Let us now cross the Channel again to France, and remembering that Watt had patented his engine in 1769 and that Périer, after seeing one of the Englishman’s engines, had installed one in his boat on the Seine in 1775, and failed in his experiment, let us see the attempts at steamboat navigation continued by the Marquis de Jouffroy. Here again writers have cast some doubt on the achievements accomplished by this distinguished Frenchman, but if we turn to an interesting little book entitled “Une Découverte en Franche-Comté au XVIIIe siècle. Application de la vapeur à la navigation,” by Le Mis. Sylvestre de Jouffroy D’Abbans (Besançon, 1881), we shall find the facts verified. Briefly, the story is that in 1776 the Marquis, undismayed by Périer’s failure, obtained a Watt engine suitable for his boat, which was only 13 metres long, and in width 1 metre 91 centimetres, so that she was quite a small craft. She was propelled by steam, the revolving blades being 2 metres 60 centimetres in length and suspended on each side of the ship near the bows. The engine was placed in the middle of the boat and worked the revolving blades by means of chains. This experiment took place at Baume-les-Dames, though it does not appear to have contributed much to the ultimate success of steam navigation. But in 1781 this same François Dorothée, Comte de Jouffroy D’Abbans, made a much bolder essay and built a far larger steamboat, which measured 46 metres long, 5 metres wide, and had a draught of 1 metre. This steamship was tried at Lyons on the Saône on July 15, 1783, not 1781 nor 1782, as some writers have asserted. Her success was undoubted, for she went against the stream from Lyons to the Isle of Barbe several times, not in any secret manner, but in the presence of 10,000 witnesses. There is no possible doubt, for the interesting event was duly attested and, I believe, this declaration exists still in Paris. The illustration here given has been photographed from the pen-and-ink sketch which was copied in the year 1830 by Mr. R. Prosser from a French print that was published in 1816, and was alleged to represent this steamboat to which we are referring. But this illustration, from the fact that it was issued so many years after the occurrence, and also that it differs in some details as given by French writers, should be regarded with caution. It shows a boat whose paddle-wheels are turned by a single horizontal steam cylinder, the piston-rod engaging the shaft of the paddle-wheels by means of a ratchet arrangement which will be easily recognised. But it is also affirmed that Jouffroy’s vessel of 1783 had two cylinders, that the piston of each of these was connected with an iron flexible chain, and that these revolved the paddle-wheels. The latter were 14 feet in diameter and the paddle-boards themselves were 6 feet wide. The two cylinders were placed behind each other and communicated with each other by means of a wide tube. The French Revolution followed, in 1789, when the Marquis de Jouffroy, in order to save his life, had to go into exile for some time, and on his return, ere he was able to obtain a patent for his achievement, someone else had stepped in and forestalled him.

In the meantime, in England, something more practicable than Hulls’ efforts had brought about was to be witnessed. If the reader will examine the illustration facing this page he will see a model of a curious double-hulled ship, which was one of eight or more paddle-propelled vessels that were employed in the experiments carried out by Patrick Miller, a wealthy Edinburgh banker. This particular vessel was built at Leith in 1787, and it is amusing to see in her that old idea of physical propulsion brought forward once more. Between the two hulls sufficient space was left for the insertion of five paddle-wheels, 7 feet in diameter, immediately behind each other, which were driven by thirty men, heaving away at the capstan placed on deck. We find pretty much the same speed to be obtained as in the experiments which we have mentioned in connection with other craft thus propelled, for the best effort when all these hands were working to get her through the water appears to have been under 4½ knots per hour. In our illustration she is seen with masts and sails which she used when the paddle-wheels were lifted out of the water and placed on deck. It will be noticed that she was steered by a couple of rudders; her displacement was 255 tons. This probably represents the final development of Miller’s design using muscular power, but an earlier and smaller ship belonging to the previous year carried only two paddle-wheels, 6 feet in diameter and 4 feet wide, which were placed on each side of the middle hull, for this ship was not double- but triple-hulled.

