In spite of Fulton’s gloomy tone in his letter there were many among the men and women who made the first trip with him who were not dubious concerning the invention. As soon as the first difficulties were overcome and the boat was moving on a steady keel, the passengers, most of whom were close friends of Fulton and of Chancellor Livingston, broke into song. As they passed by the Palisades it is said they sang “Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonny Doon.” Fulton himself could not be overlooked. A contemporary described him: “Among a thousand individuals you might readily point out Robert Fulton. He was conspicuous for his gentle, manly bearing and freedom from embarrassment, for his extreme activity, his height, somewhat over six feet,—his slender yet energetic form and well accommodated dress, for his full and curly dark brown hair, carelessly scattered over his forehead and falling around his neck. His complexion was fair, his forehead high, his eyes dark and penetrating and revolving in a capacious orbit of cavernous depths; his brow was thick and evinced strength and determination; his nose was long and prominent, his mouth and lips were beautifully proportioned, giving the impress of eloquent utterance. Trifles were not calculated to impede him or damp his perseverance.”

Fulton was now forty-two years old, and famous on both sides of the Atlantic. He asked Harriet Livingston, a near relation of his friend the Chancellor, to become his wife. She accepted him, and he was warmly welcomed into that rich and influential family.

On September 2, 1807, Fulton advertised regular sailings of the Clermont between New York and Albany. These proved popular, and other routes were soon planned. That winter he made many changes in the vessel and worked out certain devices that he wished to patent. The name of Clermont was changed to the North River the following spring, and the reconstructed steamboat continued in regular service on the Hudson for a number of years. In the succeeding year he built other boats, the Rariton, to run from New York to New Brunswick, and The Car of Neptune as a second Hudson River boat. He was very much occupied perfecting new commercial schemes, protecting his patents from a horde of pirates, and planning to introduce his invention into Europe. Before his death in 1815, eight years after the Clermont’s first trip, he had built seventeen boats, among them the first steam war frigate, a torpedo boat, and the first steam ferry-boats with rounded ends to be used for approaching opposite shores.

A century has not dimmed Fulton’s fame, nor set aside his claim to be the practical inventor of the steamboat. He built the first one to be used in American waters, and his model was copied in all other countries. He carried his ideas to completion, and that, with his talent to observe and improve upon other men’s work, gave him his leading place among the world’s pioneers.

VIII
DAVY AND THE SAFETY-LAMP
1778-1829

Humphrey Davy, according to his contemporaries, could have chosen any one of several roads to fame. Samuel Taylor Coleridge said of him, “Had not Davy been the first chemist, he probably would have been the first poet of his age.” Among many activities he invented the safety-lamp, the object of which was to protect miners from the perils of exploding fire-damp. George Stephenson invented a similar device at about the same time, or a little earlier, but Davy’s lamp was the one most generally adopted, and his claim as inventor is commonly recognized, while Stephenson’s fame is secure with the perfection of the steam-locomotive and the railroad.

Davy was born at Penzance in Cornwall December 17, 1778, the eldest son in a family of five children. More alert and imaginative than other boys, and with an uncommonly good memory, he made great headway at Mr. Coryton’s grammar school, where he went when he was six. Coleridge’s opinion of him may have been correct, for history says that he was a fluent writer of English and Latin verses while still a schoolboy, and that he could tell stories well enough to hold an audience of his teachers and neighbors. He liked fine language and the arts of speech, and, according to his brother, Dr. John Davy, he cultivated those arts in his walks. Once when he was taking a bottle of medicine to a sick woman in the country he began to declaim a stirring speech, and at its climax threw the bottle away. He never noticed its loss until he reached the patient, and then wondered what could have become of the vial. The bottle was found next morning in a hay-field adjoining the path Davy had taken.

When he was fourteen he left Mr. Coryton’s school for the Truro Grammar School, where he stayed for a year. Here he was famed for his good-humor and a very original turn of mind. A school friend, reminiscing about Humphrey, told of a walk several of them took one hot day. “Whilst others complained of the heat,” said he, “and whilst I unbuttoned my waistcoat, Humphrey appeared with his great-coat close-buttoned up to his chin, for the purpose, as he declared, of keeping out the heat. This was laughed at at the time, but it struck me then, as it appears to me now, as evincing originality of thought and an indisposition to be led by the example of others.”