APPLICATION OF STEAM TO NAVIGATION—ROBERT FULTON-CHANCELLOR LIVINGSTON—LAUNCH OF THE CLERMONT—SHE CROSSES THE HUDSON RIVER—HER VOYAGE TO ALBANY—DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENE—FULTON'S OWN ACCOUNT—LEGISLATIVE PROTECTION GRANTED TO FULTON—THE PENDULUM-ENGINE—CONSTRUCTION OF OTHER STEAMBOATS—THE STEAM-FRIGATE FULTON THE FIRST—THE FIRST OCEAN-STEAMER, THE SAVANNAH—ACCOUNT OF HER VOYAGE—MISAPPREHENSIONS UPON THE SUBJECT.

In the year 1807, a new agent was introduced into the science of navigation,—one which was destined to effect as great a change in the duration of a voyage at sea as the compass had effected in its practicability. Steam was applied to a boat upon the Hudson, and the Clermont, propelled by wheels, steamed from Jersey City to Albany. Though this was an event that immediately concerned river-navigation, and though twelve years were to elapse before the accomplishment of the first ocean steam-voyage, we cannot with propriety omit an account of the conception, construction, and success of the first river-steamboat.

Robert Fulton was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, in the year 1765. He manifested a genius for mechanics at an early age, though portrait-painting was his first profession. He spent many years in England and France, and conceived the idea of a vessel propelled by steam in 1793. He received no countenance from Napoleon, and returned to the United States in December, 1806. His mind was now occupied with two projects,—the invention of submarine explosives and the construction of a steamboat. He published a work entitled "Torpedo War," with the motto, "The liberty of the seas will be the happiness of the earth." He renewed his acquaintance with Chancellor Livingston, whom he had known when ambassador to Paris. This gentleman had long had entire faith in the practicability of steam-navigation, and as early as 1798 had obtained from the Legislature of New York a monopoly of all such navigation upon the waters of the State, provided he would within twelve months build a boat which should go four miles an hour by steam. When they met in America, in 1806, the two entered into a partnership and commenced the construction of a boat. Finding the expenses unexpectedly heavy, they offered to sell one-third of their patent; but no one would invest in an enterprise universally deemed hopeless. The boat was nevertheless launched, in the spring of 1807, from the ship-yard of Charles Brown, on the East River. She was supplied with an engine built in England, and was driven by steam, in August, from the New York side to the Jersey shore. The incredulous crowd who had assembled to laugh stayed to wonder and applaud.

The Clermont soon after sailed for Albany, her departure having been announced in the newspapers as a grand and unequalled curiosity. "She excited," says Colden, in his Life of Fulton, "the astonishment of the inhabitants of the shores of the Hudson, many of whom had not heard even of an engine, much less of a steamboat. There were many descriptions of the effects of her first appearance upon the people of the bank of the river: some of these were ridiculous, but some of them were of such a character as nothing but an object of real grandeur could have excited. She was described, by some who had indistinctly seen her passing in the night, as a monster moving on the waters, defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames and smoke. She had the most terrific appearance from other vessels which were navigating the river when she was making her passage. The first steamboat—as others yet do—used dry pine wood for fuel, which sends forth a column of ignited vapor many feet above the flue, and whenever the fire is stirred a galaxy of sparks fly off, and in the night have a very brilliant and beautiful appearance. This uncommon light first attracted the attention of the crews of other vessels. Notwithstanding the wind and tide, which were adverse to its approach, they saw with astonishment that it was rapidly coming toward them; and when it came so near that the noise of the machinery and paddles was heard, the crews—if what was said in the newspapers of the time be true—in some instances shrunk beneath their decks from the terrific sight and left their vessels to go on shore, whilst others prostrated themselves and besought Providence to protect them from the approaches of the horrible monster which was marching on the tide and lighting its path by the fires which it vomited."

Fulton himself wrote the following account of the trip up the river and back, and published it in the American Citizen:—"I left New York on Monday at one o'clock, and arrived at Clermont, the seat of Chancellor Livingston, at one o'clock on Tuesday: time, twenty-four hours; distance, one hundred and ten miles. On Wednesday, I departed from the chancellor's at nine in the morning, and arrived at Albany at five in the afternoon: time, eight hours; distance, forty miles. The sum is one hundred and fifty miles in thirty-two hours,—equal to near five miles an hour.

