- — JAMES SYMINGTON.
- — ROBERT FULTON.
- — HENRY BELL.
- — OCEAN STEAMERS.
I.—JAMES SYMINGTON.
Of the many triumphs of enterprise achieved by the agency of that tremendous power which James Watt tamed and put in harness for his race, perhaps the greatest and most momentous is that which has reversed the old proverb, that "time and tide wait for no man," given ten-fold meaning to the truth that "seas but join the regions they divide," and enabled our ships to dash across the trackless deep in spite of opposing elements,—
"Against wind, against tide,
Steadying with upright keel,"
in a fraction of the time, and with a fraction of the cost and peril of the old mode of naval locomotion. How amply realized has been James Bell's prediction more than half a century ago, "I will venture to affirm that history does not afford an instance of such rapid improvement in commerce and civilization, as that which will be effected by steam vessels!"
Towards the close of the last century, a number of ingenious minds were in travail with the scheme of steam navigation. The Marquis de Jouffroy in France, and Fitch and Rumsey in America, were successful in experiments of its feasibility; but it is to the efforts of Miller and Symington in Scotland, followed up by those of Fulton and Bell, that we are chiefly and more immediately indebted for the practical development of the project.