After spending some time in making these experiments and realising the enormous amount of muscular power which was needed, it was suggested to Miller by James Taylor, who was tutor to his children and a personal friend of William Symington, of Wanlockhead, that it would be far preferable to employ steam power to drive the paddle-wheels; and the upshot was that Symington was commissioned to design a suitable engine, which in October of 1788 was placed on one deck of a double-hulled pleasure craft 25 feet long and 7 feet wide, whilst the boiler was placed on the other deck. Thus fitted, the strange little ship was tried on Dalswinton Loch, Dumfriesshire, when she exhibited a speed of five knots per hour, and afterwards seven knots. At the first attempt the boards of the paddle-wheels were broken by concussion. Symington’s engine, however, was really of the atmospheric pattern, with the addition of a separate condenser, and was an infringement of Watt’s patent. After but a few trials the experiments accordingly had to be abandoned, although Miller afterwards got into communication with Boulton and Watt, whom he endeavoured to interest in steam navigation, but they declined.

Miller next bought one of the boats used on the Forth and Clyde Canal, and gave an order to the Carron Iron Works to make a steam engine in accordance with Symington’s plan. On December 26, 1789, this vessel towed a heavy load seven miles an hour, but was afterwards dismantled.

Symington’s first engine is shown in the illustration facing page 42, which is taken from a model in the South Kensington Museum, the original being in the Andersonian Museum, Glasgow, and it will be useful for reference in case our description of Newcomen’s engine was lacking in clearness. As will be noticed, there are two cylinders, each being open at the top, and a piston working up and down inside. It will be seen, too, that there are two paddle-wheels; these were placed in the ship fore and aft between the two hulls, and not on either side as in our modern paddle-wheel steamers. There were eight floats in each wheel, which were not feathering, but fixed. Each piston was connected with a drum by means of chains, the latter turning the drums alternately in opposite directions, and power was obtained both from the upward and downward strokes. By means of a ratchet arrangement, alternately engaging with pawls, the paddle-wheel was made always to revolve in one direction. The engine was fitted with air pumps for the purpose of which we have already dealt. In many ways it will be seen that Symington’s engine and gear resembled the method proposed by Hulls.

But the same subject that was beginning to interest both Frenchmen and Englishmen was also being studied with zest in North America. In November of 1784, at Richmond, Virginia, James Rumsey had succeeded in making some interesting experiments with a model boat propelled by steam power, which boat was seen by George Washington. Rumsey afterwards came over to England, and it is not without interest to remark at this stage that one of the most frequent visitors to him in his new home was that famous Robert Fulton, of whom we shall speak presently. Mr. John H. Morrison, in his “History of American Steam Navigation” (New York, 1903), alludes to John Fitch as the pioneer of American steam navigation, but Fitch is known to have been very jealous of Rumsey, and accused him of “coming pottering around” his Virginian work-bench.

Fitch was the first man in America who successfully made a paddle steamboat to go ahead. The date of this was July 27, 1786, and the incident happened on the River Delaware. According to Fitch’s own description of his ship, which was written in the same year as the vessel’s trial, she was just a small skiff with paddles placed at the sides and revolved by cranks worked by a steam engine. This latter machine was similar to the recent improved European steam engines—that is to say, Watt’s—but the American engine was to some extent modified. It consisted of a horizontal cylinder, in which the steam worked with equal force at either end. Each vibration of the piston gave the axis forty revolutions, and each revolution of the axis caused the twelve oars or paddles to move perpendicularly, whose movements, to quote Fitch’s own words, “are represented by the stroke of the paddle of the canoe. As six of the paddles [i.e., three on each side], are raised from the water six more are entered.” In 1788, Fitch had another boat ready which was 60 feet long and 8 feet wide, her paddles being placed at the stern and driven by an engine which had a 12-inch cylinder. It was this vessel which steamed from Philadelphia to Burlington, a distance of twenty miles. He also had another craft built in the following year which was first tried in December of 1789 at Philadelphia. This was something more than a mere experiment, for the boat showed a speed of eight miles an hour; she afterwards ran regularly on the Delaware, and during the summer of 1790 covered an aggregate of two or three thousand miles. It is not to be wondered that Fitch was mightily disappointed at the lack of faith which his shareholders exhibited by retiring one by one, and finally he ended his days by suicide. It would seem, indeed, that in giving praise to Fulton, John Fitch has not always been credited with his full deserts. Of his predecessors it may be said generally that they had succeeded not so much as a whole, but in regard to overcoming certain obstacles, and continuous actions were being fought out in the American Courts for some years which engaged Fulton until the time of his death. It was not until the Supreme Court of the United States in 1824 decided adversely to Fulton’s associates on the question of exclusive right to steamboat navigation on the Hudson that this new industry received its impetus and a large number of steamships began to be built. But we are anticipating and must return to the thread of our story.

