In 1806 Fulton returned to America, having ordered an engine to be made by Messrs. Boulton and Watt at Birmingham. He did not tell them what he proposed to do with it, but it was the engine for the first steamboat constructed by him for American voyages—the famous Clermont. After this engine was delivered in New York it remained in the Customs while Brownne, a shipbuilder, constructed the hull. In 1807 the boat made her first trip on the Hudson.
The original dimensions of the Clermont have been variously stated, the discrepancies being probably due to the alterations to which the vessel was subjected, and also to methods of measurement. From a letter which Fulton wrote it appears that the boat was 150 feet long and 13 feet wide, drawing 2 feet of water.[17] This was no doubt the over-all figure, as other data give slightly less lengths which would be on the water-line, or the inside measurements between stem and stern, both of which raked.
[17] Reprinted in the Nautical Gazette, New York, August 22, 1907.
Messrs. Millard and Kirby, of New York, who made most exhaustive researches into the history of the Clermont with a view to the reproduction of that historical vessel at the centenary celebration at New York in September 1909, state that when Fulton worked out his displacement and wetted surface and resistance, his results corresponded with a boat of the dimensions just given, and no other figures could have given those results.
On November 20, 1807, Fulton wrote to Livingston that the boat was so weak that she must have additional knees and timbers, new side timbers, deck beams and deck, new windows, and cabins altered; that she, perhaps, must be sheathed, her boiler taken out and a new one put in, her axles forged and ironwork strengthened. With all this work the saving of the hull would be of little consequence, particularly as many of her knees, bolts, timbers and planks could be used in the construction of a new boat. His opinion, therefore, was that a new hull should be built with knees and floor timbers of oak, bottom planks of two-inch oak and side planks of two-inch oak for 3 feet high. “She is to be 16 feet wide, 150 feet long; this will make her near twice as stiff as at present and enable us to carry a much greater quantity of sail. The 4 feet additional width will require 1146 lb. additional purchase at the engine, moving 2 feet a second or 15 double strokes a minute; this will be gained by raising the steam 5 lb. to the inch, as 24 inches the diameter of the cylinder gives 570 round inches at 3 lb. to the inch—1710 lb. purchase gained. To accomplish this work a good boiler and a commodious boat running our present speed, of a voyage in 30 hours, I think better and more productive to us than to gain one mile on the present boat.”
The first Clermont had a depth of hold of 7 feet. She had masts and sails but no wheel enclosures, no bulwarks, no berths in the cabin, and no covering over the boilers; this work being done, according to Fulton’s letter of August 29, 1807, after his return from the first trip. When she was altered on account of instability, in the winter 1807-8, she was widened to 16 feet on the bottom and 18 feet at the deck, which made her much stiffer. It was then that her poop was built up and various other improvements made.
Her fly-wheels were outside the hull, placed forward of the paddles, and revolved the same way, and it is related that on a subsequent voyage one of the paddle-wheels becoming disabled, paddles were affixed to the fly-wheel and the voyage resumed.
The American Citizen of August 17, 1807, announced that: “Mr. Fulton’s ingenious Steamboat, invented with a View to the Navigation of The Mississippi from New Orleans upwards, Sails to-day from the North River near The State Prison to Albany, the Velosity of the Steamboat is calculated at four miles an hour; it is said that it will make a progress of two against The Current of The Mississippi, and if so it will certainly be a very valuable acquisition to the Commerce of the Western States.”
An immense crowd assembled to witness the fiasco which was expected to mark the first experimental voyage of “Fulton’s Folly,” and jeered Fulton and his steamer unmercifully. But when the vessel moved into midstream under the power of her own engines, the crowd cheered as energetically as only a crowd can when it has been agreeably surprised and the appeal of facts to its chivalry is irresistible.
“Dense volumes of smoke began to pour forth from the smokestack. The boiler began to hiss. At one o’clock the hawser was drawn in, the throttle opened, and to the accompaniment of the stertorous exhaust, the uncovered sidewheels began to quiver, then slowly to revolve. A hush fell on the spectators. Fulton’s own hand at the helm turned the bow. The Clermont moved out into the stream, the steam connections hissing at the joints, the crude machinery thumping and groaning, the wheels splashing, and the smokestack belching like a volcano.... One honest countryman, after beholding the unaccountable object from the shore, ran home and told his wife he had ‘seen the devil on his way to Albany in a sawmill.’”[18] A passenger, recording the voyage, says a miller boarded the Clermont at Haverstraw and said he “did not know about a mill going up stream and came to inquire about it.”