This we are told by Thomas Gonzales, the director of the Royal Archives of Simancas; but his veracity is now called in question,—at any rate, nothing further was afterwards heard of the discovery.
The first authentic record we have of steam navigation occurs in a work written by the Marquis of Worcester in 1665, in which allusion is made to the application of engines to boats and ships, which would “draw them up rivers against the stream, and, if need be, pass London Bridge against the current, at low-water.”
Many attempts, more or less successful, were made by ingenious men from time to time. Papin of France in 1690 constructed a steamboat, the success of which may be gathered from the fact that it was ultimately broken up by enraged and jealous watermen! Jonathan Hulls in 1736, and M. Genevois in 1759, were each successful, to a certain extent, in constructing working models, but nothing definite resulted from their labours. Yet we would not be understood to undervalue the achievements of such men. On the contrary, it is by the successive discoveries of such inquiring and philosophical men that grand results are at last attained. The magnificent structures that crowd the ocean were not the creations of one era, or the product of one stupendous mind. They are the result of the labours of thousands of men whose names have never been known to fame.
The men who, working upon the materials supplied by preceding generations, brought the propulsion of boats by steam nearest to perfection, just before the commencement of navigation, were Mr Miller of Dumfries, Mr Taylor, his friend, and tutor in his family, and Mr Symington. All of these were, in a very important degree, instrumental in ushering in the great event. Symington, in 1788, fitted an engine to a large boat, in which he attained the speed of seven miles an hour.
The man to whom the credit belongs of introducing steam navigation is undoubtedly Mr Fulton of America. This gentleman, who was contemporary with those just mentioned, visited France and England, in the former of which countries he endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to carry out his projects, while in the latter he met with Symington, and obtained much valuable information from him.
We have no sympathy whatever with those who seem to rake in to the credit of their own country every discovery and invention they possibly or plausibly can. We did much towards the commencement of steam navigation, but we did not begin it. We pushed considerably in advance of other nations in the invention of apparatus by which boats might be propelled by steam; we constructed models, tried it on a small scale, and found the thing to answer admirably: but we rested there. Meanwhile, an enterprising American came and saw our achievements, ordered an engine in England, carried it across the Atlantic, and commenced the era of steam navigation, on the river Hudson, by building and launching:
The First Steamer.
Robert Fulton, in conjunction with Chancellor Livingston of America, planned, built, and launched a boat in the spring of 1807, which they named the Clermont. It was propelled by steam, and averaged the rate of five miles an hour on its first voyage from New York to Albany, a distance of nearly one hundred and fifty miles.