First Practical Steamboat

This series has four easy 5 minute installments.

Introduction
That the same year in which Fulton navigated the Hudson River with his improved steamboat also saw the earliest use of fixed steam-engines to drag trains on railways by means of ropes, shows how the great invention improved by Watt was engaging ingenious minds upon the new problems which he and his contemporaries had suggested.

But the fact remains, to the honor of Fulton, that he made steam navigation practicable some years before any workable plan of steam locomotion on land was completed.

The Spaniards claim to have first attempted to propel a vessel by steam in 1543, but the claim rests on doubtful authority. The French physicist Papin, born in 1647, and others in France, England, and the United States, who experimented with more or less result toward the end which Fulton reached, receive at the hands of Renwick the attention due to their efforts, and thus the historical evolution of the steamboat is sufficiently shown in the following account.

Robert Fulton was born at Little Britain, Pennsylvania, in 1765. He went to London and studied painting under Benjamin West, but in 1793 devoted himself wholly to civil and mechanical engineering. In 1794 he removed to Paris, where he conducted many experiments on the lines which finally led to his great achievement. Fulton died in New York in 1815.

This selection is by James Renwick.

Time: 1807
Place: Hudson River

Until Watt had completed the structure of the double-acting condensing-engine the application of steam to any but the single object of pumping water had been almost impracticable. It was not enough, in order to render it applicable to general purposes, that the condensation of the water should take place in a separate vessel, and that steam should itself be used, instead of atmospheric pressure, as the moving power; but it was also necessary that the steam should act as well during the ascent as during the descent of the piston. Before the method of paddle-wheels could be successfully introduced it was, in addition, necessary that a ready and convenient mode of changing the motion of the piston into one continuous and rotary should be discovered. All these improvements upon the original form of the steam-engine are due to Watt, and he did not complete their perfect combination before the year 1786.

Evans, who, in America, saw the possibility of constructing a double-acting engine even before Watt, and had made a model of his machine, did not succeed in obtaining funds to make an experiment upon a large scale before 1801. We conceive, therefore, that all those who projected the application of steam to vessels before 1786 may be excluded, without ceremony, from the list of those entitled to compete with Fulton for the honors of invention. No one, indeed, could have seen the powerful action of a pumping-engine without being convinced that the energy, which was applied so successfully to that single purpose, might be made applicable to many others; but those who entertained a belief that the original atmospheric engine, or even the single-acting engine of Watt, could be applied to propel boats by paddle-wheels showed a total ignorance of mechanical principles. This is more particularly the case with all those whose projects bore the strong est resemblance to the plan which Fulton afterward carried successfully into effect. Those who approached most nearly to the attainment of success were they who were farthest removed from the plan of Fulton. His application was founded on the proper ties of Watt’s double-acting engine, and could not have been used at all until that instrument of universal application had received the last finish of its inventor.

In this list of failures, from proposing to do what the instrument they employed was incapable of performing, we do not hesitate to include Savary, Papin, Jonathan Hulls, Perier, the Marquis de Joufiroy, and all the other names of earlier date than 1786, whom the jealousy of the French and English nations has drawn from oblivion for the purpose of contesting the priority of Fulton’s claims. The only competitor whom they might have brought forward with some shadow of plausibility is Watt himself. No sooner had that illustrious inventor completed his double-acting engine than he saw at a glance the vast field of its application. Navigation and locomotion were not omitted; but, living in an inland town, and in a country possessing no rivers of importance, his views were limited to canals alone. In this direction he saw an immediate objection to the use of any apparatus of which so powerful an agent as his engine would be the mover; for it was clear that the injury which would be done to the banks of the canal would prevent the possibility of its introduction. Watt, therefore, after having conceived the idea of a steamboat, laid it aside as unlikely to be of any practical value.

The idea of applying steam to navigation was not confined to Europe. Numerous Americans entertained hopes of attaining the same object, but, before 1786, with the same want of any reasonable hopes of success. Their fruitless projects were, how ever, rebuked by Franklin, who, reasoning upon the capabilities of the engine in its original form, did not hesitate to declare all their schemes impracticable.

Among those who, before the completion of Watt’s invention, attempted the structure of steamboats, must be named with praise Fitch and Rumsey. They, unlike those whose names have been cited, were well aware of the real difficulties which they were to overcome; and both were the authors of plans which, if the engine had been incapable of further improvement, might have had a partial and limited success. Fitch’s trial was made in 1783, and Rumsey’s in 1787. The latter date is subsequent to Watt’s double-acting engine; but, as the project consisted merely in pumping in water to be afterward forced out at the stern, the single-acting engine was probably employed. Evans, whose engine might have answered the purpose, was employed in the daily business of a millwright, and, although he might at any time have driven these competitors from the field, took no steps to apply his dormant invention.

Fitch, who had watched the graceful and rapid way of the Indian pirogue, saw in the oscillating motion of the old pumping engine the means of impelling paddles in a manner similar to that given them by the human arm. This idea is extremely ingen ious, and was applied in a simple and beautiful manner; but the engine was yet too feeble and cumbrous to yield an adequate force; and, when it received its great improvement from Watt, a more efficient mode of propulsion became practicable, and must have superseded Fitch’s paddles had they even come into general use.

In the latter stages of Fitch’s investigations he became aware of the value of Watt’s double-acting engine, and refers to it as a valuable addition to his means of success; but it does not appear to have occurred to him that, with this improved power, methods of far greater efficiency than those to which he had been limited before this invention was completed had now become practicable.

Continued.

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