The Hudson
The Rivers of America Series
by: Carl Carmer   Illustrated by: Stow Wengenroth
Published: New York, Farrar & Rhinehart, 1939

CHAPTER 18

Upriver in a Teakettle

"Ye banks and braes o’ bonny Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?"

and the eight Livingston girls around him joined in, raising their soft voices in the misty mid-August afternoon:

"How can ye chant, ye little birds?"

The three Livingston men, putting their heads close to the heads of pompous Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill, learned Dr. McNeven, and the very English, very Reverend Dean of Ripon Cathedral, offered baritone support as Fulton swung into a high sweet tenor:

"And I sae weary fu’ of care!"

Above the loud splashing of the circling paddles that sometimes threw water aft and too close rose the tenuous melody of the love song:

"Ye break my heart, ye little birds . ."

Little Sarah Barker, whose father had kept in his warehouse for months the engine that was now performing so valiantly amidships, must have wondered as she sat on a plank across the stern of the boat, with her legs sticking straight out in front of her, why they sang so sad a song when they were so happy.

There could be no questioning the joy of all the singers. But happier than tiny big-eyed Sarah, happier than noble Mr. Fulton as he sang tenor and turned upon Harriet Livingston eyes "glorious with love and genius," happier than Harriet who delightedly returned the ardent gaze of her long-haired, broad-browed suitor, was that shrewd opportunist, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of the state of New York.

Chancellor Robert R. Livingston
A ride on a steamboat was no novelty to the volatile, redheaded chancellor. He knew that the idea had been in the air before the close of the Revolution. He knew that John Fitch—now sleeping in a suicide’s grave in Kentucky—had been running a regular if profitless steam packet service on the Delaware with landings at Trenton, Bordentown, Bristol, Burlington, and Philadelphia seventeen years before, in 1790, when Fulton was painting miniatures. The chancellor had even ridden in a little steamer of John Fitch’s on the Collect Pond in New York City in 1796, and in the same year Yankee Captain Morey in a steamboat of his own devising had taken him up the Hudson to Greenwich Village and back and obtained from him expression of "great satisfaction" in her performance.

His brother-in-law, John Stevens, puttering with horticulture, real estate, and education at Castle Point, Hoboken, had found time to cooperate with his sons John and Robert in the building of a number of steamboats. The boys had run one of them, the Little Juliana, across the Hudson and back in May of 1804, using twin-screw propellers instead of paddles. Yet the chancellor chose to regard the maker of the boat on which he now rode, named Clermont for his Hudson River country home, as the inventor of the steamboat.

The distinguished gentleman’s cheerful mood could be attributed to many causes. One of them was that before this present successful venture Nicholas Roosevelt, who had been associated with him, had lost interest in steamboating on the Hudson and had set his agile mind to considering other schemes—keeping only a negligible interest in the patent rights of Fulton’s boat.

Another was that John Stevens had refused an invitation to become a partner a year ago. To make the triumph of the Livingston family more complete, dear Dr. Mitchill, now being transported by the Clermont, had that very spring in his capacity of state senator secured repeal of the privilege previously granted by the state legislature to miserable, defeated John Fitch—that of making and operating the only boats "urged or impelled by the force of fire or steam" in all New York waters. And then the legislature had, with considerable ridicule of the practicability of steam travel, granted to the chancellor and his young partner the rights just revoked.

Robert Fulton
Now Robert Fulton had had the brains to put together most of the good ideas that had already been used in other steamboats and had constructed a packet which, if properly handled, would make money. So would other packets like it. There was even more need for steamboats on western rivers than on the Hudson. The prospect opened by the steadily chugging paddles had no horizons.

And the chancellor knew a secret. Fulton was to become a member of the family. The Pennsylvania farmer’s son was to marry the daughter of Walter Livingston and Cornelia Schuyler—pretty, harp-playing, picture-painting Harriet. The chancellor was to give out the good news just before they left the boat at Clermont and then they would all go ashore for the betrothal feast.

Fed by the black cook, Richard Wilson, and attended by stewards both black and white, the joyful party whiled away the night of August seventeenth and enthusiastically expressed their delight when the chancellor made announcement of the engagement of Harriet and Robert a little before one o’clock the next day. While they refreshed themselves with wines and food that afternoon, Andrew Brink, once commander of the good sloop Maria and now captain of the steamboat Clermont, rowed across the river to fetch his wife so that he might keep his promise to "take her to Albany on a boat driven by a teakettle."

"Toot" Fulton had not had to hire a whale to pull his boat after all, as Thomas Paine had once suggested. Whether the Clermont looked like a "backwoods sawmill mounted on a scow and set afire" or like a "monster moving on the waters defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames and smoke," the important idea was that she moved against the current at about five miles an hour. On realization of that fact in Albany next day, her Scottish chief engineer fittingly celebrated it by getting so drunk that he was discharged.

And when on her return trip Chancellor Livingston left her at Clermont Landing and, standing on his own pier, watched her dwindle from his sight downriver, he knew that at last, more than a score of years after a steamboat had first been contrived, after fifteen steamboats had been built and operated on American waters by eight different inventors, a sixteenth boat made by Robert Fulton had established steam packet service under his control on the Hudson.

Citation: Carmer, Carl. "Upriver in a Teakettle." The Hudson. Rivers of America. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1939. Chapter 18, 193-197.