CHAPTER 2
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
Early Development of the Steamboat in America
Early Steamboat Progress in England
Robert Fulton
The Stevens Family
James Rumsey began his experiments in steam navigation in 1774, and in 1786 he succeeded in driving a boat at the rate of four miles an hour, at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, on the Potomac River. His method was a power-driven pumps forcing a stream of water aft, and so propelling the vessel forward. It had been proposed by Bernouilli before and has been reinvented many times since.
Hydraulic, or "jet propulsion" proposed by Rumsey has never been seriously accepted, but Rumsey received a patent grant from the State of Virginia and addressed a London society "On the Application of Steam." He died in 1793 at the age of 50 years. In 1839 the State of Kentucky voted his son a medal commemorative of the father's services "in giving the world the benefit of the steamboat."
John Fitch, an unfortunate and eccentric inventor, born at Windsor, Connecticut, after years of roaming settled down on the banks of the Delaware River, where in 1785 he conceived a steamboat. Fitch does not seem to have known of any previous progress in the art, and was genuinely surprised when first informed that others had pioneered in the field. Fitch's first model was tried in a stream at Davisville, and in 1785 aid was asked of the General Government in his behalf. This was denied; and Fitch next applied to the Spanish minister, but nothing came of the negotiations.
The following year a grant was made to Fitch by the State of New Jersey, giving him the right to navigation of the waters of the State for fourteen years, and later Pennsylvania made a similar grant. A company, organized to develop Fitch's steamboat, raised capital to build a ship, which was completed in 1787, when a trial revealed many defects. When these had been corrected the boat was found capable of moving at three or four miles an hour, the boiler being of insufficient capacity to maintain a higher speed.
Virginia granted Fitch a patent right and again he sought protection from the General Government. This application led to controversy with Rumsey, Fitch contending that Rumsey's design was similar to the plan of Bernouilli, Franklin, Henry, Paine and others, and he declared that Rumsey's steamboat had not been built until 1786. Rumsey charged that Fitch's pipe boiler was copied from his design. Fitch brought evidence forward to prove that Rumsey had not built such a boiler previous to his own production.
The first boat designed by Fitch was 45 feet in length, with paddles working on the sides. His second ship, built in 1788, was 60 feet long and had similar paddles placed at the stern. Another of Fitch's boats, built in 1790, made seven miles an hour and was placed in service between Burlington, Bristol, Bordentown and Trenton, sometimes leaving the route to accommodate excursions out of Wilmington, Gray's Ferry and Chester. Wescott, in his "Life of John Fitch," reports that this steamboat made between 2,000 and 3,000 miles without serious accident in its first season.
The first printed announcement for steamboat travel appeared in the Federal Gazette and Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, July 26, 1790:
The STEAM BOAT
sets out tomorrow morning at ten o'clock from Arch Street Ferry, in order to take passengers for Burlington, Bristol, Bordentown and Trenton, and return next day.
Fitch's next steamboat, named Perseverance, was begun in 1790, and while it was never completed, it was important in his successful application for patent from the United States Government. Disappointed in his quest for capital, Fitch went to France in I793, and met disappointment there also. In 1796 he returned to America and experimented with a screw-propeller steamboat on Collect Pond, which then occupied that part of New York City where the Tombs Prison stands. In his latter years Fitch settled in Kentucky, on a land grant made to him, continuing his experiments with a model steamboat until he died in 1798.
Currently with Fitch, a number of other American mechanics were at work upon the problem.
Samuel Morey, Nathan Read, Oliver Evans, Elijah Ormsbee and Nicholas Roosevelt were pioneers. Morey began his experiments in 1790, or perhaps earlier, designing and building a small steamboat, which had a trial on the Connecticut River that year. In 1793 Morey built a paddle-wheel steamboat, making a trip from Hartford to New York in 1794. His boat was a stern-wheeler, of five miles' speed. Next he built a side-wheel steamboat at Bordentown, New Jersey, in which he made a trip to Philadelphia in 1797. Morey exhausted his funds and had to abandon his projects, although Livingston, Fulton and Stevens rode in his boat, and Livingston is reported as having offered assistance in the event he could show eight miles' speed.
Morey's important contributions to the development of the steamboat are established, but little is known of the detail of his designs. Unlike others, he sought neither publicity for his plans nor fame for himself, but much credit to the design of stern and side-wheel paddle arrangements is due Morey.
Nathan Read's attention centered upon improvement of boilers to make them strong, light, compact and safe. A boiler patent was granted to him in 1791 Coincidentally patents were granted to Fitch, Rumsey and John Stevens for various methods of applying steam to ship propulsion. Read's fame rests upon his vertical multi-tubular fire-box boiler, now a standard form in general use.
Elijah Ormsbee, a Connecticut Yankee, residing in Rhode Island and financed by David Wilkinson, built a small steamboat in 1792 at Winsor's Cove, Narragansett Bay, employing an "atmospheric engine" and "duck's-foot" paddles, realizing a speed of three miles an hour.
In 1804 Robert L. Stevens crossed from New York to Hoboken in a small steamboat
equipped with the first tubular boiler, and driven by an engine which
worked two four-bladed wheels, five feet in diameter. This first engine
used for a steam propeller was accurately and skillfully made and when
it was put in a new hull, forty years afterward, worked successfully without
alteration, at eight miles an hour.
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