“Fulton came to the knowledge of steam-boats by employing me (H. Bell) about some plans of machinery, and begged me to call on Miller and see how he had succeeded in his steam-boat plan; and if it answered, to send him full drawings and description along with my machinery. I had a conversation with Miller, who gave me every information. I (H. Bell) told him that his engineer was wrong, and that I intended giving Fulton my opinion on steam-boats. I left Fulton’s letter with Miller.
“Two years after, a letter from Fulton arrived, stating that he had constructed a steam-boat from the drawings I had sent him, but improvements were required. This letter I also sent to Miller.”
He goes on to say that he set on foot his steam-boat after making various models, and when convinced they would answer, contracted with John Wood and Co., ship-builders, Port Glasgow, to build the Comet, so called from a comet which appeared in Scotland at that period. He claims that the Comet was the first steam-vessel built in Europe “that would work,” but this is unfair to the memories of Miller and Symington.
Oddly enough, while Bell was experimenting on the Clyde, Mr. Dawson was doing the same in Ireland. He even claims that he built a fifty-ton steamer in 1811, and which, by a coincidence simply, as it would seem, he had also named the Comet. He put the first steamer for public accommodation on the Thames in 1818, to run between London and Gravesend. Mr. Lawrence, of Bristol, introduced a steam-boat on the Severn shortly after Bell put the Comet on the Clyde, and brought her to London, but so great was the opposition from the watermen that he took her back to Bristol. She was afterwards taken to Spain, and long plied between Seville and St. Lucar. These were the precursors of those grand steam-ship lines which now run to every part of the habitable world. Bell’s steamer was made, in the second year of its career, a pleasure-boat to many parts of the coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and may therefore count as one of the first ocean-going as well as river steamers.
FOUR GREAT ENGINEERS.
CHAPTER VI.
The History of Ships and Shipping Interests (continued).
The Clyde and its Ship-building Interests—From Henry Bell to Modern Ship-builders—The First Royal Naval Steamer—The First Regular Sea-going Steamer—The Revolution in Ship-building—The Iron Age—“Will Iron Float?”—The Invention of the Screw-propeller—Ericsson, Smith, and Woodcroft—American ’Cuteness—Captain Stockton and his Boat—The First Steamer to Cross the Atlantic—Voyages of the Sirius and Great Western—The International Struggle—The Collins and Cunard Lines—Fate of the Arctic—The Pacific never heard of more—Why the Cunard Company has been Successful—Splendid Discipline on Board their Vessels—The Fleets that Leave the Mersey.