In Scotland, which has been not inaccurately called the cradle of the world’s steamship enterprise, another interesting experiment was to be witnessed early in 1802, where a vessel named the Charlotte Dundas (of which an interesting model, now in the South Kensington Museum, is here illustrated) was to cause some pleasant surprise. This vessel was 56 feet long and 18 feet wide; she had a depth of 8 feet. As will be seen from the illustration, she was fitted with a paddle-wheel placed inside the hull, but at the stern. Her horizontal engine was also by Symington, and since most of the mechanism was placed on deck, we are able to see from the model a good deal of its working. It will be noticed that the cylinder is placed abaft of the mast and that the piston-rod moved on guides which can be just discerned in the photograph. Attached to this is the connecting rod, which terminates at the crank on the paddle shaft, an entirely different means of obtaining rotary motion as compared with the “sun-and-planet” method which we saw adopted by Watt. As the steam entered the cylinder from the boiler it pushed the piston and its rod horizontally; and the connecting rod, being attached thereto at one end, and to the crank at the other, the paddle-wheel was made to revolve. Below the deck were the boiler, the condenser and the air-pump. The two rudders were controlled by means of the capstan-like wheel seen in the bows. As here seen the paddle-wheel is open in order to show its character, but as considerable spray would be cast up on deck when the wheel was revolving it was covered over by the semi-circular box, which is seen on the ground at the left of the picture. This engine which Symington supplied to the Charlotte Dundas was of a kind different from that which he had previously fitted to Miller’s double-hulled ship. For by his own patent Symington superseded the old beam engine, and obtained his rotary motion by coupling the piston-rod, by means of a connecting rod, with the crank.

This little craft is deserving of more than momentary interest, for she marked an important advance and considerably moulded the ideas of subsequent steamship inventors or adapters. Hers was the first horizontal direct-acting engine which was ever made, at any rate in this country, and in her simple mechanism may be easily recognised the nucleus of the engines in the modern paddle-wheel excursion steamer. She was built for Lord Dundas in 1801 as a steam tug-boat to ply on the Forth and Clyde Canal. The year after she was completed she towed for nearly twenty miles at a rate of 3¼ miles per hour two 70-ton vessels loaded, but just as bad luck had followed the efforts of Papin, de Jouffroy and other steamboat pioneers, so it was to be with the Charlotte Dundas. Although she had so splendidly demonstrated her usefulness, yet the wash from her paddle-wheel was such that the owners of the canal feared for the serious amount of injury which might be done to the canal-banks, and so the Charlotte Dundas was laid up in a creek of the canal, and rotted out her years until one day she was removed and buried in Grangemouth Harbour. But we may look upon her with great respect as being one of the parents of those two notable steamboats which were to follow and set the seal of success finally on the steamship proposition. I refer, of course, to the Clermont and the Comet.

And so we come to the name of Robert Fulton, whose praises have recently been sung so loudly by his appreciative fellow-countrymen. Born in the year 1765 at Little Britain, Pennsylvania, of Irish descent, he left America in 1786 and came to England, whence in 1797A he crossed over to France, where he devoted himself assiduously to the production of various inventions, which included, amongst others, a submarine craft called a “plunging boat.” Fulton’s “good fairy” was a fellow-countryman whom duties of office had also sent to settle in Paris. This Robert R. Livingston was born in New York City in the year 1746, and died in 1813. A distinguished American politician and statesman, he was appointed in 1801 as the United States Minister to France. It happened that in his private capacity Chancellor Livingston was keenly interested in mechanical matters, and the experiments of Fitch and Rumsey had attracted his attention to the question of steamboats. By an Act passed in 1798, Livingston had been granted the exclusive right of navigating all kinds of boats that were propelled by the force of fire or steam on all waters within the territory or jurisdiction of the State of New York, for a term of twenty years, on condition that within the ensuing twelve months he should produce such a boat as would go at a pace of not less than four miles per hour. Thereupon Livingston immediately had a 30-tonner built, but her performance was disappointing, for she failed to come up to the four-mile standard. It was soon after this that he crossed to France and there came into contact with young Fulton. To quote Livingston’s own words, which he used in describing the account of their business partnership, “they formed that friendship and connexion with each other, to which a similarity of pursuits generally gives birth.”