"On Thursday, at nine o'clock in the morning, I left Albany, and arrived at the chancellor's at six in the evening: I started from thence at seven, and arrived at New York at four in the afternoon; time, thirty hours; space run through, one hundred and fifty miles,—equal to five miles an hour. Throughout my whole way, both going and returning, the wind was ahead: no advantage could be derived from my sail: the whole has therefore been performed by the power of the steam-engine."

In a letter to one of his friends, Fulton wrote:—"I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward, and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. The morning I left New York there were not perhaps thirty persons who believed that the boat would even move one mile an hour, or be of the least utility; and while we were putting off from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic remarks. This is the way in which ignorant men compliment what they call philosophers and projectors.... Although the prospect of personal emolument has been some inducement to me, yet I feel infinitely more pleasure in reflecting on the immense advantage that my country will derive from the invention."

The Clermont was now advertised as a regular passenger-boat upon the Hudson. She met with numerous accidents during the season; and her obvious defects would have been remedied by the application of as obvious improvements by Fulton himself, had not other persons anticipated him by taking out patents for improvements which they themselves proposed. They thus caused him infinite annoyance, and even contested his right as an inventor. Shipmasters, too, who looked upon his boat as an intruder upon their domain, ran their vessels purposely foul of her on more than one occasion. The Legislature saw fit to counteract the effects of this hostility by passing an act prolonging Livingston and Fulton's privilege five years for every additional boat established,—the whole time, however, not to exceed thirty years. It also made all combinations to destroy the Clermont offences punishable by fine and imprisonment.

Thus protected, the Clermont ran throughout the season, always well laden with passengers. In the winter she was enlarged and improved. The wheel-guards were strengthened, and became a prominent and essential feature of the boat. The rudder was replaced by one of much larger dimensions, and a steering-wheel towards the bow was substituted for the ordinary tiller. The accommodations for passengers were made much more comfortable,—luxurious even,—and the public taste was consulted in the application of numerous coats of rather gaudy paint. She then commenced her trips for the season of 1808. She started regularly at the appointed hour,—at first much to the discontent of travellers who had before been waited for by both sloops and stages. At the end of the season the Clermont was altogether too small for the crowds who thronged to take passage. Two boats, the Car of Neptune and the Paragon, were therefore soon added to the line.

Fulton, menaced by constant contestation of his rights, took out a patent in 1809 from the General Government, and another, for improvements, in 1811. His system was so simple—the adaptation of paddle-wheels to the axle of the crank of Watt's engine—that it seemed then, as it has proved since, almost impossible by any specifications effectually to protect it. The famous Pendulum Company caused Fulton for a time much trouble. They built a boat the wheels of which were to be moved by a pendulum. While she was upon the stocks and the wheels were resisted only by the air, the labor of a few men made them turn regularly and rapidly; but when she was launched, and the pendulum encountered the resistance of the water, neither pendulum, wheels, nor boat would stir. The Pendulum Company were aghast at this phenomenon, and clearly saw that if the boat was to be moved by the wheels, and the wheels by the pendulum, something must be devised of sufficient power to move the pendulum. There was nothing, evidently, but the steam-engine; and so they copied Fulton's. Lawsuits followed; and in his argument in behalf of Fulton Mr. Emmet thus spoke of the Pendulum gentlemen:—"They are men who never waste health and life in midnight vigils and painful study; who never dream of science in the broken slumbers of an exhausted mind; who bestow upon the construction of a steamboat just as much mathematical calculation and philosophical research as on the purchase of a sack of wheat or a barrel of ashes." Fulton gained his cause, and the boat which was to go by clock-work was prohibited from going even by steam.

