[38] Chambers’ Journal, April 25, 1857.
When the adventurous journey was resumed several persons went with them as far as Dunleary, now Kingstown, where they landed after being violently sea-sick owing to the rough water. Some naval officers on board prophesied that the vessel could not live long in heavy seas. Kingstown was left, and the steamer soon found herself in as rough a sea as ever. The next morning they arrived off Wexford. The smoke led the people to suppose the vessel was on fire, and all the pilots in the place put off to her help, but their dreams of salvage were disappointed. The weather becoming worse, Dodd sought safety in Wexford Bay. They sailed again for St. David’s Head. Both paddle-wheels met with an accident and had to have a blade cut away, the vessel’s progress, however, suffering but slightly in consequence. Milford Haven was safely reached, but when nearing the port they met the Government mail packet from Milford to Waterford under full sail. They had passed the packet about a quarter of a mile when Dodd thought he would send some letters by her to Ireland; accordingly the Thames was put about, overhauled the packet, and sailed round her. The letters having been put aboard, Dodd took his boat again round the packet, although the latter was under way, and then continued his journey. At Milford the engine and boiler were cleaned. But after leaving Milford the pilot declined to attempt to round the Land’s End that night. Dodd put into St. Ives, where the Thames was again mistaken for a ship on fire. There being no shelter at St. Ives he went on to Hayle. Off Cornwall Head a tremendous swell from the Atlantic met the steamer, and the waves were of such a height as to render her position most alarming. Dodd battled on, and after a night’s struggle rounded the Land’s End. At Plymouth and Portsmouth officials and thousands of sightseers went to see her, and at Portsmouth the Port Admiral was asked to grant the voyagers a guard that order might be preserved.
The “Industry,” 1814.
The Thames steamed up the harbour with wind and tide at nearly fourteen miles an hour. A court-martial which was being held at the time on one of the warships hurriedly adjourned to witness the wonderful sight. Margate and London were reached in due course, the ninety miles’ run from Margate to Limehouse being done in ten hours.
Sir Richard Phillips, in his “Million of Facts,” published in 1839, writes: “In her first voyage to Margate none would trust themselves, and the editor and three of his family with five or six more were the first hardy adventurers. To allay alarm he published a letter in the newspapers, and the end of that summer he saw the same packet depart with three hundred and fifty passengers!” They must have been packed as tightly as herrings in a barrel.
Another steamer on the Thames in 1815 was the Defiance. She was possibly the first steamer to be built on the banks of the Thames, but as there is no discoverable record of the fact, it is equally possible she was built as a sailer, and was fitted with engines. The Majestic appeared in 1816, and is thought to have been the first steamer employed in towing ships. On August 28, 1816, she towed the Hope, an Indiaman, from Deptford to Woolwich at a rate of three miles an hour against the wind.[39]
[39] Kennedy’s “History of Steam Navigation.”
It is recorded that prior to the appearance on the Thames of the Marjory, Defiance, and Thames, a man named Dawson in 1813 had a steamer on the river plying between Gravesend and London. This Dawson is stated to have made steamship experiments in Ireland, and according to his own account he built a steamboat of 50 tons burden, worked by a high-pressure steam-engine as early as 1811, which, by one of those singular coincidences frequently met with in the history of inventions, he named the Comet.[40]
[40] Stuart’s “History” and Knight’s “Cyclopædia.”