The one hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the invention of the steamboat will be celebrated on August 17. The incident which has prompted this celebration was the voyage of Robert Fulton’s Clermont from New York City to Albany. But was Fulton actually the inventor of the steamboat? His craft was far from being the most mechanically perfect vessel built up to that time. It was considerably slower than the boat built by John Fitch some seventeen years before and not one of its parts was original with Fulton. To answer this question properly, an inspection of the major candidates for this honor is necessary. The favorite rival is John Fitch, but there are many others, the Frenchman Jouffrey, the Englishman Symington, and the Americans Morey, Rumsey, Livingston, and Stevens. Although Fulton was a latecomer to the development of steamboats, he was the first inventor to have more than one boat operating at the same time, or to keep his ships operating for more than one or two seasons.
Many elements of the modern steam engine were incorporated by Thomas Newcomen, who, in 1705, patented the first engine capable of transforming the energy of steam into mechanical motion with any degree of efficiency. Several attempts were made to adapt the reciprocating motion of this “atmospheric engine” to the rotary motion needed to turn the paddle wheel of a boat, but with little success. The greatest single advancement in the design of the steam engine was fostered in 1765 by James Watt with his idea of installing a separate condenser as a replacement for the inefficient jet spray cooling arrangement which had characterized the earlier engines. By adding this device, the cylinder would remain hot, while the condenser could be kept relatively cool. Here at last was an engine efficient enough to drive boats. However, sidetracked by other projects, Watt was unable to set up a full scale engine until 1776.
In the year that Watt brought forth this improved engine, a French nobleman, the marquis de Jouffrey d’Abbans, launched a steamboat. However, Jouffrey, like his predecessors, was content with the Newcomen engine and utilized a propulsion system, in which his engine was connected to a mechanical “webbed foot” fastened to the end of a rod. Although this arrangement seems absurd today, it was well suited to the Newcomen engine’s irregular, uneven, strokes. Despite sound theory, it soon was found that the force of the current kept the paddles from opening even for the work stroke. A second boat, equipped with a more satisfactory propelling device, a paddle wheel, was ready for trial in 1783. The boat moved slowly against the current for about fifteen minutes before both the hull and boiler split wide open. However imperfect this experiment had been, Jouffrey was the first man who can be proved to have made a boat move under steam power.
Understandably, America’s first steamboat experiments were not conducted in the seacoast regions, but rather far inland where sails were of little use. The first name actively associated with American steamboating is that of James Rumsey, an innkeeper in the wilderness settlement of Bath, West Virginia. For many years this man and John Fitch of Windsor, Connecticut, waged bitter campaigns for the right to be named the inventor of the steamboat. The outcome of this battle was indeed discouraging and pathetic for both. By 1785, Rumsey had conducted preliminary experiments in jet propulsion, involving a stream of water ejected from the stern of a boat by a steam pump. While Rumsey was theorizing, Fitch, a former silversmith and surveyor, was busily devising an engine for his first model boat. Being virtually ignorant of British advances in this field, he developed his own plant from printed descriptions of out-dated engines. The rivals toiled for many years, working solely by trial-and-error methods. There were never sufficient funds or interested backers, and on several occasions both approached the point of abandoning their dreams. In 1787, in collaboration with Henry Voight, a German watchmaker, Fitch produced a craft which ran a successful trial with one exception . . . , the boat never exceeded a speed of three knots. Obviously such a boat could not hope to compete with the stage coaches which sped along the shores of the Delaware, nor would it be capable of stemming the powerful current of the Mississippi. But, despite its weaknesses, here was the first steamboat to move consistently on American waters, and it was by far the most efficient craft built up to that time.
Hearing of Fitch’s successful trials at Philadelphia, the heretofore secretive Rumsey finally declared himself a rival steamboat inventor. In August, 1787, he began construction of an engine similar to Watt’s early single-acting engines. By September his boat was ready for trial. Carrying a two- ton load plus the machinery, the boat moved against the current at two knots; moved, that is, until the boiler burst, forcing Rumsey to scull back to the pier. A second trial was made in December and proved quite successful, the craft noisily cruising back and forth before the town wharf at four knots for nearly two hours.
