The Americans had at an early period turned their attention to new modes of propelling vessels. As early as 1784, James Rumsey proposed to General Washington a project of steam navigation, but having been refused a patent in Pennsylvania, came to England, and succeeded in inducing a wealthy countryman of his own, then in London, and others to disburse the expenses of an experiment, for which he afterwards obtained a patent. In this also oars were worked by steam. A couple of years later, Fitch obtained from the States of Pennsylvania and New York the exclusive right to run steamers on their waters, and is said to have attained with one of his vessels the rate of four or five miles an hour [pg 86]against the current of the Potomac. In 1787 he built another vessel, 12 feet beam and 45 feet long, with a 12-inch cylinder, which progressed at the rate of seven miles an hour. In 1790 he completed another and larger boat, which was advertised and used for a time as a regular passenger boat on the Delaware. The oars or paddles were worked from the stern.
OUTLINE OF FITCH’S FIRST BOAT.
FITCH’S SECOND BOAT.
Poor Fitch! He, in common with many others of the day who did and did not give their ideas to the world, was on the right track, but could not put them into practical and practicable shape. He was really a man of remarkable genius. The son of a Connecticut farmer, he had been apprenticed to a watch and clock maker, where doubtless he increased his knowledge of the mechanical arts. During the early part of the Revolutionary War, he was armourer to the State of New Jersey, and later, became a land surveyor. While acting in that capacity, the idea first suggested itself to him, as it did almost simultaneously to Symington in Scotland, of propelling carriages by steam, but he soon abandoned it on account of the roughness of the American roads. After that he turned his attention almost exclusively to the propulsion of vessels by steam, visiting England and France, but obtaining no pecuniary advantage from the experiments he proposed or consummated. In a sketch of his life, which appeared a few years since,[26] the writer describes Fitch’s difficulties in raising the money to finish his second steam-boat: “In a letter to David Roltenhouse, when asking an advance of £50 to finish the boat, he says, ‘This, sir, whether I bring it to perfection or not, will be the mode of crossing the Atlantic for packets and armed vessels.’ But everything failed, and the poor projector loitered about the city for some months, a despised, unfortunate, heart-broken man. ‘Often have I seen him,’ said Thomas P. Cope, many years afterwards, ‘stalking about like a troubled spectre, with downcast eyes and lowering countenance, his coarse soiled linen peeping through the elbows of a tattered garment.’ Speaking of a visit he once paid to John Wilson, his boat-builder, and Peter Brown, his blacksmith, in which, as usual, he held forth upon his hobby, Mr. Cope says: ‘After indulging himself for some time in this never-failing topic of deep excitement, he concluded with these memorable words: “Well, gentlemen, although I shall not live to see the time, you will, when steam-boats will be preferred to all other means of conveyance, and especially for passengers; and they will be particularly useful in the navigation of the river Mississippi.” He then retired, on which Brown, turning to Wilson, exclaimed, in a tone of deep sympathy, “Poor fellow! what a pity he is crazy!” ’ ” Fitch, reduced to utter poverty and despair, threw himself into the Alleghany in 1798, and thus terminated his chequered life.
The experiments of John Cox Stevens, of New York, were not particularly successful, although made at an expense of some 20,000 dollars. His vessel was a “stern-wheeler,” similar to those common enough on many American rivers to-day. But he deserves the credit, apparently, of having been the first to practically apply a tubular boiler to marine engines. His boiler, only 2 feet long by 15 inches wide and 12 inches high, consisted of no less than 41 copper tubes, each an inch in diameter. While Fitch and Stevens were experimenting, another American citizen, Oliver Evans, was endeavouring to mature a [pg 87]plan for using steam at a very high pressure, to be employed in propelling road wagons, and in an account of his plans, which he published in 1786, he suggests a mode of propelling vessels by steam. “He states,” says Lindsay, “that in 1785 he placed his engine, used to clean docks, in a boat upon wheels, the combined weight being equal to 200 barrels of flour, which he transported down to the water, and when it was launched he fixed a paddle-wheel to the stern, and drove it down the Schuylkill to Delaware, and up the Delaware to the city, ‘leaving all the vessels going up behind, one at least half-way, the wind being ahead.’ ” In 1794 and 1797 one Samuel Morey, of Connecticut, is said to have built two steamers, which were publicly exhibited and made passages, but which do not appear to have been afterwards employed. It is to Robert Fulton, who all this time was working at naval applications of many kinds, that not merely America, but the whole world owes the practical and continuous use of steam-vessels. He and his associates started the first paying line of steam-boats.
The life of this remarkable man is little known in England, and not generally even in his own country. Pursuing then the plan which has guided the writer throughout this work, he proposes to give it, for these very reasons, in fuller detail than has been usual with better known examples of patient and struggling inventors.
Robert Fulton was born in the year 1765, in the village of Little Britain, Pennsylvania, of respectable, but not wealthy, parents. From his earliest years he showed a great aptitude for the study of the mechanical arts, and, indeed, for the fine arts also. So marked was his progress in drawing and painting, that he was recommended to go to England and study art seriously. This at length he did, and for several years we find him an inmate of Benjamin West’s house. Most readers will remember that West, although he spent the larger part of his life in England, and made his great successes there, was by birth American. Fulton afterwards lived in Devonshire and other parts of England, and practised art for a time, while his brain was busy with schemes for improving inland navigation by the construction of canals, with new forms of bridges and aqueducts. Next we find him in France living with the family of one of his countrymen, Joel Barlow; during this period he painted a panorama, which was a great success. In 1797 he experimented with carcases of gunpowder—practically torpedoes—under water, and was engaged in perfecting a wonderful submarine boat. The French and Dutch Governments gave him some little encouragement, so far as fair words were concerned, and he wasted a considerable amount of time in hanging about public offices, to be eventually disappointed, for his plans were rejected.
But the French Government changed. Bonaparte placed himself at the head of it, with the title of First Consul. Mr. Fulton soon presented an address to him, soliciting him to patronise the project for submarine navigation, and praying him to appoint a commission with sufficient funds and powers to give the necessary assistance. This request was immediately granted, and the citizens Volney, La Place, and Monge were named the commissioners. In the spring of the year 1801, Mr. Fulton repaired to Brest, to make experiments with the plunging-boat he had constructed the previous winter. This, so he says, had many imperfections, natural to a first machine of such complicated combinations; added to this, it had suffered much injury from rust in consequence of his having been [pg 88]obliged to use iron instead of brass or copper for bolts and arbours. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, he engaged in a course of experiments with the machine, which required no less courage than energy and perseverance. Of his proceedings he made a report to the committee appointed by the French executive, from which report we learn the following interesting facts:—