Meantime the ill-starred Fitch, unable to gain a hearing in England either, worked his passage back to America as a common sailor. In 1796, still determined to convince the public of the need for steamboats, he obtained a ship’s yawl, and fitted her with an engine and screw-propeller. With these he experimented in New York and, as usual, no one took any interest in the boat except the proprietor. In 1798 he made and tried upon a small stream near Bardstown a steamboat model measuring three feet in length, but a few weeks later he committed suicide by taking poison. His “Journal” contains the following passage: “The day will come when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from my invention, but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention.”
About twenty years later Fitch’s merits as an inventor were recognised by a Committee of the New York Legislature, which reported that “the steamboats built by Livingston and Fulton were in substance the invention patented to John Fitch in 1791, and Fitch during the term of his patent had the exclusive right to use the same in the United States.”
Other inventors were at work. Fulton was in France thinking over the Fitch drawings which had been left there in 1793, trying a submarine boat on the Seine, and in 1801 making a variety of experiments under the auspices of the French Government.
In America, one Samuel Morey, in 1790, built a strange boat with a paddle-wheel in the prow, constructed a steam-engine for her, and presently was voyaging on the Connecticut River at the break-neck speed of four miles an hour. A few years later he had another boat ready which could do five miles an hour, this boat having a wheel at the stern, and by request he took Chancellor R. Livingston and others for a trip in New York waters. The Chancellor, who had made a trip in Morey’s first boat at Orford, perceived two things, first, that the speed ought to be increased, and, second, that there was money in steamboats. He promised Morey 100,000 dollars, it is believed, if he could run a boat at eight miles an hour, and offered him 7000 dollars for a patent for the North River as far as Amboy for what had already been accomplished. The latter offer was not accepted. Morey in 1795 took out a patent for a steam-engine, in which the power was to be applied by crank motion, to propel boats of any size. Two years later he built a steamer which he placed on the Delaware, and propelled it by means of two paddle-wheels, one on either side. These wheels gave better results than any method which had yet been tried.
When, a little later, Livingston went to France and became associated with Fulton as the financier of his enterprises, it is probable that the knowledge the former had gained of Morey’s work and Roosevelt’s experiments, and the latter of Fitch’s designs, proved extremely useful to both of them. Nicholas J. Roosevelt had attracted some attention by building a small wooden boat across which was an axle projecting over the sides, and carrying paddles, the contrivance being made to revolve by a light cord wound round the middle of the machine and attached to hickory and whalebone springs. In 1798 he recommended to Livingston a vertical wheel, and the Chancellor replied, “Vertical wheels are out of the question.” As late as 1802 Fulton favoured chains and floats, and it was not until after Livingston had communicated Roosevelt’s plan to him that they applied vertical wheels on Roosevelt’s system to their boat on the Seine.
About this time also Livingston was engaged with John Stevens, his brother-in-law, and Nicholas J. Roosevelt on the construction of a steamboat to be used on the Hudson, the New York State Legislature having granted the necessary monopoly. The State required that the boat should attain a speed of three miles an hour, but this was not achieved. Livingston was appointed Minister to France in 1801, and was thus cut off from his two partners and brought into communication with Fulton. Another version is that the boat made three miles an hour, and that the State stipulated for four miles an hour.
Robert Fulton, asserted to be an Irishman by descent, was born in Pennsylvania in 1765. When a boy he had witnessed the experiments made on the Delaware by John Fitch, but the problems of steam navigation were only a few of those which occupied his versatile genius. He came to England in 1786, and in 1794 invented a marble-sawing machine, a flax-spinning machine, a machine for ropemaking and a mechanical dredger. In 1795 he published a treatise on canal navigation in which he suggested a number of improvements in lock construction.
In 1797 he went to France and was for some time occupied in designing and experimenting with submarine boats. He suggested to the French Government that his submarine would be useful in destroying the British Fleet. The Directory would have nothing to do with his plans, but when Napoleon became First Consul a Commission was appointed to investigate and report upon them. Beyond agitating the British Government for some time, however, while he experimented with torpedoes designed to destroy their fleet, and trying unsuccessfully to sell his invention to the French Government, nothing was accomplished. He came over to England in 1804 prepared to sell his invention to the British Government. From one point of view Fulton appears as the inventor of a horrible engine of destruction, ready to dispose of it to any country which would buy at a remunerative price.
But there is another aspect of Fulton, and this is exhibited by his enthusiastic biographer Cadwallader D. Colden. According to this gentleman, Fulton took no interest “in the then existing contest” between England and France. England and France were to him possible torpedo buyers and their fleets possible torpedo victims. But his ideals included universal free trade and the liberty of the seas, and he looked upon the annihilation of naval armaments as a step in the right direction, as it would destroy what he called the war system of Europe. If this could be effected nations would engage in education, science, and a rivalry of peaceful arts.
Fulton has been called a prophet and a statesman; but the doctrine that warfare will be ended by elaborating a more deadly means of destruction than has hitherto been known, coupled with the implied assertion that each invention is the last word in destruction, suggests at once conspicuous limitations in prophecy and statecraft. He never thought of torpedo destroyers.