"On Thursday, at nine o'clock in the morning, I left Albany, and arrived at the chancellor's at six in the evening: I started from thence at seven, and arrived at New York at four in the afternoon; time, thirty hours; space run through, one hundred and fifty miles,—equal to five miles an hour. Throughout my whole way, both going and returning, the wind was ahead: no advantage could be derived from my sail: the whole has therefore been performed by the power of the steam-engine."
In a letter to one of his friends, Fulton wrote:—"I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward, and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. The morning I left New York there were not perhaps thirty persons who believed that the boat would even move one mile an hour, or be of the least utility; and while we were putting off from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic remarks. This is the way in which ignorant men compliment what they call philosophers and projectors.... Although the prospect of personal emolument has been some inducement to me, yet I feel infinitely more pleasure in reflecting on the immense advantage that my country will derive from the invention."
The Clermont was now advertised as a regular passenger-boat upon the Hudson. She met with numerous accidents during the season; and her obvious defects would have been remedied by the application of as obvious improvements by Fulton himself, had not other persons anticipated him by taking out patents for improvements which they themselves proposed. They thus caused him infinite annoyance, and even contested his right as an inventor. Shipmasters, too, who looked upon his boat as an intruder upon their domain, ran their vessels purposely foul of her on more than one occasion. The Legislature saw fit to counteract the effects of this hostility by passing an act prolonging Livingston and Fulton's privilege five years for every additional boat established,—the whole time, however, not to exceed thirty years. It also made all combinations to destroy the Clermont offences punishable by fine and imprisonment.
Thus protected, the Clermont ran throughout the season, always well laden with passengers. In the winter she was enlarged and improved. The wheel-guards were strengthened, and became a prominent and essential feature of the boat. The rudder was replaced by one of much larger dimensions, and a steering-wheel towards the bow was substituted for the ordinary tiller. The accommodations for passengers were made much more comfortable,—luxurious even,—and the public taste was consulted in the application of numerous coats of rather gaudy paint. She then commenced her trips for the season of 1808. She started regularly at the appointed hour,—at first much to the discontent of travellers who had before been waited for by both sloops and stages. At the end of the season the Clermont was altogether too small for the crowds who thronged to take passage. Two boats, the Car of Neptune and the Paragon, were therefore soon added to the line.
Fulton, menaced by constant contestation of his rights, took out a patent in 1809 from the General Government, and another, for improvements, in 1811. His system was so simple—the adaptation of paddle-wheels to the axle of the crank of Watt's engine—that it seemed then, as it has proved since, almost impossible by any specifications effectually to protect it. The famous Pendulum Company caused Fulton for a time much trouble. They built a boat the wheels of which were to be moved by a pendulum. While she was upon the stocks and the wheels were resisted only by the air, the labor of a few men made them turn regularly and rapidly; but when she was launched, and the pendulum encountered the resistance of the water, neither pendulum, wheels, nor boat would stir. The Pendulum Company were aghast at this phenomenon, and clearly saw that if the boat was to be moved by the wheels, and the wheels by the pendulum, something must be devised of sufficient power to move the pendulum. There was nothing, evidently, but the steam-engine; and so they copied Fulton's. Lawsuits followed; and in his argument in behalf of Fulton Mr. Emmet thus spoke of the Pendulum gentlemen:—"They are men who never waste health and life in midnight vigils and painful study; who never dream of science in the broken slumbers of an exhausted mind; who bestow upon the construction of a steamboat just as much mathematical calculation and philosophical research as on the purchase of a sack of wheat or a barrel of ashes." Fulton gained his cause, and the boat which was to go by clock-work was prohibited from going even by steam.
