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With what means did this inventor propose to attack those great masses of oak with their towering sides, with row on row of guns and great spreads of canvas? A tiny boat propelled by two men by hand, that would meet the enemy, not as Bonaparte would meet him by an attack in force, but by stealth, unseen and beneath the surface of the sea! As Bonaparte looked at his visitor he could not see the valley of Waterloo and St. Helena. Nor could he possibly imagine that long before that fateful June day of 1815, when the silence of the guns on the slope of Mt. St. Jean would mark the end of his career, the man who had been rash enough to seek the audience would have given to the world a vessel whose motive power would defy that of wind and that he would have designed a ship of war more powerful than any ship that sailed under the command of Nelson.

The tiny boat that was offered him was far from being a perfected machine, but even as it was it presented sufficient potentiality to strike terror to England’s navy as Fulton had prophesied in his Memorial. If Livingston with such limited means as he possessed could develop Fulton’s ideas into practical reality, how much sooner could the same result have been attained through the resources of a great government?