[CHAPTER XII.]
Steam Navigation.
[Early Experiments]—[Symington’s Boat]—[Col. John Stevens’ Screw Propeller]—[Robt. Fulton and the “Clermont”]—[First Trip to Sea by Stevens’ “Phœnix”]—[“Savannah,” the First Steam Vessel to Cross the Ocean]—[Ericsson’s Screw Propeller]—[The “Great Eastern”]—[The Whaleback Steamers]—[Ocean Greyhounds]—[The “Oceanic,” Largest Steamship in the World]—[The “Turbinia”]—[Fulton’s “Demologos,” First War Vessel]—[The Turret Monitor]—[Modern Battleships and Torpedo Boats]—[Holland Submarine Boat].
The application of steam for the propulsion of boats engaged the attention of inventors along with the very earliest development of the steam engine itself. Blasco de Garay in 1543, the Marquis of Worcester in 1655, Savary in 1698, Denys Papin in 1707, Dr. John Allen in 1730, Jonathan Hulls in 1737, Bernouilli and Genevois in 1757, William Henry (of Pennsylvania) in 1763, Count D’Auxiron and M. Perier in 1774, the Marquis de Jouffroy in 1781, James Rumsey (on the Potomac) in 1782, Benjamin Franklin and Oliver Evans in 1786 and 1789, John Fitch in 1786, and also again in 1796, and William Symington in 1788-89 were the early experimenters. Papin’s boat was said to have been used on the Fulda at Cassel, and was reported to have been destroyed by bargemen, who feared that it would deprive them of a livelihood. Allen, Rumsey, Franklin, and Evans (1786) proposed to employ a backwardly discharged column of water issuing from a pump. Jonathan Hulls and Oliver Evans (1789) had stern wheels. Bernouilli, Genevois, and the Marquis de Jouffroy used paddles on the duck’s foot principle, which closed when dragged forward, and expanded when pushed to the rear. Fitch’s first boat employed a system of paddles suspended by their handles from cranks, which, in revolving, gave the paddles a motion simulating that which the Indian imparts to his paddle. Symington’s boat of 1788 (Patrick Miller’s pleasure boat) had side paddle wheels. Symington’s next boat, built in 1789, and also owned by Patrick Miller, was of the catamaran type, i. e., it had two parallel hulls with paddle wheels between them.
Such was the state of this art when the Nineteenth Century commenced its wonderful record. No practical steam vessel had been constructed, as the efforts in this direction were handicapped by the crudeness of all the arts, and were to be regarded as experiments only, most of which had to be abandoned. The seed of this invention, however, had been sown in the fertile soil of genius, conception of its great possibilities had fired the zeal of the inventors in this field, and the new century was shortly to number among its great resources a practical and efficient steamboat.
FIG. 106.—SYMINGTON’S STEAMBOAT, 1801.
The first steamboat of the Nineteenth Century was the “Charlotte Dundas,” built by William Symington in 1801, see [Fig. 106], and used on the Forth and Clyde Canal in 1802. She had a double acting “Watt engine,” which transmitted power by a connecting rod to a crank on the paddle-wheel shaft. The boat had a single paddle wheel in the middle near the stern, and was intended only for canal use, in the place of horses. It was abandoned for fear of washing the banks.
