and bomb vessels. Rodgers was thus in command of the largest American squadron to assemble in the Mediterranean until the twentieth century. The blockading force was so overwhelming that, after much deliberation and appeals from the Dey, a peace treaty with Tripoli was negotiated by the end of July. When news of the treaty reached Washington D.C. in the fall of 1805, President Thomas Jefferson ordered all of the ships home with the exception of a frigate and two smaller supporting vessels. Before returning home, Rodgers sailed to Malta and Syracuse to close down military hospitals and settle accounts. He stopped to pay a visit to the Dey of Algiers, who had learned of the US treaty with Tripoli, and extended every courtesy to Rodgers, allowing him to be armed in his presence. In a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddert, Rodgers later wrote "I am the first Christian that has ever been permitted to visit the Dey of Algiers with sidearms...." Other service A year later, Rodgers returned to the United States to take command of the New York Flotilla. After the Embargo Act against Great Britain was passed by Congress at the close of 1807, Rodgers commanded operations along the Atlantic coast enforcing its provisions. Torpedo test In 1810 Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton instructed Commodore Rodgers to oversee a series of tests or trials of inventor Robert Fulton's new naval torpedo. Fulton had recently published Torpedo War, and Submarine Explosions, in which he argued that his newly developed torpedo was practical, and cost efficient, and would soon make most naval vessels obsolete. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were intrigued by Fulton's idea and the US Congress authorized $5,000 to test the new weapon. Rodgers thought Fulton's torpedo was a folly. Secretary Hamilton directed Rodgers to prepare "a plan of opposition." In reply, Rodgers promised Hamilton he "would not only prevent the application of any torpedoes which he has yet invented, but any which he will ever be able to invent…" On September 24, 1810, several thousand residents of New York City gathered on the banks of Corlear's Hook overlooking the East River to watch the widely publicized demonstration of a mock torpedo attack against the brig USS Argus, commanded by Lieutenant James Lawrence. Fulton, the successful inventor of the first commercially viable steamboat, Clermont, and the first practical submarine, , was confident