THE “CHARLOTTE DUNDAS”
(From Fincham.)
It was in America that the most persistent and continuous development took place, quite independently of efforts elsewhere and almost contemporaneously with those above described. America, whose geographical conditions made water transport relatively far more important than it was in Great Britain, lent a ready ear to the schemes of inventors. In 1784 James Rumsey, and shortly afterwards John Fitch, had already laid plans before General Washington for the propulsion of boats by steam.
John Fitch, whose original idea was a steamboat propelled by means of an endless chain of flat boards, afterwards experimented with an arrangement, “borrowed no doubt from the action of Indians in a canoe,” of paddles held vertically in frames mounted along the sides of the boat and operated by cranks. In 1786 a boat thus equipped made a successful trial on the Delaware, and in the following year a larger boat, fitted with a horizontal double-acting engine with a 12-inch cylinder and a 3-foot stroke, giving motion to six paddles on each side, was publicly tried on the same river. The speed attained was very small. At last in 1790, still protected by a patent which granted him a temporary monopoly in steamboat building, Fitch succeeded in building a boat which was an undisputed mechanical success. Discarding the paddle-frame and adopting a beam engine to drive paddle-boards at the stern, he produced a steamboat which, after being tested and credited with eight knots’ speed on a measured mile in front of Water Street, Philadelphia, in the presence of the governor and council of Pennsylvania, ran two or three thousand miles as a passenger boat on the Delaware before being dismantled. It was a considerable achievement. But the excessive weight and space absorbed by the machinery prevented the boat from being a financial success; and, after a journey to France, then distracted by the Revolution, Fitch returned home to America and ended his days a disappointed and a broken man. Nevertheless, the work he did was of service to others. He proved that the ponderous nature of the machinery was the greatest obstacle to the propulsion of small craft by steam, and from his failure deduced the conclusion, on which later inventors were able to build, that the solution of the problem lay in the scale: that, “it would be much easier to carry a first-rate man-of-war by steam at an equal rate than a small boat.”[139]
James Rumsey, a Virginian, carried out in 1775 the first practical trials of water-jet propulsion, a small boat of his plying the Potomac at a small speed by means of a steam pump which sucked in water at the bow and threw it out at the stern. But as he felt himself obstructed in further experiments by the patent rights which had been given his rival Fitch he came to England; where, financed by a wealthy compatriot and aided by James Watt himself, he produced in ’93 a boat which on the Thames attained a speed of over four knots. Unfortunately Rumsey died in the middle of his experiments.
An individual of extraordinary qualities had now turned his attention to the problem of steam propulsion. In that same year a young American artist, Robert Fulton, who had come to England to work under the guidance of his countryman Benjamin West, wrote to Lord Stanhope informing him of a plan which he had formed for moving ships by steam. Lord Stanhope, well known as a scientific inventor, had recently been experimenting with a vessel fitted with a 12-horse-power engine of Boulton and Watt’s working a propeller which operated like the foot of an aquatic bird. A correspondence ensued. Fulton, whose self-confidence equalled his originality, illustrated by drawings and diagrams his ideas on the subject. At first, he said, he thought of applying the force of an engine to an oar or paddle which, hinged on the counter at the stern, by a reciprocating motion would urge the vessel ahead. But on experimenting with a clockwork model he found that, though the boat sprang forward, the return stroke of the paddle interfered with the continuity of the motion. “I then endeavoured,” he wrote, “to give it a circular motion, which I effected by applying two paddles on an axis. Then the boat moved by jerks; there was too great a space between the strokes. I then applied three paddles, forming an equilateral triangle to which I gave a circular motion.” These paddles he proposed to place in cast-iron wheels one on each side of the boat and mounted on the same shaft at some height over the waterline, so that each wheel would “answer as a fly and brace to the perpendicular oars.” And he stated that he found, from his experiments with models, that three or six oars gave better results than any other number. From which it is clear that the paddlewheel was evolved by Fulton from the simple paddle independently of suggestion received from previous inventors.
Some time was to elapse before the results of his experiments were utilized. Attracted by the boom in canal construction then in vogue Fulton devoted his mind to that subject; though in this connection the idea of steam-propelled boats still occupied him, as is shown by a letter he wrote in ’94 to Messrs. Boulton and Watt, asking for an estimate of costs and dimensions of “an engine with a rotative movement of the purchase of 3 or 4 horses which is designed to be placed in a boat.” From England he went to Paris, to try his fortune at half a dozen projects. In ’98 he was experimenting on the Seine with a screw propeller—“a fly of four parts similar to that of a smoke-jack,” which gave promising results. This screw propeller, however, was as yet unrecognized as the propulsive medium of the future. It had already been patented in England by Bramah in 1785—“a wheel with inclined fans, or wings, similar to the fly of a smoke-jack or the vertical sails of a windmill”; and, hand-operated, it had actually been used in America in 1776 by Bushnell in connection with his submarine. But in 1802 Fulton had decided against the screw, and in favour of the paddlewheel.