The American Minister pointed out to Fulton the importance which steamboats might one day occupy, informed him of what had so far been accomplished in America, and advised him to turn his mind to the subject. As a result a legal form of agreement was drawn up between them, signed on October 10, 1802, and forthwith they embarked on their enterprise, Fulton being allowed a fairly free hand in the preliminary experiments which “would enable them to determine how far, in spite of former failures, the object was attainable.” Fulton had a considerable knowledge of mechanics, both theoretical and practical, and after trying various experiments on models of his own invention he believed that he had evolved the right principles on which the steamboat should be built. Some of these experiments were carried on in the house of another fellow-countryman, Joel Barlow, then sojourning in Paris. A model 4 feet long and 1 foot wide was used to ascertain the best method to be employed: whether by paddles, sculls, endless chains or water-wheels, the power being obtained temporarily by means of clockwork. Finally, he decided on having one wheel at either side, but in order to convince themselves that what was true of a small model might also be demonstrated in bigger craft, the two partners decided to build a boat 70 French feet long, 8 French feet wide, and 3 French feet deep. Fulton states that they hired from M. Périer a steam engine “of about 8 horses power.” There were two brothers of this name, and one of them had already made an essay in the sphere of steam navigation, as we have noted. Whether or not this borrowed engine was of the Watt type I am not able to say, but since Périer had already possessed one, and Fulton during the same summer in which his experiment on the Seine took place got into communication with Messrs. Boulton and Watt with a view of purchasing one of their engines, it is by no means improbable that this was of English make. On either side of the craft was placed a paddle- or, as Fulton described it, a “water-” wheel, having a diameter of about 12 feet. In an interesting article in The Century Magazine for September and October of 1909, Mrs. Sutcliffe, a great-granddaughter of Fulton, gathered together a number of facts which have hitherto remained hidden away from the eyes of the public, and published for the first time a complete description of her ancestor’s trial boat, taken from a document prepared by Fulton eight years after the vessel was ready for her experiment. In this statement Fulton strangely enough remarks that the power from the engine was communicated to the water-wheels “by mechanical combinations which I do not recollect,” but the drawing shown on page 51 will clear up this point. The arrangement of the boiler, the cylinder, and the working parts sufficiently shows those “mechanical combinations” which had slipped from Fulton’s memory during the following eventful and industrious years. This boat which was used on the Seine was 70 feet long, 8 feet wide, and drew very little water.

In January of 1803 Fulton, who had already been attracting some attention in his adopted country by his submarine experiments, decided to offer his steamboat to the French Government and a Commission was appointed to inquire into its merits. The illustration on this page is taken from Fulton’s own drawing of his projected steamboat submitted to this Commission appointed by Napoleon, the original of which is now preserved in the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, in Paris. In his letter to the Commissioners, Fulton observes that his original object in making this experiment was rather with a view to the employment of steam tow-boats for use upon the rivers of America, “where there are no roads suitable for hauling,” and “the cost of navigation by the aid of steam would be put in comparison with the labour of men and not with that of horses as in France.” In fact, he suggests that if his experiment should prove successful, it would be infinitely less useful to France than to his native country, for he doubts very much if a steamboat, however perfect it might be, would be able to gain anything over horses for merchandise, “but for passengers it is possible to gain something because of the speed.” Ultimately Napoleon’s advisers counselled against the adoption of Fulton’s proposition.

However, by the spring of 1803, the boat was completed and lying on the Seine in readiness for her trial trip. Fulton spent a restless night, and we can well picture the feelings of the man who had wrestled with calculations, worked out theories, made little models, watched their behaviour in still water, spent hours and days discussing the subject with his friend Livingston, thought out every conceivable aspect, allowed for obstacles, and now, at length, after watching the child of his brain gradually take a concrete shape, waiting sleeplessly for the morrow in which he was to have the chance of living the great day of his life. Those of us who remember ever to have looked forward with zest and suppressed excitement to some new event in our lives likely to alter the trend of future years can well sympathise with the emotions of this clever young inventor, when, whilst eating his breakfast, a messenger burst in and dramatically exclaimed to his horror: “Please, sir, the boat has broken in two and gone to the bottom!”

