EARLY ATTEMPTS TO INVENT A STEAMBOAT
Among the first of these was an American named John Fitch. Judged by the practical results of his efforts, he was not a highly successful inventor; as a prophet, however, and as an experimenter whose efforts fell just short of attainment, he deserves a conspicuous place in the history of an epoch-making discovery. Yet his prophecy was based on his failures. From 1780, for twenty years he strove to perfect a steamboat. His efforts did not carry him far beyond the experimental stage. But his courage and enthusiasm never waned. "Whether I bring the steamboat to perfection or not," he declared, "it will some time in the future be the mode of crossing the Atlantic for packets and armed vessels."
At that very time Benjamin Franklin said this would never be. But twenty years later Fulton's Clermont paddled up the Hudson River from New York to Albany and opened the era that saw Fitch's prophecy fulfilled. This was in 1807—a year that must stand as the most momentous in maritime history. In that year the little Clermont steamed slowly from New York to Albany, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles in thirty-two hours, unaided by sails or oars, and propelled entirely by steam-power. A sail-boat could cover the distance in the same number of hours; a modern torpedo boat in one-sixth the time. Yet no performance of any boat, before or since, had such far-reaching effects upon the progress of the world.
When Fulton turned his attention from his favorite theme—the invention of a submarine boat—and took up the question of perfecting a boat propelled by steam, he did not find himself the first or the only inventor in the field. For a hundred years, in round numbers, men had been wrestling with the question of applying steam pressure to boat propulsion. All manner of more or less ingenious devices had been conceived, most of them having a germ of success in the principles involved, but all of them being failures in actual practice.
Among the most promising of these first steamboats were those in which the propeller, or the paddle-wheel, was tried; but neither of these methods was looked upon favorably at first. Less promising was one in which the motive power was a jet of water pumped through a submerged tube—a principle that still periodically fascinates certain modern inventors.
MARINE ENGINES AND AN EARLY TYPE OF STEAMBOAT.
The small figure in the centre represents a very remarkable steamboat constructed in America by John Fitch. The precise date of its construction is not clearly established, but the inventor had made efforts at steam navigation as early as 1776. The upper figure shows a marine engine made in Scotland in 1788 for Patrick Miller by William Symington. It was used to equip a double-hulled pleasure boat which it is said to have propelled at the rate of five miles an hour. The motive power is supplied by two open-top Newcomen cylinders. The lower figure represents a modern side wheel steamer with oscillating engines.
But the boats that seemed to have come nearer attaining practical success for the moment were those in which several sets of oars worked by steam were placed vertically on each side of the hull, the machinery so arranged that the oars were dipped into the water and drawn sternward by one motion of the machinery, raised and carried toward the bow by the opposite motion. In some of these boats it was planned to have four sets of oars, two sets on each side, which were to work alternately, so that while one set was traveling forward through the air, its mate would be paddling through the water, thus insuring a continuous forward impulse. But the machinery for these boats proved to be too cumbersome and complicated for practical results, and this idea was finally abandoned. The jet of water did not prove any more successful, and but two other methods were available—the propeller and the paddle-wheel.
Both of these methods of utilizing the power of moving water had been familiar in the form of the Archimedian screw and the commonplace overshot or undershot mill-wheel. In these examples, of course, the force of the water was used to move machinery, reversing the action of the paddle-wheel of the boat. And yet the principles were identical. Obviously if the conditions were reversed, and the undershot mill-wheel, for example, forced against the water with corresponding power, the propulsive effect might be great enough—since action and reaction are equal—to move a boat of considerable size. But curiously enough, at the time when Fulton began his experiments there was a wave of general belief that when this principle was applied to boats it would fail. The reason for this lay in the fact that several such boats had been built from time to time, and all had failed. The fault, of course, lay in some other place than in their paddle wheels; but for the time being the wheel, and not the machinery, was shouldered with the blame.
Just a hundred years before Fulton finally produced his practical paddle-wheel steamboat, a prototype was built by the Spaniard, Blasco de Gary. In 1707, this inventor constructed a model paddle-wheel steamboat, and tried it upon the river Fulda. But this model boat failed to work, and the experiment was soon forgotten.
Twenty-five years later Jonathan Hulls of England patented a marine engine which he proposed to use in a boat which was to be propelled by a stern wheel. His idea was to use his boats as tug- or tow-boats, and to equip the larger vessels themselves with steam. But his engines were defective and his boats did not achieve commercial success.
During the time of the American Revolution, a French inventor, the Marquis de Jouffroy, made several interesting experiments with steam-propelled boats, using the principle of the paddle which was dipped and raised alternately as referred to a few pages back. His boats made several public trials, one of them ascending the Seine against the current; but nevertheless, the French government refused to grant the inventor a patent. Presumably, therefore, the boat was not considered a practical success in official circles; and this view is tacitly conceded by the fact that no more boats of its type were constructed. Had they been really practical steamboats it is a fair presumption that others would have been constructed and put into operation, regardless of patents. Nevertheless, in France to-day, the Marquis de Jouffroy is often referred to as the father of steam navigation.