Here now were two boats which had moved consistently. Both had advantages in their propulsion systems. Although Fitch’s idea of paddles was more sound than Rumsey’s jet propulsion, when considered in the light of widespread use, the simple mechanism of Rumsey’s boat was much better suited to those days of few mechanics. A reconciliation between these two men might well have produced a steamboat of commercial quality a decade before Fulton’s voyage. But, the fanatic, Fitch, always ill at ease in society, had one purpose in life ... to demonstrate that, in his own words, “little Johnny Fitch can do something of importance.” Rumsey was capable of compromise; Fitch was not.
Rumsey’s progress now slowed to a snail’s pace due to an absence of backers and his lavish expenditures. Fitch, however, had managed to organize a company which, in 1790, built a boat capable of making eight knots. Philadelphia’s Federal Gazette and other Pennsylvania papers soon carried advertisements offering steamboat passage from Philadelphia to Burlington, Bristol, Bordentown, and Trenton, the most expensive fare being five shillings to Trenton. Despite its efficiency and low cost, the boat lost money. Apparently Philadelphians preferred traditional modes of travel and considered such a glorified teakettle with its noise and dirt much too risky. This failure was the final push downhill for Fitch. Personal troubles increased his misery, and finally he abandoned his project, returning to his earlier trade of silversmith. Wandering aimlessly, eventually he settled in Bardstown, Kentucky, where he died, the victim of an overdose of opium pills washed down with raw whiskey.
Rumsey also was up and down the financial ladder. Nevertheless, in December, 1792, he was sufficiently solvent to assemble a steamboat which performed moderately well in preliminary runs. Before a public trial could be arranged, Rumsey succumbed to emotional apoplexy. Further trials were conducted by his backers and proved disappointing. The boat’s speed of four knots could not be compared with Fitch’s achievements of 1790. Fitch had won his race with Rumsey.
News of the Rumsey-Fitch duel spread throughout the world. Grossly exaggerated rumors were heard in Scotland by James Taylor and William Symington, a man still claimed by British writers as the inventor of the steamboat. These two men immediately appealed to Taylor’s employer, Patrick Miller, and received sufficient funds to mount a half-ton engine on a small but handsome skiff, complete with paddle wheels, which Miller used as a pleasure craft at his estate. A successful run was made in October, 1788, the boat’s speed exceeding five knots, greater than that then claimed by either Rumsey or Fitch. The inventors then moved to a larger model, which navigated easily at five to seven knots. Although Symington was enthusiastic over the results of the trial, his patron was disgusted. Miller was amazed that the inventor had not noticed what he considered obvious faults within the engine. As a result, the engine was sold and, the project was abandoned.
An interesting aspect of this particular experiment was the relative ease with which the boat was assembled. The engine was provided by Watt, a brilliant engineer. The propulsion system was the product of years of experimentation by Miller himself and financial worries were nil. Both Fitch and Rumsey assumed that upon conceiving the idea of a steamboat, they had actually invented it. Neither fully realized that every part of this machine had to be built in exact correlation with every other part; that its success was a function of minute calculations. America was attacking the problem with craftsmen; England, with engineers.
The ideas which Fitch and Rumsey fostered surged across the country and America displayed the initial signs of “steamboat fever.” Through Yankee ingenuity, copper stills became boilers, cylinders were forged in blacksmith shops, and makeshift engines appeared on rowboats and longboats, pushing these overloaded craft along at two or three knots.
Samuel Morey of Orford, New Hampshire, a more serious-minded artisan, successfully built several steamboats to navigate the upper Connecticut River and surrounding ponds. In 1797, this exacting and persevering mechanical genius brought forth a steamboat which incorporated an important advancement in design. Traveling in excess of eight knots, Morey’s boat was propelled “by means of two wheels, one on each side. The shaft ran across the boat with a crank in the middle, worked from the beam of the engine with a shackle bar.” It was a simple and efficient system, certainly greatly superior to the complicated contraptions of his forerunners and yet, nothing came of his efforts. When his backers ran into financial difficulties, Morey moved on to fame in other fields.
