August 22, 1807, Fulton says, after describing his celebrated steam voyage up the Hudson:— “However, I will not admit that it (steam navigation) is half so important as the torpedo system of defence or attack, for out of this will grow the liberty of the seas—an object of infinite importance to the welfare of America and every civilised country. But thousands of witnesses have now seen the steamboat in rapid movement and they believe; but they have not seen a ship of war destroyed by a torpedo, and they do not believe. We cannot expect people in general to have knowledge of physics or power to reason from cause to effect, but in case we have war and the enemy’s ships come into our waters, if the Government will give me reasonable means of action, I will soon convince the world that we have surer and cheaper modes of defence than they are aware of.”