In 1812, Fulton built the Fire-Fly; and, as the town of Newburgh, half-way to Albany, offered sufficient traffic to support at least one boat, she was placed upon that route. In the same year he constructed two ferry-boats for crossing the Hudson, making them with rudder and bow at either end. He also contrived floating docks for their reception, and a method of stopping them without concussion. In 1813, he built a steam-vessel of four hundred tons and unusual strength, to ply in Long Island Sound between New York and New Haven. She was the first steamboat constructed with a round bottom. We quote a passage referring to her from a work published in 1817:—"During a great part of her route she would be as much exposed as she could be on the ocean: it was therefore necessary to make her a perfect sea-boat. She passes daily, and at all times of the tide, the dangerous strait of Hell-Gate, where for the distance of nearly a mile she often encounters a current running at the rate of at least six miles an hour. For some distance she has within a few yards of her, on each side, rocks and whirlpools which rival Scylla and Charybdis even as they are poetically described. This passage, previously to its being navigated by this vessel, was always supposed to be impassable except at certain stages of the tide; and many a shipwreck has been occasioned by a small mistake in the time. The boat passing through these whirlpools with rapidity, while the angry waters are foaming against her bows and appear to raise themselves in obstinate resistance to her passage, is a proud triumph of human ingenuity. The owners, as the highest tribute they had in their power to offer to his genius, and as an evidence of the gratitude they owed him, called her the Fulton."

Early in 1814, the United States and England being at war, Fulton conceived the idea of a steam vessel-of-war, capable of carrying a strong battery, with furnaces for red-hot shot, and sailing four miles an hour. Congress authorized the construction of such a floating battery, and the keel was laid on the 18th of June. The vessel was launched on the 27th of October the same year, in the midst of excited and applauding throngs. Before she sailed, however, her engineer and builder had been removed to another sphere: Fulton died on the 24th of February, 1815. The Legislature paid an unusual tribute to his memory: they resolved to wear mourning for three weeks. This manifestation of regret for the loss of a man who had never held office nor served his country in any public capacity was entirely unprecedented.

On the 4th of July, the steam-frigate made a trial trip, and, with her engines alone, sailed fifty-three miles in eight hours and twenty minutes. The following description of the Fulton the First, as she was called, is given by the committee appointed to examine her in behalf of Congress:—"She is a structure resting on two boats and keels separated from end to end by a channel fifteen feet wide and sixty-six feet long. One boat contains the caldrons of copper to prepare her steam; the cylinder of iron, its piston, lever, and wheels, occupy part of the other. The water-wheel revolves in the space between them. The main or gun deck supports the armament, and is protected by a parapet, four feet ten inches thick, of solid timber, pierced by embrasures. Through thirty port-holes as many thirty-two pounders are intended to fire red-hot shot, which can be heated with great safety and convenience. Her upper or spar deck, upon which several thousand men might parade, is encompassed by a bulwark, which affords safe quarters: she is rigged with two stout masts, each of which supports a large lateen yard and sails: she has two bowsprits and jibs, and four rudders, one at each extremity of each boat, so that she can be steered with either end foremost: her machinery is calculated for the addition of an engine which will discharge an immense column of water, which it is intended to throw upon the decks and through the port-holes of an enemy and thereby deluge her armament and ammunition. If in addition to all this we suppose her to be furnished, according to Mr. Fulton's intention, with hundred-pound Columbiads, two suspended from each bow so as to discharge a ball of that size into an enemy's ship ten or twelve feet below her water-line, it must be allowed that she has the appearance, at least, of being the most formidable engine for warfare that human ingenuity has contrived."

Such was the first step towards the establishment of a steam-navy. Forty years afterwards, George Steers built the propeller-frigate Niagara; and the reader, by comparing the two vessels, will have an adequate idea of the immense strides made in naval mechanics and engineering during the lapse of less than half a century. In Europe the size and qualities of the Fulton the First were at the time ludicrously exaggerated, as will be seen from the following passage from a Scotch treatise on steamships. After magnifying her proportions threefold, the author continues:—"The thickness of her sides is thirteen feet of alternate oak plank and cork wood: she carries forty-four guns, four of which are hundred-pounders; quarterdeck and forecastle guns, forty-four-pounders; and, further to annoy an enemy attempting to board, can discharge one hundred gallons of boiling water in a minute, and, by mechanism, brandishes three hundred cutlasses with the utmost regularity over her gunwales, works also an equal number of heavy iron spikes of great length, darting them from her sides with prodigious force and withdrawing them every quarter of a minute!"

