A Lost Chapter in the History of the Steamboat

by John H. B. Latrobe

“I would recommend that we throw two wheels of wood over the sides, fastened to the axes of the flys (fly wheels) with eight arms or paddles; that part which enters the water of sheet iron to shift according to the power they require either deeper in the water, or otherwise, and that we navigate the vessel with these until we can procure an engine of the proper size, which, I think, ought not to be less than 24 inch cylinder.”

No better description of a side wheel steamboat has ever been given than is contained in this letter of the 6th of September, 1798, the original draft of which, with all its interlineations, is now before me; and this is the first practical suggestion of the combination which made steam navigation a commercial success, that there is a record of in America; and this also, when, as late as 1802, four years later, Fulton, as we are informed by his biographer, had become assured, that endless chains and floats were alone to be relied on!

Receiving no reply to the suggestion, thus made, Roosevelt writes to the Chancellor on the 16th of September, 1798, saying: “I hope to hear your opinion of throwing wheels over the sides;” when the Chancellor answers: “I say nothing on the subject of wheels over the sides, as I am perfectly convinced from a variety of experiments of the superiority of those we have adopted.”

Again, on the 21st October, in the letter giving an account of the trial trip with the Spanish Minister on board, Roosevelt says, “he would wish the Chancellor’s wheels to be tried, contrasted with paddles on Mr. Stevens’ plan, or with wheels over the sides, so as to ascertain the difference in the application of the power.” To which the Chancellor answers on the 28th October, 1798, referring to the Stevens’ paddles, “they are too inconvenient and liable to accidents to be used—AND, AS FOR VERTICAL WHEELS, THEY ARE OUT OF THE QUESTION!”

Roosevelt was at this time so strongly impressed with the plan that the Chancellor thus peremptorily put aside, that in a letter of the 21st to the same John Stevens already mentioned, who, as we have seen, was one of the partners in the adventure, he says, “I am firmly of opinion that a vessel may be propelled at the rate of eight miles an hour.”

Not even the praise of the Spanish Minister seems to have been sufficient to vitalize the Chancellor’s boat; and we are led to suppose that it was recognized by all as a failure; for Stevens, who seems to have had more influence than Roosevelt, persuaded the Chancellor to adapt the engine to his contrivance of a set of paddles in the stern, pushing the boat forward as they were made by a crank motion to rise and fall. A rough sketch of this contrivance in a letter from Stevens, dated July 15th, 1799, is before me. The experiment so racked the Chancellor’s boat as to make it unfit for use altogether. We wonder now that such things could have been thought of even.

In Mr. Stevens’ letter there is a passage that indicates the reliance that was placed on Roosevelt by this, the most practical of his associates, and shews him to have been the party on whose skill the others depended. He says:

“In the meantime, I would wish to determine on our plan for placing the paddles in the stern of the boat and provide immediately to put it in execution. You and Stoudinger (a young man brought up by Roosevelt, and who subsequently became Fulton’s right hand man, and one of the first practical engineers in America,) and Smallman (another of Roosevelt’s employees) must lay your heads together on this subject; and, as soon as you have fixed upon the plan you conceive will be most eligible, I wish you would take a ride down and communicate it to me; and, at the same time, I can give you the result of my cogitations.”

The Stevens’ paddles, until they shook the boat to pieces, were far more successful than any one of the Chancellor’s inventions; and I remember, distinctly, seeing a boat propelled by paddles in the harbor of New York, as I crossed the Hudson on my way to West Point, in the fall of the year 1818. The paddles I refer to, however, were on the sides, and not at the stern, and were literally paddles, being square floats attached to upright shafts, which a crank motion caused to rise and fall.

It is not difficult to understand why the Chancellor told Roosevelt that his vertical wheels were not to be thought of, and why Stevens, confessedly a man of ability and mechanical ingenuity, preferred his own suggestion. They doubtless believed that the percussion of the floats of the vertical wheel as they strike and then enter the water, and before they exert their greatest power; which is when they are at right angles with the surface, was objectionable and would be fatal to their usefulness. They feared also, most probably, the further loss of power consequent upon the lifting of the water as the floats emerged from it; and, wedded to their own schemes, they refused to subject the matter to the test of experiment. The paddles of Stevens, and the floats on the endless chains, to which Fulton gave the preference, entered the water perpendicularly, or nearly so, and were free from what was regarded, it is to be supposed, as the objection to Roosevelt’s vertical wheels over the sides. That both Stevens and Fulton were wrong, and that Roosevelt was right, time has conclusively established.