It is hardly necessary to add that these devices were all worthless, and others of miscellaneous character may have been tried, yet without merit.
Remarks.
Wealth, experience and skill have marked this first era of steam, and though combined, they utterly failed. Both Mr. Prosser and the Western Transportation Co. were owners of fleets of splendid lake propellers, and were wealthy, with interests intimately identified with canals. It is evident there was no want, either of money, mechanical resources, or knowledge of canal business as basis of their failures with steam.
Capital flowed into the steam enterprise from various resources, and ambition multiplied experiments, but with no appreciable success.
The difficulties lay beyond the reach of capital and beyond the reach of known resources, and no adequate knowledge had been developed to solve the problem. Therefore, after suffering failures for several years, the State wisely volunteered to add extraordinary inducements by a large appropriation to encourage success. It could not have been to encourage the reproduction of former failures by the repetition of former trials.
The inquiry is therefore proper, as a lesson from the history of the early era of steam, what are the difficulties? Why has steam failed so absolutely and so universally? Why did the State subsequently offer a large bounty to foster and develop steam.
Obviously there is some hidden difficulty, some unknown inability, because steam is the arbiter of the age, it is the great supreme motor of man's agencies throughout the world, hence we come from the sublime to the ridiculous when we use it to load boats at Buffalo, to be towed 350 miles by horses.
The lessons of the early era are worthless for repetition. There is no better screw-propelling machinery known than was then tried and abandoned; but the lessons are of value to discover the difficulties which must be remedied; to teach that the success of steam lies beyond the reach of publicly known mechanical resources.
The trials establish plainly and incontrovertibly that the failures were owing to the want of mechanical adaptation to required duty; to a mechanical inability to utilize the power of the steam; to a mechanical waste of power beyond their ability to control or remedy; and that the wasted power was extravagantly large and the utilized insignificantly small. A very intelligent captain of one of the best and most powerful steamers known to the Erie Canal, who had a full and carefully-kept log, stated that when his engine exceeded a hundred horse-power of steam, he could only equal twelve horses on the tow-path. Thus over seven-eighths of his power was wastefully developed in order to render one-eighth useful. But this occurred when he was moving only two loaded boats—the steamer and one in tow—but when moving four boats—three in tow—the percentage of utility was lessened, and he could not exceed eight to ten per cent. of his steam, as shown in slower movement, when fewer horses on the tow-path could equal him.
The steamer is a reservoir, and its rotatory power is free to be developed "inversely as its resistances." Hence, when fastened to a pier, it is all developed in its receding currents, and per contra when moving; if its machinery had a perfect fulcrum, it would all be developed in the run of the boat; consequently, on rivers and lakes, with fine-lined steamers, that cut the water like a knife, it is like standing in a small boat and pushing from a large one, but on canals, with their full bows, it is like standing in a large boat and pushing from a small one; the little one runs away with the power. The more than 100 square feet area of immersed section of the full bow represents the large boat, and the dozen square feet effective area of propeller blades, set at an easy angle for spiral motion and recession velocity, is the little one that squanders the power so extravagantly. Increase in number of boats increases this contrast. The propeller blades of a good canaller will move twelve to fifteen miles, in their line of spiral movement, to get two to three miles headway for the boat.