In 1812, Fulton built the Fire-Fly; and, as the town of Newburgh, half-way to Albany, offered sufficient traffic to support at least one boat, she was placed upon that route. In the same year he constructed two ferry-boats for crossing the Hudson, making them with rudder and bow at either end. He also contrived floating docks for their reception, and a method of stopping them without concussion. In 1813, he built a steam-vessel of four hundred tons and unusual strength, to ply in Long Island Sound between New York and New Haven. She was the first steamboat constructed with a round bottom. We quote a passage referring to her from a work published in 1817:—"During a great part of her route she would be as much exposed as she could be on the ocean: it was therefore necessary to make her a perfect sea-boat. She passes daily, and at all times of the tide, the dangerous strait of Hell-Gate, where for the distance of nearly a mile she often encounters a current running at the rate of at least six miles an hour. For some distance she has within a few yards of her, on each side, rocks and whirlpools which rival Scylla and Charybdis even as they are poetically described. This passage, previously to its being navigated by this vessel, was always supposed to be impassable except at certain stages of the tide; and many a shipwreck has been occasioned by a small mistake in the time. The boat passing through these whirlpools with rapidity, while the angry waters are foaming against her bows and appear to raise themselves in obstinate resistance to her passage, is a proud triumph of human ingenuity. The owners, as the highest tribute they had in their power to offer to his genius, and as an evidence of the gratitude they owed him, called her the Fulton."
Early in 1814, the United States and England being at war, Fulton conceived the idea of a steam vessel-of-war, capable of carrying a strong battery, with furnaces for red-hot shot, and sailing four miles an hour. Congress authorized the construction of such a floating battery, and the keel was laid on the 18th of June. The vessel was launched on the 27th of October the same year, in the midst of excited and applauding throngs. Before she sailed, however, her engineer and builder had been removed to another sphere: Fulton died on the 24th of February, 1815. The Legislature paid an unusual tribute to his memory: they resolved to wear mourning for three weeks. This manifestation of regret for the loss of a man who had never held office nor served his country in any public capacity was entirely unprecedented.
On the 4th of July, the steam-frigate made a trial trip, and, with her engines alone, sailed fifty-three miles in eight hours and twenty minutes. The following description of the Fulton the First, as she was called, is given by the committee appointed to examine her in behalf of Congress:—"She is a structure resting on two boats and keels separated from end to end by a channel fifteen feet wide and sixty-six feet long. One boat contains the caldrons of copper to prepare her steam; the cylinder of iron, its piston, lever, and wheels, occupy part of the other. The water-wheel revolves in the space between them. The main or gun deck supports the armament, and is protected by a parapet, four feet ten inches thick, of solid timber, pierced by embrasures. Through thirty port-holes as many thirty-two pounders are intended to fire red-hot shot, which can be heated with great safety and convenience. Her upper or spar deck, upon which several thousand men might parade, is encompassed by a bulwark, which affords safe quarters: she is rigged with two stout masts, each of which supports a large lateen yard and sails: she has two bowsprits and jibs, and four rudders, one at each extremity of each boat, so that she can be steered with either end foremost: her machinery is calculated for the addition of an engine which will discharge an immense column of water, which it is intended to throw upon the decks and through the port-holes of an enemy and thereby deluge her armament and ammunition. If in addition to all this we suppose her to be furnished, according to Mr. Fulton's intention, with hundred-pound Columbiads, two suspended from each bow so as to discharge a ball of that size into an enemy's ship ten or twelve feet below her water-line, it must be allowed that she has the appearance, at least, of being the most formidable engine for warfare that human ingenuity has contrived."
Such was the first step towards the establishment of a steam-navy. Forty years afterwards, George Steers built the propeller-frigate Niagara; and the reader, by comparing the two vessels, will have an adequate idea of the immense strides made in naval mechanics and engineering during the lapse of less than half a century. In Europe the size and qualities of the Fulton the First were at the time ludicrously exaggerated, as will be seen from the following passage from a Scotch treatise on steamships. After magnifying her proportions threefold, the author continues:—"The thickness of her sides is thirteen feet of alternate oak plank and cork wood: she carries forty-four guns, four of which are hundred-pounders; quarterdeck and forecastle guns, forty-four-pounders; and, further to annoy an enemy attempting to board, can discharge one hundred gallons of boiling water in a minute, and, by mechanism, brandishes three hundred cutlasses with the utmost regularity over her gunwales, works also an equal number of heavy iron spikes of great length, darting them from her sides with prodigious force and withdrawing them every quarter of a minute!"