Chancellor Robert R. Livingston and John Stevens are linked not only as brothers- in-law, but also as partners in a steamboat project begun in 1798. Livingston, a politically powerful self-claimed mechanical genius, was doomed to failure as a steamboat inventor, primarily because of a niggardly, dogmatic attitude, and his refusal to heed the advice of his craftsmen and partner, Stevens. When in 1799 Livingston finally allowed his partner to apply some original ideas to their common boat, the success or failure of Steven’s propulsion scheme was undecided . . . the cheap materials of Livingston’s construction disintegrated under the tremendous vibrations of the machinery. Believing the strains caused by piston vibration were too great to overcome, Stevens decided to ignore that type of engine entirely and designed a high pressure engine much like a modern turbine. His machinery was admirably simple. A brass cylinder laid in the bottom of the boat contained two propeller-like blades, which alternately received steam pressure. This force turned a shaft fitted with a screw propeller. Since no condensation was involved, no piston, condenser, air pump, or valves were needed. His 25-foot boat operated comfortably at four knots until cold weather presented the problem of blade clearances within the cylinder, which varied with changes in temperature. Unable to solve this dilemma, Stevens returned to the Watt-type reciprocating engine. Now his pace was disastrously slow. His position in the forefront of American steamboat investigation soon was to be challenged by a new genius, Robert Fulton.
Fulton’s name appears initially in connection with steamboats a few months after the failure of Rumsey’s boat in 1793. After conducting exacting experiments with a small model boat, he decided that the paddle wheel was the most efficient source of propulsion. He then consciously set out to combine existing discoveries into an effective steamboat, noticing carefully the necessary correlations between engine and hull design. Backed by Chancellor Livingston, Fulton conducted experiments with several engine and hull types, until, in 1806, he received permission from the British government to export to this country an engine built to his own specifications by Boulton and Watt, the leading engineering concern in this field.
The hull of the steamboat which eventually would be known as the Clermont was built at the yard of Charles Brownne at Corlear’s Hook. It was long and narrow—150 feet by thirteen feet—with a freeboard of less than four feet. In shaping the hull, Fulton’s experiments had prompted him to disregard curves completely; the bow and stern were cut off at a sixty-degree angle to form a point.
August 17 was set as the date for the run to Albany, a formidable trip of 150 miles. When sufficient steam had been generated, Fulton ordered that the engine be started. The uncovered paddle wheels creaking and splashing, the boat edged out into the stream . . . and stopped. Something had gone wrong, but fortunately the trouble was minor and was soon remedied. The boat moved on. Twenty-four hours later and 110 miles up the river, the Clermont anchored off Chancellor Livingston’s estate. Underway again at nine the next morning, the boat arrived in Albany, a distance of forty miles, in eight hours, 150 miles in 32 hours—more than fast enough to compete with the river sloops which normally required four days for the journey. On September 4, 1807, with fourteen paying passengers aboard, the Clermont’s commercial role was begun.
From the moment the Clermont moored at the Albany wharf, the chain of successful steamboats in America was never broken. Busily, Fulton projected new boats. Nicholas Roosevelt was sent to the Mississippi to study its possibilities for steam navigation. John R. Livingston was sold the right to run a steamboat from New York to New Brunswick, New Jersey. “Steamboat fever,” with its battles, monopolies, and progress was showing more than occasional symptoms now. This was a full-blown disease. Yes, the steamboat had been invented, but the question is ... by whom?
James Watt’s engine provided the seed for the steamboat’s successful evolution. The straight line development of a boat of commercial quality began with the work of Rumsey and Fitch. These two men failed in their efforts because of a fundamental error in method. True, Fitch had built a successful boat in 1790, but since he did not understand what he had done, he was incapable of repeating his success. The year following Fitch’s triumph, not one steamboat was operating anywhere; for sixteen years steamboat experiments failed with few exceptions. Samuel Morey futilely worked in a fashion similar to Fitch’s, while Symington’s project was thwarted by the vacillating interest of British sophisticates. The aristocrats, Livingston and Stevens, erred in employing simple craftsmen to carry out theories too often based on unscientific inspiration. However, Stevens might well have beaten Fulton to the problem’s solution had he not turned his interest to high pressure systems.
By modern standards, Fulton’s first boat was ridiculous; so long and thin that it was unsafe, and using an engine cluttered with needless complications. Yet, Fulton knew exactly what he had done, and why he had done it: weaknesses which developed were recognized immediately. Thus Fulton’s great contribution to steamboating was not the Clermont and her successful voyage to Albany, but rather his ability to improve engine and propulsion design as he went along, and to build effective steamboats at will. Through Fulton’s efforts, the steamboat ceased to be a freak. It became a practical means of transportation, a machine which people would accept. Our history books are correct: Robert Fulton was the inventor of the steamboat. Whether or not he was the most creative and the most useful contributor to the invention’s development is a matter for individual decision.