The idea of propelling a boat by means of a jet of water pumped out at the stern by steam pumps was given a practical test in 1784, by James Rumsey. His boat made a trial trip on the Potomac River in September of that year, General Washington and other army officers being present on this occasion. The boat was able to make fairly good progress through the water, and seemed so promising that a company was formed by capitalists known as the Rumsey Society, for promoting the idea and building more boats. Rumsey was sent to England where he undertook the construction of another boat, meanwhile taking out patents in Great Britain, France, and Holland. Before his boat was completed, however, he died suddenly, and the Rumsey Society passed out of existence shortly afterwards.
An even closer approach to practical success was made in Scotland by James Symington, who in 1788, in association with two other Scotchmen, Miller and Taylor, constructed a boat consisting of two hulls, with a paddle-wheel between them worked by a steam-engine. This boat worked so well that in 1801, Lord Dundas engaged Symington to build a smaller boat to be used for towing on the Caledonian Canal. This boat, called the Charlotte Dundas, completed in 1802, is said to have been capable of towing a vessel of one hundred and forty tons "nearly four miles an hour." But in doing this the resulting "wash" so threatened the banks of the canal that the vessel was laid up and finally rotted and fell to pieces.
By many impartial judges this boat is considered the first practical steamboat, and its failure to establish its claim due to the force of circumstances rather than to any inherent defects. Symington was too poor to pursue his work independently, and was deterred by the attitude of James Watt, who "predicted the failure of his engine, and threatened him with legal penalties if it succeeded." And when at last he received an order for eight smaller vessels from the Duke of Bridgewater, his patron died before the details of the agreement had been completed. So that while he failed in accomplishing what was done by Fulton a few years later, it is certain that, as Woodcraft says, "He combined for the first time those improvements which constitute the present system of steam navigation."
Some of Symington's engines have been preserved, and one of them is now in the Patent Office Museum in London. Since the beginning of practical steam navigation this engine has been tested several times, the result showing that Woodcraft's estimate is not overdrawn.
While Symington was thus perfecting a paddle-boat, an American, Col. John Stevens of Hoboken, New Jersey, was on the verge of accomplishing the same end with a screw-propeller boat—a form of steamship that did not come into use until some forty years later.
THE STEAMSHIPS "CHARLOTTE DUNDAS" AND "CLERMONT."
The "Charlotte Dundas" (lower figure) was built in 1801 by A. Hart at Grangemouth, Scotland, and engined by William Symington, for service on the Forth and Clyde Canal. Its length was 56 feet; beam 18 feet; depth 8 feet. The boat was a practical success, but its use was discontinued because of the damage done to the banks of the Canal by the wash of the paddles. The upper left-hand figure is a picture of Fulton's "Clermont." The diagram at the right represents the "Clermont's" paddle wheels and the mechanism by which they were worked.
Stevens also invented what he called a "rotary engine" which was really an engine constructed on the same principle as the modern turbine engine. It was a small affair which he placed in a skiff, and used for turning the screw-propeller of a boat which was able to travel at a rate of three or four miles an hour on the North River, during the fall of 1802. But Stevens found so much difficulty in packing the blades of this engine without causing too much friction that he finally abandoned it for the more common type of reciprocating engine. But if this little steamboat had its defects, it nevertheless contained the germs of two great features of steam navigation—the screw propeller and the turbine engine, the advantage of the first of which was not recognized for nearly half a century, and the other not until almost a full century later.