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Fulton submitted to the Minister on the 27 Vendemiaire an VI (October 17, 1798) a new project of the Company which was similar to those previously proposed except in the following articles:

1. That the Government should pay immediately on the receipt of news of the destruction of an English ship of the line, 500,000 francs, with which sum he engaged to build a squadron of 10 Nautilus to be used against the English fleets.

2. That the Government was to pay him or his assigns the sum of 100 francs for each pound of calibre of the guns of English ships destroyed or put out of action by the Nautilus during the war, that is to say, for a 5 pounder gun 500 francs, or for a 10 pounder, 1000 francs.

In spite of the favorable report by the investigating Commission and of the financial terms offered by Fulton, which were certainly liberal as they were entirely contingent on success, Fulton’s proposals were again rejected.

He then went to Holland, but obtained no more encouragement from the Dutch Government than from the French. Hearing that Bonaparte had been named First Consul, he hurriedly returned to Paris. On the 13 Vendemiaire, an XI (October 6, 1800), he wrote to the Minister of Marine again proposing the consideration of the Nautilus. Attached to this letter was a memorial entitled, “Observations sur les Effets Moreaux du Nautile.” This memorial was written in French, and is preserved in the Archives Nationales and is quoted at length by E. L. Pesce in “Navigation Sous-Marine.” The plaint as to delay with which he began he repeated in varying form until finally in 1806, he abandoned all European negotiations and returned to America. The portion of the memorial that gives his political reasoning is at the present time the most interesting, especially as the German Admiralty held almost precisely the same views with respect to the effect that submarines would have on the British Empire during the recent war. Fulton’s severe restrictions on the British navy and his lauding of the submarine as an instrument for true “liberty and peace” sound much like communiqués emanating from Berlin during 1914–1918. As we will see, Fulton recognized later that his description of the criminal character of the British was at least inaccurate when in very similar language he pointed out how it could and should destroy the naval power of France.