It was in this year that an introduction to an influential compatriot, himself an experimenter in steam propulsion, gave Fulton the opportunity to display his talents to their mutual advantage. Chancellor Livingston, U.S. Minister to France, was aware of the enormous advantages which would accrue to America (and to the happy inventor) if steam propulsion could be achieved economically. With Fulton’s aid he decided on building an experimental steam vessel in France, with a view to transferring to America for commercial enterprise the perfected results of their labour. A partnership was formed, the work proceeded; but the experimental steamboat, whose scantlings were unequal to supporting the weight of the 8-horsepower machinery placed on board, sank at her moorings in a storm. A second boat, stronger and bigger, attained complete success. Fulton promptly wrote to Messrs. Boulton and Watt asking them to export to America a 24-horse-power engine complete with all accessories, in accordance with his sketches; and with a brass air-pump suitable for working in salt water. Then, going himself to England, he visited Messrs. Boulton and Watt and gleaned what information he could as to the properties of their machinery; studied the newly published results of Colonel Beaufoy’s experiments on ship form and fluid resistance; and journeyed to Scotland to visit Symington and see the famous Charlotte Dundas.
Armed with this knowledge, with all the experience of Rumsey and Fitch, and with the data from his own trials, Fulton brought to a successful solution the problem of steam propulsion on a commercial scale. It has been remarked that there was no element in the Clermont or her successors so original in conception that it would entitle Fulton to be regarded as the inventor of steam navigation. Nor did he himself claim to be such. He was successful in fitting together the elements, the inventions of others. Science is measurement, and Fulton applied his data and measured with great insight, adapting his elements in the right manner and proportion to form an efficient whole. “He was the first to treat the elementary factors in steamship design—dimensions, form, horse-power, speed, etc.—in a scientific spirit; to him belongs the credit of having coupled the boat and engine as a working unit.” From Fitch he had learned the economy of size, and the advantages of enlarging the scale of operations; from Beaufoy, the importance of a fair underwater form, with a sharp bow and stern. From Symington, who generously took him for a trip in the Charlotte Dundas, he could not fail to have gleaned much practical advice and information; it is remarkable, in this connection, that, after a sight of Symington’s horizontal cylinder with its simple connecting-rod drive to the stern wheel, he should have adhered to the vertical cylinder and the bell-crank or beam for the transmission of the force: an initial divergence which was perpetuated, and which became the hall-mark distinguishing American from English practice for some years to come. Most of his knowledge he gained by his activities in England, and many writers have contested a claim—which so far as is known was never made by him—to the invention of the steamship. His achievements were well defined and legitimately executed, and the remarkable insight and initiative which he displayed in adapting the labours of others to serve his own utilitarian ends cannot, surely, deserve the opprobrium cast on them by some of the nineteenth-century writers. Prometheus, it is said, stole fire from heaven. Fulton bought his in the open market; obtaining his engine in Soho and his boiler in Smithfield he transported them across the Atlantic, and in 1807 produced the Clermont.
The Clermont, a flat-bottomed wall-sided craft 166 feet in length and only 18 feet in beam, steamed at a speed of five knots from New York to Albany, in August, 1807; to the surprise of thousands of spectators who knew her as “Fulton’s folly,” and whose shouts of derision gave place to silence, and then to a chorus of applause and congratulation. Many of the inhabitants of the banks of the Hudson had never heard even of an engine, much less of a steamboat. “A monster moving on the waters, defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames and smoke! The first steamboat used dry pine wood for fuel, which sends forth a column of ignited vapour many feet above the flue, and, whenever the fire is stirred, a galaxy of sparks fly off which, in the night, have a very brilliant and beautiful appearance.”[140] The Clermont was followed by others, each an improvement on the last; until in 1816, so rapid was the process of evolution, the Chancellor Livingston was built, ship-shaped, with figure-head and fine bows, faired sides and tapering stern, with engines of 75-horse-power and with promenade decks and accommodation for 120 passengers. Certain characteristics now showed themselves in all American construction. The engines were mounted with cylinders vertical, their rods actuating large overhead beams which transmitted the force of the steam to the paddlewheels. The boats were made very broad to give the necessary stability, the machinery being carried high; and to reduce their underwater resistance as much as possible their bodies were made full near the water-line and lean below. For the same reason, and since the principal weights were concentrated amidships, fine forward and after bodies were given them; a rising floor, and a deep draught if necessary. The position of the paddlewheels was limited by that of the engine. Experience showed that where two paddles on each side were used their relative position had to be adjusted nicely, otherwise the rear paddles, acting on accelerated water, might actually be a disadvantage. Much difficulty was caused with accidents to paddles; on the Mississippi the wheels were generally mounted astern, where they were protected from floating logs of timber. In some cases double hulls were built, with the paddlewheels between them; but owing to the rush of water on which they acted these wheels were not very efficient.[141]