Early in the war the Federal or Northern Government entered into negotiations with a Frenchman, whose name we have been unable to discover, to build and operate a submarine boat against the Confederate or Southern vessels. In particular the North desired to blow up the Confederate _Merrimac_ in Norfolk Harbour. It has been stated that $10,000 were to be paid for the boat when finished, and $5,000 for each successful attack with her. The boat was apparently constructed at the Navy Yard at Washington, and paid for by the Federals, but before they could learn the art of navigating the vessel the Frenchman, taking his gains with him, left the country. Whether the boat would have proved of much value is to be doubted, and the probability is that the inventor would have been as unsuccessful as were the Federals in working the craft. Admiral Hichborn terms it “an absurd arrangement of duckfoot hand-worked paddles in an age when the screw-propeller was in common use.” It was 35 feet long and 6 feet in diameter, and was built up of steel plates. Immersion was obtained by the admission of water, and the mode of propulsion on the surface or below the water was by eight pairs of oars or paddles which opened and shut like the leaves of a book, and were worked by sixteen men placed half on the port and half on the starboard. The maximum speed was 2½ knots on the surface. Fresh air was produced by two machines—one consisted of a bellows passing air over a chamber of lime, the other produced oxygen. The armament was a spar torpedo. According to one account it was towed round by a steamboat to Port Royal and foundered in a storm of wind off Cape Hatteras. Early in 1863 the Confederates cut down a gunboat at Charleston and converted it into a half-submerged torpedo-boat. It does not appear to have done any mischief, but Mr. H. W. Wilson, in his “Ironclads in Action,” says that it may have been the vessel which on the night of April 19, 1864, approached the _Wabash_. The Northern vessel was at anchor when something was seen near her in the water and challenged. She slipped her cable and went ahead, opening a heavy fire upon the strange craft, after which it disappeared, whether as the result of a shot or not is uncertain. On the night of October 5, 1863, an attack was made upon the United States’ ironclad, _New Ironsides_, of 3,486 old American tons, carrying twenty guns, at anchor in the midst of the blockading squadron off Charleston, by a submarine vessel owned by the Confederates. This boat was built by Theodore Stoney at Charleston, and was called the _David_, a name given by the Southerns to some subsequent under-water craft in memory of the fight between the lad David and the giant Goliath.