The complete list of Fulton’s steamboats would include also the Rariton (1809), New Orleans (1811), Paragon, Firefly, a Jersey ferryboat, and Camden (1812), Washington and a York ferryboat (1813), Richmond, a Nassau ferryboat, Fulton, Vesuvius, and Demologos, a warship (1814), Aetna, Buffalo, and Mute (1815), Olive Branch, Empress of Russia, and Chancellor Livingston (1816).
Fulton and Livingston’s enterprise was a financial success almost from the first, and naturally others thought to share in it; as they could not join the pioneers they determined to rival them. One of the chief of these was a Captain Elihu S. Bunker, who maintained a line of sailing sloops between Hudson City and New York. The steamers were taking the wind out of his sails in more senses than one, and not liking the prospect of being becalmed, financially, he determined to go in for steam. A syndicate of capitalists of Albany backed him. The fact that Livingston and Fulton had been already granted an absolute monopoly for navigating the waters of the State of New York by steam deterred them not a whit. They ordered two boats, to be about the size of the Clermont, and called them the Hope and Perseverance. They were each 149 feet in length, 25 feet beam inside the paddles, and had a depth of 7 feet 7 inches.
Robert Fulton’s “Clermont,” 1807.
Legal proceedings quickly followed, Livingston and Fulton having their work cut out to defend their monopoly. How like these boats were to the Fulton boats is evident from the affidavit of Charles Brownne, the builder of the Clermont. He says that he has “examined the steamboats Hope and Perseverance and they are not built like any vessels which navigate by wind or oars on any of our waters, or any foreign waters that he knows of. That said steamboats being more than Six the length of their breadth[20] of beam and flat at bottom are not calculated to navigate with sails only. And that the first boats of such make of the said steamboats which he ever saw or heard of was built by him from drawings and directions given to him by Robert Fulton and constructed to be navigated by steam and wind, and which boats are now known by the name of North River and Car of Neptune Steamboats: This deponent also saith that the water wheels; the guards round the water wheels, the covering to the water wheels; the steps from the wheel guards to enter the row-boats, space on the guards for wood for the engine, bins or lockers in the wheel guards and necessaries on the fore part of the wheel guards, are exact copies from the Boats built by him for Livingston and Fulton, and such water wheels, wheel guards and conveniences he has never known or heard of to any other kind of boat or vessel. This deponent further saith that in the said Steamboat Hope the manner of arranging the rudder with a perpendicular iron bar on its after part, and leading from its wheel ropes, along the sides of the boat to a steering wheel before the Chimney of the Boiler and to a Station above the place of the engineer and fireman, is an exact copy from the boats of Livingston and Fulton. This deponent objected to this mode of steering at the time the said Fulton proposed it, believing it to be impracticable, and he does not know of a like mode of steering to any other kind of vessel. This deponent also says that the mode of placing the main mast far forward, and the mizzen mast so far aft, as to leave a convenient space between the two, which shall not be incommoded by ropes, booms, or yards, and afford room for spreading an awning for the comfort and convenience of passengers is the same exactly in the said Hope Steamboat as in the boats built by him for Livingston and Fulton. That this mode of placing masts so far apart, to the best of his knowledge, is not known in any other kind of vessel, and would not answer for a vessel intended to work with wind only, without the aid of steam, but in union with steam has been proved by three years’ experience on the North River Steamboat to succeed perfectly well. This deponent further says that the form and make of the said Hope and Perseverance steamboats, their wheels, wheel guards, manner of steering, mode of placing the masts and rigging, mode of arranging the awning, arrangements of the Cabins and kitchen, suspending their row-boats from the sides instead of from the stern, as is usual, are in his opinion in all these combinations and arrangement, exact copies from the Car of Neptune Steamboat, and more like her than she is like the North River Steamboat which was first built, and further this deponent saith not.”[21]
[20] Sic: probably means “their length was rather more than six times their beam.”
[21] “Steamboats on the Hudson,” in the “Master, Mate, and Pilot,” October 1909.
The Hope and Perseverance ran throughout the season of 1811 with passengers and freight, between New York and Albany, and met with as much of the public patronage as did the other boats. The courts, however, decided that Captain Bunker and his supporters were acting illegally, and gave the drastic order that their steamers should be confiscated and handed over to Livingston and Fulton, who did not run them but had them broken up.
Writing in 1838, in regard to his early experiments, to the Secretary of the Treasury at Washington, Captain Bunker described an incident which unfortunately for American steamship records does not stand alone. The Captain was undoubtedly fortunate that matters were no worse.
“In 1811,” he says, “I had command of the steamboat Hope plying between New York and Albany. The engine and boilers were made and put in by Robert McQueen. On the second trip from New York, while Mr. McQueen’s foreman had still charge of the works on board (they not having been delivered as completed), this man had a gang of his own men from the shop, and, while proving the machinery, had a man that he was instructing to become engineer of the boat. While on the passage, off Esopus meadows, something appeared to be wrong in the fire-room (which was in charge of a miserable drunken fireman) and the engine moving very slowly. I found on examination, that there was not a drop of water in either of the boilers, and that both of them were red-hot, as well as the flues, and must have been so for at least half an hour. The heat was great enough to melt down five solder-joints of steam-pipe, which was made of copper. I immediately started the forcing pump myself, not thinking that there could be any danger in the operation; the effect of which was a crackling in the boiler as the water met the hot iron, the sound of which was like that often heard in a blacksmith’s shop when water is thrown upon a piece of hot iron. I cannot, therefore, believe for a single moment that explosions are produced, to such a degree as I have before recited, by throwing cold water into a red-hot boiler. In the way above described, I cooled down both of the boilers, during which time neither of them jumped out of its place; nor do I see how it could be possible for such an effect to be produced, having always been of opinion that there could be no other cause for a boiler to burst than the pressure of steam inside, and not gas produced by letting cold water or lukewarm water into it; for I deem it impossible for a red-hot boiler to contain heat enough to explode with any quantity of water that might be suddenly thrown into it. Besides, it must be remembered that the supply-pipes are connected with the bottom of all steam-boilers, or are very near to the bottom; therefore, instead of producing explosion, the forcing of cold or lukewarm water into hot water must have the tendency to cool it. For instance, I have known engineers to keep off their feed as long as they possibly dared, when running with another boat, knowing that as soon as they began to feed, the steam would fall, especially if they could not get a full supply of steam for the engine.”[22]