Towards the end of the eighteenth century American inventors turned their attention to the problem of navigation by steam, and to one of them, Robert Fulton, the credit of having invented the steamboat has usually been given. Livingston’s “Historical Account of the Application of Steam for the Propelling of Boats” has been accepted as an authority on the subject, but as he was Fulton’s friend and backer, and Fulton married into the Livingston family, there is reason to question the absolute accuracy of the circumstantial story told by this most eloquent special pleader, though there is some excuse for his partiality. A little investigation makes it apparent that Fulton was not the first American to design a successful steamboat, nor even the first to make the running of steamboats a satisfactory speculation.
In 1909 a Mr. John Moray of West Virginia presented a petition to Congress in which he asked for the official recognition of James Rumsay as the inventor of the steamboat, and the perpetuation of his memory by the placing of an appropriate bust in the Statuary Hall at the Capitol. According to the petition “The deed-books of Berkeley County, Va., for the year 1782 record the fact that James Rumsay, a native of Maryland, who was a millwright and Revolutionary soldier, purchased a farm, and soon after a pond, for experimental purposes in the line of his calling. On that pond, as the results of many experiments in steam and hydrostatics by James Rumsay, the wonderful discovery of the principle of steam navigation took place. Thoroughly satisfied by continuous experiments that the newly discovered principle would become of immense value in the world, Rumsay contracted with his brother-in-law, Joseph Barnes, for the building of a boat for steam purposes at St. John’s Run, on the Potomac River. The resulting steamboat was publicly exhibited at Shepherdstown, Va., on the Potomac, on December 3 and 11, 1787. The great success and useful character of Rumsay’s steamboat were established by sworn testimony of many notable witnesses, including General Horatio Gates, conqueror of Burgoyne, and by a multitude of astonished and delighted spectators. This practically successful trial took place twenty years before the Hudson River trial in 1807, and the speed of Rumsay’s boat was fully equal to that of the Clermont in its initial trip to Albany—four miles an hour—without sails, paddles, and the complexities of the Hudson River boat.”
Rumsay afterwards launched on the Potomac a boat propelled by a steam-engine and machinery, both of which were of his own construction. His method of propelling the boat was to force out a stream of water at the stern, a system known as the “Jet,” which has never commended itself to engineers in general, owing to the friction caused in the pipes by the water rushing through them. A trial trip, in December 1787, was successfully made in the presence of a great number of spectators, and resulted in Rumsay being granted the right to navigate the streams of New York, Maryland, and Virginia. His scheme was taken up by an organisation formed in Philadelphia for that purpose, and known as the Rumsay Society. Benjamin Franklin was among its members. Rumsay also visited England and the Continent, and obtained patents for his invention in Great Britain, France, and Holland, but he did not live long enough to develop his schemes. He made a successful trip on the Thames in 1792, and died in London the same year.
His great rival was John Fitch, who, in 1785, conceived the idea of using steam-power for land carriages and afterwards for vessels. His first model of a steamer carried large wheels at the sides, but these were found to labour too much in the water, and in his experiments in July 1786 upon a skiff with a steam-engine having a three-inch cylinder, the wheels were replaced by paddles or oars supported by a framework above the vessel. Convinced of the success which must ultimately attend the use of steam-power, he petitioned Congress and the State Legislature for a grant of money, but without avail. As a result of his efforts to interest “the leading scientific and public men of that day, everywhere and at all times,” and his bold advocacy of the adoption of steam for purposes of navigation, he was generally considered insane. But in 1786 he succeeded in persuading the State of New Jersey to grant him for fourteen years the sole and exclusive right to navigate its waters by steam, and this example was followed in 1787 by the States of New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. He had earned some money by map-making, and now formed a company and built a boat of 60 tons. She was 45 feet long with a beam of 12 feet, had six oars or paddles on each side, and carried an engine with a 12-inch cylinder. She made a successful trial trip at Philadelphia in 1787. A still larger boat followed in 1788, and another in 1790. The latter demonstrated “with their increased speed and facility the value of Fitch’s invention,” and the last was run during the summer as a passenger boat between Philadelphia and Burlington at a speed of about eight miles an hour. She appears, from an illustration in Appleton’s “Cyclopædia of American Biography,” to have had three large paddles at the stern held in place by a projecting frame, a cross-beam at the extreme end of the frame supporting the rudder, which was placed a little distance behind the paddles. Consequent upon the Virginia patent which gave him the exclusive right of navigating “the Ohio River and its tributaries” he now designed a boat called the Perseverance, for freight and passengers on the Mississippi. But as, owing to a storm, she could not be got ready in time, the default clause in the patent became operative. Fitch’s associates now left him and his own resources were at an end, and after one or two other misfortunes he went to France in 1793. Needless to say, that country was in no mood then to entertain the idea of building steamboats. Finding no one ready to listen to his schemes, Fitch departed for London, having deposited his plans and specifications with the American Consul at Lorient.
John Fitch’s Oared Paddle boat, 1786.
A rather curious thing then happened.
“During this absence his (Fitch’s) drawings and papers were loaned by the Consul to Robert Fulton, then in Paris, in whose possession they were for several months.”[14] Until now, it must be remembered, Fulton had scarcely been heard of in connection with steamboats.
[14] Appleton’s “Cyclopædia.”