From the Hudson the use of steam spread first to the Delaware. John Stevens, who had been associated with Livingston and Roosevelt at the end of the eighteenth century, continued his experiments after Livingston went to France as American minister. He could not find any mechanics fit to help him carry out his ideas, but he built a machine shop and trained young men for the work. In 1804 he made a number of trips on the Hudson with a 25-foot boat that was propelled by screws. He also invented the tubular boiler "which at least has been the means of working wonders, for in a boiler six feet long, four feet wide and two feet deep he exposed four hundred feet of surface, in the most advantageous manner, to the action of fire." (Macfarlane, History of Propellers.)
In 1807, while Fulton was bringing out the Clermont, Stevens had a smaller, but none the less practical, boat, almost ready. He missed the honor of leading by no more than two weeks. Being unable to use her on the Hudson, Stevens, in June, 1808, sent her to the Delaware, under the command of Captain Moses Rogers, who had commanded the Clermont on her first voyages, and his son, Robert L., served as engineer. Thus this vessel—she was named the Phœnix—was the first steamer that ever went to sea. On the Delaware the Phœnix proved a commercial success.
The next step in the expansion of steam navigation was taken when Nicholas J. Roosevelt built the steamer New Orleans at Pittsburg (1811), and demonstrated to the incredulous frontiersmen of the region—especially to the "half horse, half alligator" keel boatmen—that a steam-driven boat could overcome the current of the swiftest part of the Mississippi.
In 1813 Fulton and his associates reached out for alongshore trade by building the Fulton for use between New York and New Haven, but because of the activity of the British war-ships on the blockade, she did not make her first trip until March 21, 1815, when she carried thirty passengers to New Haven in eleven hours.
The Massachusetts was the first steamer in use at Boston. She began plying to Salem in 1817. In the same year the Fire Fly was sent from New York to Rhode Island, where she was used between Providence and Newport. Rounding Point Judith in this vessel was considered a feat showing extraordinary courage, and this, too, among sailors who thought nothing of a voyage around the world in a ship less than a hundred feet long.
In 1818 the Walk-in-the-water was built at Black Rock, (now a part of Buffalo), on the Niagara River, for use on the Great Lakes. When ready for her trial trip, she was unable to stem the river current until eight yoke of oxen were brought to her assistance, but once on the lake she did well. She made her first trip to Detroit, starting on August 20, 1818, and covered the distance in about forty hours, using a cord of wood an hour.
By the annual report of the Commissioner of Navigation it appears that four steamboats, aggregation 457 tons, were built in the United States in 1812, the first year for which there is a record. In 1813 seven of an aggregate tonnage of 1430 were built, and in 1819 the number was twenty-eight, with a tonnage of 7291. More than a hundred had been built in all. This expansion was almost but not quite all made upon inland or sheltered waters. Fulton had looked toward the high seas. He had built a steamship, which he named the Emperor Alexander, to sell to the Russian government, but the War of 1812 prevented his trying to navigate her across the ocean, and she was eventually worn out at home. During the war he built the huge war steamer Demologos, a vessel fit to go along the coast, and crude as she was, she would have changed the manner of war at sea had she been set afloat a year sooner.
The year 1819 is especially memorable because a transatlantic steam passage was then made. It appears that Captain Moses Rogers was the originator of the venture. In 1818 Francis Fickett built a common sailing ship at New York that was 100 feet long by 28 broad and 14 deep. Rogers had had the honor of first navigating the sea with a steamer, and he had been selected in 1816, because of his reputation for courage and skill, to take the steamer New Jersey from New York to the Chesapeake, a voyage thought to be full of danger for such a vessel. He was now inspired with the ambition to be the first to drive a steamship across the Atlantic, and after a look at the ship that Fickett was building, he persuaded Scarborough & Isaacs, ship merchants of Savannah, to buy and fit her with a steam engine for use between Savannah and Liverpool.
The engine for this ship was built by Stephen Vail, of Speedwell, New Jersey, and the boiler by David Dod, of Elizabethtown, New Jersey. It is worth while to interrupt the narrative to consider these two facts. At the beginning of the century mechanics had been so scarce in the nation that Stevens had to train men for his work. But in 1819 mechanics and shops fitted for engine building were found not only in the larger cities but in some of the smaller towns close to navigable waters. That these shops had been brought into existence through the mechanical progress—perhaps it may be called the mechanical awakening—that was due to the success of steam navigation is beyond question. Many machine shops had been built, and were profitably employed. They not only built engines, but other tools for many kinds of work. The day when a British consul like Bond could hamper the progress of American manufactures by reëxporting tools made in England was passing.
The paddle-wheels fitted to the new ship for use on the Atlantic were made of iron. They had eight radial arms, each so arranged (according to Preble) that they could be folded up like a fan and laid inboard when the ship was under sail; for her sailing rig was retained.