An attentive consideration of the subject leads to the conclusion at which Mr. MacGregor has arrived. Even in the present day it would require an engine and boiler of considerable size to propel a vessel of 200 tons three miles an hour; moreover, the novel and bulky machinery with which the experiment is said to have been made, could not have been erected in the ship or removed from her without attracting considerable public attention. Indeed, had such an experiment been made before the Spanish Emperor, and made successfully as the narrative leads us to suppose, a matter so important could hardly have lain dormant for any great length of time: whatever, therefore, Blasco de Garay’s invention may have been, it was evidently not a steam-engine practically applicable for any useful purpose.
Witzen, no doubt, in confirmation of Garay’s experiment, furnishes an illustration of a “Spanish bark without oars or sails,” but as, unfortunately, there is not a single line of letter-press beyond the few words quoted to throw the faintest light upon his drawing, it can only be supposed from the descriptive title that it referred to the vessel which Garay is said to have propelled. Indeed, De Garay’s whole story looks very much as if it was an invention of the Spaniards; Mr. Scott Russell,[16] as well as Mr. MacGregor, is of this opinion, and Mr. Woodcroft, no mean authority on such matters, states that, having made diligent inquiries at Simancas, he could find no trace of these documents, thus confirming the result of the more minute researches of Mr. MacGregor.[17]
Progress of invention; Bourne, Solomon de Caus, Marquess of Worcester, &c.
About this period, however, frequent mention is made of other modes of propulsion besides those hitherto in use. J. C. Scaliger (who died 1558) published at Frankfort a short notice of a vessel to be propelled without oars. Bourne, in 1578,[18] says, in his own quaint style, “you may make a boate to goe without oares or sayle by the placing of certain wheeles on the outside of the boat in that sort that the armes of the wheeles may go into the water, and so turning the wheeles by some provision, and so the wheeles shall make the boate goe.” I. Bessoni, in 1582, describes a vessel with two prows, or rather two separate vessels attached to each other (not unlike the Castalia, now running between Dover and Calais), between which a frame is suspended on gimbles carrying at its lower end a circular reel worked by ropes and a winch whereby they can be propelled.[19] A. Ramelli, in 1588, furnishes a design of a flat-bottomed boat with a wheel on each side, turned by men working upon a winch handle.[20] Indeed, long before this, the celebrated Roger Bacon (A.D. 1214-1296) speaks of a “vessel which, being almost wholly submerged, would run through the water against waves and winds with a speed greater than that attained by the fastest London pinnaces.”[21] Baptista Porta (the inventor of the magic lantern) published in his “Pneumaticorum Libri Tres,” Naples, 1601, many curious experiments on the power of steam, on its condensation, and on its relative bulk as compared with water. In one of these a vacuum is clearly indicated, the water being forced up by the pressure of the atmosphere from without.
David Rivault, Seigneur de Flurance near Laval, published “Les Éléments de l’Artillerie,” first in 1605 and secondly in 1668—and in this work he describes the power of steam in bursting a strong bomb-shell partly filled with water, tightly plugged, and then heated.
In 1615, Solomon de Caus (Engineer to Louis XIII.) published a treatise (“Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes”) in which he shows he was well acquainted with the motive power of steam—as, in his fifth theorem, he says, “water will mount by the help of fire higher than its level:” he also shows, by an experiment, how a column of water may be driven up a tube to such a height as will balance the elasticity of the heated air confined in the boiler; and Arago, in his “Éloge de James Watt,” considers that this experiment, though of little practical use, “will make a noble figure in the annals of the steam-engine.”
In 1629, Giovanni Branca, an engineer of Loretto, applied steam to blow against vanes attached to the external rim of a wheel, and, doubtless, machinery with due mechanical contrivances could have been impelled by it. He gives a picture of his machine in “Le Machine,” vol. nuovo, Pl. XXV.
In 1618, David Ramsay obtained a patent for an invention “to make boates for carriages running upon the water as swift in calmes and more safe in storms than boats full sayled in great windes;” and in 1630 he patented a plan “to make boats, ships, and barges to goe against the wind and tide;” and “to raise water from lowe pitts by fire”[22] (the steam-engine).
In 1637, Francis Lin and others patented a plan “to use and exercise upon the River Thames, and any other river within England and Wales, according to their owne way and inventing the sole drauinge and workinge up of all Barges and other vessels without the use of horses;” and, in 1646, Edward Ford proposed a similar plan for the navigation of rivers, and one whereby he could “bring little ships, barges, and vessels in and out of havens without or against any small wynd or tide, and transport souldiers and passengers without or against wynde yf the seas be not rough.”[23]
In 1652 (July 30th), Thomas Grant, Doctor of Physic, obtained a patent “for several instruments, whereof the first is an instrument very profitable when co[~m]on winds fayle for a more speedy passage of calmed shipps or other vessells upon the sea or great rivers, which may be called the wynds māty.”