The frigate made a second experimental trip, on the 11th of September, with her armament and stores on board, her draught of water being eleven feet. She changed her course by reversing the motion of her wheels. She fired salutes as she passed the forts, and performed manoeuvres around the United States frigate Java. The machinery was not affected in the slightest degree by the detonation of her guns. Her average speed was five and a half miles an hour,—Fulton having contracted to obtain three miles an hour only. The city of New York now felt itself invulnerable; but the cessation of hostilities, which occurred soon after, precluded the necessity of employing her as a means of defence. It is probable that such a contrivance, even in the present advanced state of naval warfare, would be found useful in protecting the mouths of harbors,—not as a frigate, but as a floating battery or movable fortress. The fact that this vessel was built by Fulton makes him the father not only of steam-navigation, but of the steam-navies of the world as well. We shall have occasion to chronicle at intervals, as we progress in our record, the successive steps of improvement in the science, till we arrive at the era of steam floating palaces upon American rivers, of steam pleasure-yachts owned by American merchants, of commercial steam-leviathans, American and English, bearing the names of continents and oceans, and of the peerless steam-frigate to which we have already alluded,—"a noble ship with a noble name, bound, in 1857, upon the noblest of missions."

The history of the first ocean-steamer is very incompletely and unsatisfactorily told in the annals of the time. The following is the substance of all that has been preserved of the first transatlantic steam-voyage on record:

The Savannah, a steamer of three hundred and fifty tons, intended to ply between New York and Liverpool, under the command of Captain Moses Rodgers, was launched at New York on the 22d of August, 1818. She made a preliminary voyage to the city whose name she bore, in April, 1819, where she arrived in seven days, after a very boisterous passage. She was several times compelled to take in her wheels—having machinery for the purpose—and rely upon her sails, which was done with all the promptitude and safety anticipated. This trial trip left no doubt that she would successfully accomplish the object for which she was built. She left Savannah for Liverpool soon after, and the New York newspapers of the second week in June announced that she had been spoken at sea, all well. In the log-book of the Pluto, which arrived soon after at Baltimore from Bremen, occurred the following passage:

"June 2.—Clear weather and smooth sea: lat. 42°, long. 59°, spoke and passed the elegant steamship Savannah, eight days out from Savannah to St. Petersburg by way of Liverpool. She passed us at the rate of nine or ten knots; and the captain informed us she worked remarkably well, and the greatest compliment we could bestow was to give her three cheers, as the happiest effort of mechanical genius that ever appeared on the Western ocean. She returned the compliment."

Niles' New York Register of the 21st of August contains the following paragraph in italics at the head of its column of foreign news:—"The steamship Savannah, Captain Moses Rodgers,—the first that ever crossed the Atlantic,—arrived at Liverpool in twenty-five days from Savannah, all well, to the great astonishment of the people of that place. She worked her engine eighteen days." The next record of her movements is that she sailed in August for St. Petersburg, passing Elsinore on the 13th, and that the British "wisely supposed her visit to be somehow connected with the ambitious views of the United States." She arrived back at Savannah in November, in fifty days from St. Petersburg vi Copenhagen and Arendal in Norway, all well, and, in the language of Captain Rodgers, "with neither a screw, bolt, or a rope-yarn parted, though she encountered a very heavy gale in the North Sea." She left Savannah for Washington on the 4th of December, losing her boats and anchors off Cape Hatteras.

It is a singular fact, and one not creditable to the English, that many of their works treating of inventions and the progress of the arts and sciences entirely overlook this voyage out and back of the Savannah, and uniformly make the British steamers Sirius and Great Western the pioneers, in 1837, in the great work of ocean steam-navigation. The authors of these works err either through design or ignorance, and in either case display a marked unfitness for their vocation. Were they to consult the London and Liverpool newspapers of the time, they would find ample record of the accomplishment of a steam-voyage nearly twenty years before the period to which they assign it. We have said enough, however, to prove that the first steam-vessel that crossed the ocean was built in New York, and that Moses Rodgers, her captain, was an American citizen. When we arrive at the year in which the two British steamers inaugurated steam commercial intercourse between the hemispheres, we shall record it, with due acknowledgment of its importance; but we repeat the assertion that, as the first river-steamer was the Clermont, the first Atlantic steamer was the Savannah: both one and the other were built in New York.