It was suggested in our introduction that it is usually the case that an invention is no sooner born than it is compelled, while yet frail and infantile, to fight for its very existence: and it is curious that this should seem to be demanded not merely as against the opposition of human obstinacy but against sheer bad luck, which comes as a test of a man’s sincerity and of his faith in his own ideas. In the end, historically, this calamity had no ill-effects, for it only spurred the enthusiast to greater and more perfect accomplishment. But physically it cut short Fulton’s life of usefulness. As soon as the heart-breaking news was delivered to him, he rushed off to the Seine and found that the intelligence was all too true. For the next twenty-four hours he laboured assiduously, not stopping for food or rest, ignoring the chilly waters of the river, until his precious craft was raised from its watery bed. Fulton never recovered entirely from these physical trials following so suddenly on his years of mental work and worry, and his lungs were permanently affected for the rest of his life. But what he did recover—and that no doubt was to him more precious than his very life—were the machinery and main fragments of the hull. The gale of the night before had done more than wreck his ship: it had taught him to allow for one difficulty which he had overlooked, and it was well that it had happened thus instead of later on, when loss of life might have prejudiced the coming of the steamboat even longer still.

For Fulton soon realised that he had made his hull insufficiently strong for the weight of the machinery. This is the truth of the incident, and not that jealous enemies had maliciously sunk her, nor that Fulton had himself sent her to the bottom through the lack of appreciation which Napoleon’s Commissioners were exhibiting. This is confirmed by an eyewitness of the event, named Edward Church. But Fulton soon set to work to get his ship built more strongly, and by July of the same year she was ready for her trials. A contemporary account, in describing the strange sight which was witnessed on August 9, 1803, says that at six o’clock in the evening, “aided by only three persons,” the boat was set in motion, “with two other boats attached behind it, and for an hour and a half he [Fulton] produced the curious spectacle of a boat moved by wheels, like a chariot, these wheels being provided with paddles or flat plates, and being moved by a fire-engine.” The same account prophesies great things for the invention and that it will confer great benefits on French internal navigation: for, by this means, whereas it then required four months for barges to be towed from Nantes to Paris, the new method would cause them to do the distance in ten or fifteen days. Very quaintly this account speaks of the existence behind the paddle-wheels of “a kind of large stove with a pipe, as if there were some kind of a small fire-engine intended to operate the wheels of the boat!”

These experiments were made in the vicinity of the Chaillot Quay in the presence of many people, including Périer and some of the leading Parisian savants, and the boat was found to steam at a rate of 3¼ miles per hour. It is therefore both inaccurate and unjust to dismiss, as at least one writer has done, Fulton’s achievements on the Seine in one line by referring to them as unsuccessful and merely experimental. True, this vessel did not show that amount of speed which Fulton had hoped to get out of her, but she was very far from being a failure. Fulton had left nothing to chance, and the misfortune of the weakness of his first hull and the error in the speed actually obtained were the results rather of inexperience than of carelessness. It is difficult to-day, when we are in possession of so much valuable knowledge connected with naval architecture and marine propulsion, to realise that these early experimenters were feeling in the dark for an object they had never seen. At one time Fulton had estimated that a steamboat could be driven at a rate of sixteen to twenty-four miles an hour, but he found that so much power was lost in getting a purchase on the water that he altered his opinion and put forward the speed of five or six miles as the utmost limit which could be obtained by any boat using the best engines then in existence.

