Henry Bell, 1800.
But it was not till the beginning of the present century that any real progress was made in the maritime pursuits of the people of Scotland. In 1800, Henry Bell, then resident at Helensburgh, first laid before the British Government his inventions for the improvement of steam navigation. The Board of Admiralty, however, so far from expressing any desire to promote his views, discouraged them, as they did thirteen years afterwards, when the subject was again urged upon their attention. Naturally anxious that his invention should be practically tested on a scale sufficiently extended, Bell forwarded, in 1803, a detailed account of his method of propelling vessels against wind and tide by steam power, to most of the European Governments, and also to the Government of the United States of America. He found, however, that his plans were received no better abroad than at home: while it further seems probable that the Government of the United States had either given or shown them to Fulton, who was then engaged in endeavouring to induce his countrymen to assist him in starting trading steamers on their lakes and rivers, where such vessels were admirably fitted for the profitable development of their vast natural inland resources.
Correspondence between Bell and Fulton.
Mr. Fulton evidently knew how Mr. Bell had been employed, for he opened a correspondence with him, and, in the course of it, requested him to call on Mr. Miller of Dalswinton, and on Mr. Symington, and to send him a drawing and description of their last boat with the machinery. These were sent out, and Fulton, some time afterwards, answered that “he had constructed a steamer from the different drawings of the machinery forwarded to him by Bell, which was likely to succeed with some necessary improvements.” This letter Bell sent to Mr. Miller for his information. As the matter, however, to which it refers is one of considerable importance, it is desirable to state the facts as related by Mr. Bell himself in a letter which appeared in the Caledonian Mercury in 1816, wherein he says, referring to the communication he had received many years previously from Mr. Fulton:
Letter from Bell to Miller of Dalswinton.
The Comet steamer, 1811.
“This letter led me to think of the absurdity of writing my opinion to other countries, and not putting it into practice in my own country; and from these considerations I was [a]roused (sic), to set on foot a steam-boat, for which I made a number of different models before I was satisfied. When I was convinced they would answer the end, I contracted with Messrs. John Wood and Company, shipbuilders, in Port Glasgow, to build me a steam-vessel according to my plan: 40 feet keel, and 10 feet 6 inches beam, which I fitted up with an engine and paddles, and called her the Comet, because she was built and finished the year that a comet appeared in the north-west part of Scotland. This vessel is the first steam-boat built in Europe that answered the end, and is, at this present time, upon the best and simplest method of any of them, for a person sitting in the cabin will hardly hear the engine at work. She plies on the Firth of Forth, betwixt the east end of the great canal and Newhaven near Leith. The distance by water is 27 miles, which she performs in ordinary weather in three and a half hours up, and the same down.”
In another communication, Bell says, “when I wrote to the United States’ Government on the great utility that steam navigation would be to them on their rivers, they appointed Mr. Fulton to correspond with me.”
No merit, as the inventor of the present system of steam navigation, can, however, be conceded to Bell more than to Fulton; nor for any progress beyond the improvements of which he had obtained cognizance from the previous experiments of Messrs. Miller, Taylor, and Symington. In fact, there can be no doubt, from existing drawings, that Symington’s Charlotte Dundas was superior in mechanical arrangements to either Fulton’s Clermont or Bell’s Comet. But what Fulton and Livingston accomplished in the United States, Bell effected in his own country; each was, therefore, instrumental in the introduction, for commercial purposes, of steam navigation.[97]
plies between Glasgow and Greenock,