CHAPTER II.
The First Steamboats on Lake Ontario and the Niagara River.
The era of steamboating had now arrived. The Clermont, built by Robert Fulton, and furnished with English engines by Boulton & Watts, of Birmingham, had made her first trip on the Hudson from New York to Albany in August, 1807, and was afterwards continuing to run on the river.
In 1809 the Accommodation, built by the Hon. John Molson at Montreal, and fitted with engines made in that city, was running successfully between Montreal and Quebec, being the first steamer on the St. Lawrence and in Canada.
The experience of both of these vessels had shown that the new system of propulsion of vessels by steam power was commercially profitable, and as it had been proved successful upon the river water, it was but reasonable that its application to the more open waters of the lakes should next obtain consideration.
The war of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States, accompanied by its constant invasions of Canada, had interrupted any immediate expansion in steamboating enterprises.
Peace having been declared in February, 1815, the projects were immediately revived and in the spring of that year a British company was formed with shareholders in Kingston, Niagara, York, and Prescott, to build a steamboat to ply on Lake Ontario. A site suitable for its construction was selected on the beaches on Finkle's Point, at Ernestown, 18 miles up the lake from Kingston, on one of the reaches of the Bay of Quinte.
A contract was let to Henry Teabout and James Chapman, two young men who had been foremen under David Eckford, the master shipbuilder of New York, who during the war had constructed the warships for the United States Government at its dockyard at Sackett's Harbor. Construction was commenced at Finkle's Point in October, 1815, and with considerable delays caused in selection of the timbers, was continued during the winter. (Canniff—Settlement of Upper Canada). The steamer was launched with great eclat on 7th September, 1816, and named the Frontenac, after the County of Frontenac in which she had been built.
A similar wave of enterprise had arisen also on the United States side and it becomes of much interest to search up the annals of over a hundred years ago and ascertain to which side of the lake is to be accorded the palm for placing the first steamboat on Lake Ontario. Especially as opinions have varied on the subject, and owing to a statement made, as we shall find, erroneously, in a distant press the precedence has usually been given to an American steamer.
The first record of the steamboat on the American side is an agreement dated January 2, 1816, executed between the Robert Fulton heirs and Livingston, of Clermont, granting to Charles Smyth and others an exclusive right to navigate boats and vessels by steam on Lake Ontario.