Fulton had advanced with almost meticulous caution. He had first collected together all the details that could be got about contemporary experiments; he had sifted the theories of others and made use of the residue. He had often talked with Rumsey while in England, and he had even accompanied Henry Bell to call on Symington, seen a trial trip of the Charlotte Dundas, and incidentally obtained some valuable information. Finally, after seeing what was good and what was bad he had proceeded independently, and, after a stroke of ill-luck, succeeded. He had knowledge of what others had attempted in America, in England and in France, and emphatically he was not the kind of man to deny his indebtedness to what others had done before him. The ship which he evolved was certainly in shape, proportions and general appearance not unlike the model of that earlier craft whose exploits on the Saône we considered on another page. The Marquis de Jouffroy had sent this model to Paris as far back as 1783, the year of his successful enterprise at Lyons, or twenty years before Fulton made his achievement, and it is most improbable that Fulton, who endeavoured to see everything which bore on his pet subject, living several years in Paris, should not have carefully studied this. Furthermore, Fulton’s boat was constructed in the workshop and under the very eyes of that Périer who had been associated with the Marquis in navigating the Seine by steamboat, and from this same Périer, as already stated, the engine was borrowed for Fulton’s boat. Fulton also personally considered the patent which Desblanc, forestalling Jouffroy, had obtained, and the American had described his impressions of Desblanc’s idea in no praiseworthy terms, for he saw that at least two-thirds of the latter’s steam power would be lost. Fulton worked his plans out to the minutest details: Desblanc had left his theory too scantily clothed with facts. He had not found the proportion which his paddles should bear to the bow of his boat, nor the velocity at which they should run in proportion to the velocity at which the boat was intended to go. Very scathing is the American’s denunciation of this haphazard method. “For this invention to be rendered useful,” wrote Fulton, “does not consist in putting oars, paddles, wheels or resisting chains in motion by a steam engine—but it consists in showing in a clear and distinct manner that it is desired to drive a boat precisely any given number of miles an hour—what must be the size of the cylinder and velocity of the piston? All these things being governed by the laws of Nature, the real Invention is to find them.”

Fulton believed that previous failures were due not so much to a defective steam engine, as to the wrong methods employed in applying the steam power thus generated. He criticised Rumsey’s method of propelling a ship by forcing water through the stern (in a manner similar to that which John Allen and Fitch had suggested) as the worst method of all. Ten years before his Seine success Fulton had been in communication with the Earl of Stanhope, who in 1790 had patented a means of propelling a ship in a strange way. This consisted in using a gigantic arrangement resembling a duck’s foot, placed on either side. These feet opened and shut like umbrellas and could send the ship along at three miles an hour. Fulton, then staying at Torquay, wrote to Lord Stanhope and proposed the use of paddle-wheels, but the noble earl would not listen to the suggestion. A similar freak idea was also put into practice in North America in 1792 by one Elijah Ormsbee.

The illustrations on this page represent Fulton’s first plans for steam navigation. They were sent by him to Lord Stanhope in the year 1793 and are here reproduced from a copy, by kind permission of the present earl. In his letter descriptive of these ideas Fulton shows the upper part of this illustration, marked No. 1, to be an attempt to imitate the spring in the tail of a salmon. Amidships will be noticed an object resembling a bow such as one usually associates with arrows. This bow was to be wound up by the steam engine, and the collected force attached to the end of the paddle, shown in the stern of the boat, would urge the ship ahead. But the sketch of a ship in the lower part of the picture marked No. 2 represents the model at which he was then working. It will be noticed that she has something of the characteristic stern which was so marked a feature of the sailing ships of this period and had been inherited from the Dutch of the seventeenth century, and is still traceable in the design of the modern royal steam yachts in England, as will be seen by a comparison with the illustration of the Alexandra. In referring to this No. 2, Fulton points out that he had found that three or six paddles answered better than any other number, since they do not counteract each other. By being hung a little above the water there is allowed a short space from the delivery of one paddle to the entrance of the other, and, also, the paddle enters the water more perpendicularly; the dotted lines show its situation when it enters and when it is covered. In the smaller illustration, No. 3, he emphasises the importance of arranging the paddle-blades still further. Thus the paddles A, B, C, and D strike the water almost flat and rise in the same situation, whilst that paddle marked E is the only one that pulls, the others acting against it. Whilst E is sending the ship ahead, “B.A. is pressing her into the water and C.D. is pulling her out, but remove all the paddles except E and she moves on in a direct line.” Finally, he concludes his letter with an explanation that the perpendicular triangular paddles are supposed to be placed in a cast-iron wheel “which should ever hang above the water” and would answer as a “fly and brace to the perpendicular oars”; and with regard to the design of the steamship, he says: “I have been of opinion that they should be long, narrow and flat at bottom, with a broad keel as a flat Vessel will not occupy so much space in the water: it consequently has not so much resistance.”

