The North Bay. It was here that Robert Fulton developed his steamboat invention, receiving pecuniary aid from Chancellor Livingston, and it is fitting to give at this place a concise account of
Steam Navigation, which after many attempts and failures on both sides of the Atlantic was at last crowned with success on the Hudson.
John Fitch first entertained his idea of a steamboat in 1785, and sent to the general assembly of the State of Pennsylvania a model in 1786. New Jersey and Delaware in 1787, gave him exclusive right to navigate their waters for fourteen years, which, however, was never undertaken. His steamboat "Perseverance," on the Delaware in 1787, was eighteen feet in length and six feet beam. The name, however, was a misnomer, as it was abandoned. These facts appear by papers on file in the State Library at Albany. After his experiment on the Delaware, he traveled through France and England, but not meeting with the encouragement that he expected,[page 150] became poor and returned home, working his passage as a common sailor. In 1797 he constructed a little boat which was propelled by steam in the old Collect Pond, New York, below Canal Street, between Broadway and the East River.
Exactly one hundred years separate the first paddle-boat
of Papin from the first steamboat of Fulton.
Victor Hugo.
According to records in the State Library, the steam was sufficiently high to propel the boat once, twice, or thrice around the pond. "When more water being introduced into the boiler or pot and steam was generated, she was again ready to start on another expedition." The boat was a yawl about eighteen feet in length and six feet beam. She was started at the buoy with a small oar when the propeller was used. The boiler was a ten or twelve gallon iron pot. This boat with a portion of the machinery was abandoned by Fitch, and left to decay on the muddy shore. Shortly after this he died in Kentucky in 1798. Had he lived, or, had the fortune like Fulton, to find such a patron as Livingston, his success might have been assured. His visit to Europe may have inspired Symington's experiment on Dalswinton Loch in 1788, which made five miles an hour, and another steamboat on the Forth of Clyde which made seven miles an hour in 1789, and the "Charlotte Dundas" in 1802, which drew a load of seventy tons over three miles against a strong gale. Something, however, was wanting and the idea of successful navigation was abandoned in Britain till after the invention of Robert Fulton which made steam navigation an assured fact.
"How necessary it is to succeed," said Kosciusko, at the grave of Washington, and this is also as true in the story of invention as in the struggle for freedom: "That they never fail who die in a great cause though years elapse, and others share as dark a doom. They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts which overpower all others and conduct the world at last to fortune."