The idea of propelling a boat by means of a jet of water pumped out at the stern by steam pumps was given a practical test in 1784, by James Rumsey. His boat made a trial trip on the Potomac River in September of that year, General Washington and other army officers being present on this occasion. The boat was able to make fairly good progress through the water, and seemed so promising that a company was formed by capitalists known as the Rumsey Society, for promoting the idea and building more boats. Rumsey was sent to England where he undertook the construction of another boat, meanwhile taking out patents in Great Britain, France, and Holland. Before his boat was completed, however, he died suddenly, and the Rumsey Society passed out of existence shortly afterwards.
An even closer approach to practical success was made in Scotland by James Symington, who in 1788, in association with two other Scotchmen, Miller and Taylor, constructed a boat consisting of two hulls, with a paddle-wheel between them worked by a steam-engine. This boat worked so well that in 1801, Lord Dundas engaged Symington to build a smaller boat to be used for towing on the Caledonian Canal. This boat, called the Charlotte Dundas, completed in 1802, is said to have been capable of towing a vessel of one hundred and forty tons "nearly four miles an hour." But in doing this the resulting "wash" so threatened the banks of the canal that the vessel was laid up and finally rotted and fell to pieces.
By many impartial judges this boat is considered the first practical steamboat, and its failure to establish its claim due to the force of circumstances rather than to any inherent defects. Symington was too poor to pursue his work independently, and was deterred by the attitude of James Watt, who "predicted the failure of his engine, and threatened him with legal penalties if it succeeded." And when at last he received an order for eight smaller vessels from the Duke of Bridgewater, his patron died before the details of the agreement had been completed. So that while he failed in accomplishing what was done by Fulton a few years later, it is certain that, as Woodcraft says, "He combined for the first time those improvements which constitute the present system of steam navigation."
Some of Symington's engines have been preserved, and one of them is now in the Patent Office Museum in London. Since the beginning of practical steam navigation this engine has been tested several times, the result showing that Woodcraft's estimate is not overdrawn.
While Symington was thus perfecting a paddle-boat, an American, Col. John Stevens of Hoboken, New Jersey, was on the verge of accomplishing the same end with a screw-propeller boat—a form of steamship that did not come into use until some forty years later.
THE STEAMSHIPS "CHARLOTTE DUNDAS" AND "CLERMONT."
The "Charlotte Dundas" (lower figure) was built in 1801 by A. Hart at Grangemouth, Scotland, and engined by William Symington, for service on the Forth and Clyde Canal. Its length was 56 feet; beam 18 feet; depth 8 feet. The boat was a practical success, but its use was discontinued because of the damage done to the banks of the Canal by the wash of the paddles. The upper left-hand figure is a picture of Fulton's "Clermont." The diagram at the right represents the "Clermont's" paddle wheels and the mechanism by which they were worked.
Stevens also invented what he called a "rotary engine" which was really an engine constructed on the same principle as the modern turbine engine. It was a small affair which he placed in a skiff, and used for turning the screw-propeller of a boat which was able to travel at a rate of three or four miles an hour on the North River, during the fall of 1802. But Stevens found so much difficulty in packing the blades of this engine without causing too much friction that he finally abandoned it for the more common type of reciprocating engine. But if this little steamboat had its defects, it nevertheless contained the germs of two great features of steam navigation—the screw propeller and the turbine engine, the advantage of the first of which was not recognized for nearly half a century, and the other not until almost a full century later.
In 1804 Stevens produced another propeller steamboat, this one using the ordinary type of reciprocating engine, and being notable for having twin screws of a pattern practically identical with the screws now in use. This boat was able to steam at a rate of four miles an hour on many occasions, and at times almost double this rate, according to some observers. The engines of this boat are still in existence, and on several occasions since 1804 have been placed in hulls corresponding as nearly as possible to the original, and have demonstrated that they could force the boat through the water at six or eight miles an hour. These engines in a modern hull were exhibited at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago, in 1893. They supply irrefutable evidence that the practical steamboat had been invented at least three years before Fulton's historic voyage in 1807. Yet no one questions that it was Fulton's, not Stevens', invention that inaugurated steam navigation.
Just why this was so is a little difficult to comprehend at this time, unless it was that Stevens' boat was such a small affair that it did not attract the attention it deserved, as did Fulton's larger boat. And yet we should not be guided too much by retrospective judgment. The significant fact remains that Stevens himself did not have entire confidence in his boat, or in the principle of his screw propeller, as is shown by the fact that three years later, while Fulton was building the Clermont, Stevens was also constructing a steamboat, not along the lines of his previous inventions, but as a paddle-wheel boat. This leaves little room for doubt that Stevens had not full confidence in the propeller; and when an inventor himself mistrusts his own device, there is little likelihood that anyone else will supply the necessary confidence. This may account for the fact that Stevens found difficulty in securing financial backing for his enterprise; and when such backing was found it was for the construction of the paddle-wheel boat, which was finished a few months after Fulton's boat had solved the problem of steam navigation.