A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine

by Robert Henry Thurston

This was the first application of the steam-engine to naval purposes, and, for the time, it was an exceedingly creditable one. Fulton, however, did not live to see the ship completed. He was engaged in a contest with Livingston, who was then endeavoring to obtain permission from the State of New Jersey to operate a line of steamboats in the waters of the Hudson River and New York Bay, and, while returning from attending a session of the Legislature at Trenton, in January, 1815, was exposed to the weather on the bay at a time when he was ill prepared to withstand it. He was taken ill, and died February 24th of that year. His death was mourned as a national calamity.

From the above brief sketch of this distinguished man and his work, it is seen that, although Robert Fulton is not entitled to distinction as an inventor, he was one of the ablest, most persistent, and most successful of those who have done so much for the world by the introduction of the inventions of others. He was an intelligent engineer and an enterprising business-man, whose skill, acuteness, and energy have given the world the fruits of the inventive genius of all who preceded him, and have thus justly earned for him a fame that can never be lost.

Fulton had some active and enterprising rivals.

Oliver Evans had, in 1801 or 1802, sent one of his engines, of about 150 horse-power, to New Orleans, for the purpose of using it to propel a vessel owned by Messrs. McKeever and Valcourt, which was there awaiting it. The engine was actually set up in the boat, but at a low stage of the river, and no trial could be made until the river should again rise, some months later. Having no funds to carry them through so long a period, Evans’s agents were induced to remove the engine again, and to set it up in a saw-mill, where it created great astonishment by its extraordinary performance in sawing lumber.

Livingston and Roosevelt were also engaged in experiments quite as early as Fulton, and perhaps earlier.

The prize gained by Fulton was, however, most closely contested by Colonel John Stevens, of Hoboken, who has been [already mentioned] in connection with the early history of railroads, and who had been since 1791 engaged in similar experiments. In 1789 he had petitioned the Legislature of the State of New York for a grant similar to that accorded to Livingston, and he then stated that his plans were complete, and on paper.

Fig. 83.—Section of Steam-Boiler, 1804.

In 1804, while Fulton was in Europe, Stevens had completed a steamboat, 68 feet long and of 14 feet beam, which combined novelties and merits of design in a manner that exhibited the best possible evidence of remarkable inventive talent, as well as of the most perfect appreciation of the nature of the problem which he had proposed to himself to solve. Its boiler ([Fig. 83]) was of what is now known as the water-tubular variety. It was quite similar to some now known as sectional boilers, and contained 100 tubes 2 inches in diameter and 18 inches long, each fastened at one end to a central water-leg and steam-drum, and plugged at the other end. The flames from the furnace passed around and among the tubes, the water being inside them. The engine ([Fig. 84]) was a direct-acting high-pressure condensing engine, having a 10-inch cylinder, 2 feet stroke of piston, and drove a screw having four blades, and of a form which, even to-day, appears quite good. The whole is a most remarkable piece of early engineering.