My diving suit I built myself by shaping iron in the form of an open helmet, which extended down as far as my breast; this I covered with painted canvas. I used the dead-light from a yacht's cabin as my eyeglass in front of the helmet. I tied sash weights to my legs to hold me down on the bottom when walking in the vicinity of the boat. A cousin, B. F. Champion, accompanied me on my first submerged run with the _Argonaut_, which was in Blackfish Hole in the Shrewsbury River. We submerged the boat alongside of a dock and started across stream in the river. The first time we went under water a stream of water came through a bolt-hole which had not been plugged and struck "Bart" on the back of the neck. He said, "Ugh!" and made a dive. The _Argonaut_ had a little port-hole in one end about six inches in diameter, and "Bart" said afterward, "I made a dive for that port-hole, but came to the conclusion that I could not get through, so I stopped." It was a simple matter, however, to drive a plug in and stop the water from coming in. On our first trip we ran across the river and back, and, although there was a strong current in the river, she "backed" right back to her starting place, having rested on the bottom firmly enough to prevent the current from carrying her down stream. [Illustration: "ARGONAUT, JR.," 1894 A small experimental boat built by the author to demonstrate the practicability of wheeling over the bottom and of sending divers out from the boat without water entering the vessel. She was propelled by hand over the waterbed; she had an air lock and diver's compartment which permitted egress and ingress of a diver when submerged.] Later we took the boat up to Atlantic Highlands and had a lot of fun running around on the bottom of New York Bay picking up clams and oysters, etc. We finally decided to organize a company and build a larger boat; so one day we invited the mayor of Atlantic Highlands, the president of the bank, and a number of other prominent people of the little community to witness our trials. A number of the men wrote their names on a shingle, which was tied to a sash weight and then thrown off the end of the Atlantic Highlands pier in about sixteen feet of water. My cousin and I got into the boat, submerged her, wheeled her forward to where the sash weight had been thrown overboard, picked it up, and had it back on the dock again in five minutes. The performance of the _Argonaut, Jr._, becoming known, she received no little newspaper notoriety. In looking over my old clippings I find that there was a vein of scepticism and sarcasm running through most of these early accounts of her performance. I just quote briefly from one of the papers describing her, the _New York Herald_, of January 8, 1895: THIS BOAT CRAWLS ALONG THE BOTTOM. AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT IT WAS TO DO, BUT IT ESCAPES AND ASTONISHES FOLKS IN OCEANIC, N. J. DRIFTS UP THE SHREWSBURY