The famous Sir Sydney Smith was an aider and abettor of Fulton, though a naval officer, but his attitude may have been due to a desire to stand well with Mr. Pitt rather than to a conviction that the adoption of his proposed methods of warfare would be of real service to the navy. What doubtless attracted both men was the hope of destroying the French invasion flotillas at Boulogne and in the Basque Roads, which our fleet could not get at. Attempts were made, but ended in dismal failures. The public generally was dead against the employment of what were regarded as dastardly and underhand apparatus, and so were most naval officers. An officer, in a diary made at the time, describes[46] "six copper submarine carcasses, some to hold 540 pounds of powder and others 405 pounds" that were sent on board his ship for the purpose of being employed against the enemy's vessels. He says further that "Johnstone the smuggler laid one down near the gates of the new harbour before Flushing surrendered, but we never heard of any damage being done by it. As for our part we never tried them--indeed, _our Admiral said it was not a fair proceeding_." The idea of attacking an enemy under water was, however, by no means a novel one. Attempts in this direction have been made almost from time immemorial. Swimming under water and diving seem to have been often resorted to in order to cut ships' cables, and even for the purpose of boring holes in their bottoms; but the latter would appear to be rather an impossible performance.[47] The Romans are said to have had a corps or society of divers known as _Urinatores_. Then there are legends of diving-apparatus employed by Alexander the Great, who himself is frequently depicted in mediæval manuscripts being lowered to the bottom of the sea in a glass barrel. In manuscripts and woodcuts of the Middle Ages there are to be found several pictures representing men in a species of diver's costume, supposed to have been made of leather, with air-tubes leading to the surface of the water, where they are buoyed by bladders. Some, instead of tubes, are provided with flasks of air. Personally I should doubt whether such dresses ever had any actual existence. I fancy they are originally derived from a species of swimming-jacket or life-belt which is depicted in a fourteenth-century manuscript in the Imperial Historical Museum at Vienna.[48] [Illustration: Diver Salving a Gun (_From a print of 1613_)]