Soon afterwards another New Englander took up the running, Fulton--one of the cleverest and least appreciated engineers of the early years of the nineteenth century. His _Nautilus_, built in the French dockyards, was in many respects the pattern for our own modern submarines. The cigar-shaped copper hull, supported by iron ribs, was twenty-four feet four inches long, with a greatest diameter of seven feet. Propulsion came from a wheel, rotated by a hand winch, in the centre of the stern; forward was a small conning-tower, and the boat was steered by a rudder. There was a detachable keel below; and fitted into groves on the top were a collapsible mast and sail for use on the surface of the water. An anchor was also carried externally. In spite of the imperfect materials at his disposal Fulton had much success. At Brest he took a crew of three men twenty-five feet down, and on another day blew up an old hulk. In the Seine two men went down for twenty minutes and steered back to their starting-point under water. He also put in air at high pressure and remained submerged for hours. But France, England, and his own country in turn rejected his invention; and, completely discouraged, he bent his energies to designing boat engines instead. In 1821 Captain Johnson, also an American, made a submersible vessel 100 feet long, designed to fetch Napoleon from St. Helena, travelling for the most part upon the surface. This expedition never came off. Two later inventions, by Castera and Payerne, in 1827 and 1846 respectively, were intended for more peaceful objects. Being furnished with diving-chambers, the occupants could retrieve things from the bottom of the sea; Castera providing his boat with an air-tube to the surface. Bauer, another inventor, lived for some years in England under the patronage of Prince Albert, who supplied him with funds for his experiments. With Brunel’s help he built a vessel which was indiscreetly modified by the naval authorities, and finally sank and drowned its crew. Going then to Russia he constructed sundry submarines for the navy; but was in the end thrown over, and, like Fulton, had to turn himself to other employment. The fact is that up to this period the cry for a practical submarine to use in warfare had not yet arisen, or these inventions would have met with a far different reception. Within the last half century all has changed. America and France now rival each other in construction, while the other nations of Europe look on with intelligent interest, and in turn make their contributions towards solving the problem of under-wave propulsion.