Desblanc had, like the Earl of Stanhope and Elijah Ormsbee, experimented with the duck’s foot idea, but had also met with failure. Fulton carefully went into the consideration of its merits before trying his Seine boat, but deemed it to be unsuitable. Whatever advantages this method might have possessed, the action of the duck’s foot caused far too great resistance, since after making the propelling stroke it returned through the water before being ready for the following stroke; whereas in the case of the revolving paddles or oars on wheels their return is made through air. Thus the resistance is considerably less.

But all this time Fulton had his native country in mind and not so much the advantages that might accrue to the land in which he had made his experiments. It was the Hudson, not the Seine, which he longed to conquer by steam, and the title-page of his note-book, dated more than a year prior to the events on the Seine, in which he drew a prophetical sketch of a steamboat travelling from New York to Albany in twelve hours, eminently confirms this. Therefore, we find him immediately writing to Messrs. Boulton and Watt from Paris, asking them to make for him “a cylinder of 24 horse-power double effect, the piston making a four-foot stroke”; also he wants them to manufacture a piston and piston-rod, valves, condenser, air-pump, and so on. It is perfectly clear that Fulton had but limited knowledge of the amount of power which an engine could develop. His ability consisted rather in knowing how best to apply that power. Thus he asks in his letter: “What must be the size of the boiler for such an engine? How much space for water and how much for the steam? How many pounds of coal will such an engine require per hour?” and so on. At first Boulton and Watt had to decline the order, since they were unable to obtain permission to get the engine into America. Finally, after paying £548 in purchase, it was not until March of 1805, or most of two years after receiving the order, that Boulton and Watt received permission to ship the engine to America. Fulton had crossed from France to England in 1803, and in the autumn of 1806 left by a Falmouth packet for his native land. Writing to-day, when the Mauretania and Lusitania are still making their wonderful records for fast voyages between the two countries, little more than a hundred years after Fulton had given the inspiration to marine engineering, it is no small contrast that the ship which carried him from England to America took no less than two months on the way. But the same winter he set to work immediately after his return to build that ever-famous Clermont, so called as a courteous acknowledgment of the hospitality he had enjoyed at Livingston’s country place of that name on the banks of the Hudson. From an agreement which had already been made in Paris, dated October 10, 1802, between Livingston and himself, Fulton had jointly contracted to make an attempt to build such a steamboat as would be able to navigate the Hudson between New York and Albany. She was to be of a length not exceeding 120 feet, width 8 feet, and was not to draw more than 15 inches of water. “Such a boat shall be calculated on the experiments already made, with a view to run 8 miles an hour in stagnate water and carry at least 60 passengers allowing 200 pounds weight to each passenger.” After the engine had at last arrived in New York it remained for six months at the New York Custom House, waiting, it is said, until Fulton was able to raise enough money to pay the duties. But as Mrs. Sutcliffe has pointed out in her article on Fulton to which reference has already been made, and to which also I am indebted for many interesting facts then for the first time made public, it is possible that the delay arose because the boat was not yet ready to receive her machinery. Fulton had rich friends who were interested in his work, so that I think the latter is the more probable reason for the delay.

And here, as we step from out of the realm of theories and suggestions into a realm of almost uninterrupted success, we may bring this chapter to a close. But before doing so let us not lose sight of that important fact on which I have already insisted—viz. that when steamboat success did eventually come, it was the happy fortune of no single individual, but an achievement in which many men, long since dead and gone, took part. It was the work of centuries and not of a year or two to bring about this marvellous means of transport. Hero, the ancient Romans, Blasco de Garray, Besson, Solomon de Caus, the Marquis of Worcester, Papin, Savery, Hulls, Watt, Périer, de Jouffroy, Miller, Symington, Taylor, Fitch, Stanhope, Desblanc, Livingston, Rumsey and others had all assisted in bringing this about, sometimes by their success, sometimes also by their failures. When next we step aboard even the most ill-found excursion steamer or the grimiest and most antiquated tug-boat, still more when we lie peacefully in the safety and luxury of a great modern liner, let us not forget that none of this would have been possible but for centuries of work and discovery, years of patient experiment and costly efforts, much disappointment, and considerable anxiety and abuse.