American Leaders and Heroes: A preliminary text-book in United States History

by Wilbur F. Gordy

While still young Robert won the warm regard of a great painter, Benjamin West, whose father was an intimate friend of Robert's father. Very likely this friendship turned Robert's mind strongly toward painting. At all events, the desire to become an artist took so strong a hold upon him that at the age of seventeen he went to Philadelphia and devoted his time to drawing and painting. Here he remained three years and painted with such skill that he not only supported himself, but sent money to his old home, and saved $400, with which he bought a little home for his mother.

In time his interest in art led him to go to London, where he studied under Benjamin West. But very soon he became interested in trying to improve canal navigation and in working out various mechanical appliances.

This love for invention finally diverted his attention very largely from painting, and led him to the work which made him famous. When about thirty years old he went to Paris to experiment with a diving-boat, an invention of his own, intended to carry cases of gunpowder under water. This machine was not successful, but by the spring of 1801, a little more than three years after his first effort, he had constructed another diving-boat, and went with it to Brest where he gave it a successful trial. With three companions he descended twenty-five feet below the surface of the water and remained for one hour. In 1805 he tested it again in England where, with a torpedo of 170 pounds, he blew up a vessel of 200 tons.

For the invention of the torpedo-boat, the world is indebted to Fulton, but for the first successful steamboat it owes him a debt of deeper gratitude. Before leaving Paris, Fulton became acquainted with Robert R. Livingston, who was at that time the American minister to France. Mr. Livingston had long felt an interest in steamboat navigation, and was willing to supply Fulton the necessary money. A steamboat, constructed at Paris, was finished by the spring of 1803, and the day for its trial trip was at hand, when, early one morning the boat broke in two parts and sunk to the bottom of the river. The frame had been too weak to support the weight of the heavy machinery. On receiving the news, Fulton hastened to the scene of his misfortune and began at once the work of raising the boat. For twenty-four hours, without food or rest, and standing up to his waist in the cold water, he labored with his men until he succeeded in raising the machinery and in placing it in another boat. But the exposure to which he submitted himself brought on a lung trouble from which he never fully recovered.

Having discovered the defects of the machinery Fulton returned in 1806 to America, where, with money furnished by his friend Livingston, he began to construct another steamboat which he called the Clermont, after the name of Livingston's home on the Hudson. This boat was 130 feet long and 18 feet wide, with a mast and a sail, and on each side a wheel 15 feet in diameter, fully exposed to view.

One morning in August, 1807, a throng of expectant people gathered on the banks of the North River at New York, to see the trial of the Clermont. Everybody was looking for failure. People had all along spoken of Fulton as a crack-brained dreamer, and had called the Clermont "Fulton's Folly." "Of course the thing would not move." "That any man with common-sense might know," they said. So while Fulton was waiting to give the signal to start, these wiseacres were getting ready to jest at his failure.

The Clermont.

Finally, at the signal, the Clermont moved slowly, and then stood perfectly still. "Just what I have been saying," said one onlooker with emphasis. "I knew the boat would not go," said another. "Such a thing is impossible," said a third. But they spoke too soon, for after a little adjustment of the machinery, the Clermont steamed proudly up the Hudson.

As she continued her journey, all along the river, people who had come from far and near stood watching the strange sight. When the boatmen and sailors on the Hudson, heard the clanking machinery and saw the great sparks of fire and the volumes of dense, black smoke rising out of the funnel, they thought the Clermont was a sea-monster. In their superstitious dread, some of them went ashore, some jumped into the river, and some fell on their knees in fear, believing the day of judgment to be at hand. One old Dutchman told his wife that he had seen the devil coming up the river on a raft.