CHAPTER IX
Building the First Steamboat
For the time England and France were at peace. No need now for weapons of warfare, so Fulton set aside his plan for submarine torpedo-boats and began to devote his attention to an idea of greater importance,—the invention of a steamboat.
The thought was not new to him for he had pondered over it since 1793 when he had submitted a description of an original model to Lord Stanhope. Now he bent all his energies to the task and commenced a series of new experiments.
He made many sketches of engines, paddles and boats. Some are yet in existence, notably one made June 5th, 1802. It bears a pen-drawing of a steamboat, with side paddle-wheels, a forward smokestack, a covered cabin amidships, with upper deck occupied by imaginary passengers, a pointed bow and a square stern,—not in reality the shape of the later product of his skill, but a fanciful sketch of the form then in mind. How far ahead his imagination darted, in time and space, may be seen from the inscription, “The Steamboat from New York to Albany in 12 hours.” It was a brave prediction!
In 1804, when General Armstrong was appointed Minister to France, he lived in the house formerly occupied by Joel Barlow; and upon the walls of Fulton’s room he found, plans of steamboats sketched, as a panorama. Even then the thought had so taken possession of Fulton’s mind that he lived with it day and night.
By this time Fulton was recognized by thoughtful men as a power to be considered. At Barlow’s hospitable home Fulton enjoyed the opportunity of making friends among prominent men; and during 1801 there arrived in Paris, as Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, a noted American statesman and lawyer. The meeting between Fulton and Livingston, at Barlow’s table, proved important. Mr. Livingston’s keen intellect had already recognized the importance of providing boats with steam power. Indeed, he himself had experimented in the matter, and had caused an Act to be passed by the Legislature in 1798 granting to himself “the exclusive right and privilege of navigating all kinds of boats which might be propelled by the force of steam or fire, on all waters of the state of New York, for the term of twenty years from the passage of the Act; upon consideration that he should within a twelve-month build such a boat, the mean of whose progress should not be less than four miles an hour.”
The Act was passed but Livingston’s steamboat was not a success. The trial boat, of thirty tons’ burden, built by the Chancellor’s orders by an Englishman named Nesbit, near Tivoli on the Hudson, failed to run! When the Chancellor met Robert Fulton, this clean-cut, energetic young countryman who had built a much-talked-of submarine torpedo-boat recognized by Napoleon, he thought, “Here is the clever man whom I am seeking!” It is characteristic of great men to notice the mental worth of others and enlist it in their cause, whatever it may be. And Livingston quickly learned the rare capacity of Fulton.
There could have been no stronger combination than the partnership of these two men, formally enacted at Paris, in October, 1802. The original agreement is signed “Robert R. Livingston of the state of New York, and Robert Fulton of the state of Pennsylvania.”
Fulton’s part of the contract was:
1st: To build a boat one hundred and twenty feet long, eight feet wide, to draw fifteen inches of water, to navigate the Hudson River between New York and Albany, at a speed of eight miles an hour and to carry sixty passengers, allowing two hundred pounds’ weight per passenger.