There is a peculiar charm attaching to the figure of Robert Fulton, the attraction that plays about the man who is many-sided, and picturesque on whatever side one looks at him. He was a man at home on both shores of the Atlantic, at a time when such men were rare. He had been taught drawing by Major AndrÉ, when the latter was a prisoner of war in the little Pennsylvania town of Lancaster. He had hung out his sign as Painter of Miniatures at the corner of Second and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia, under the friendly patronage of Benjamin Franklin. He had lodged in London at the house of Benjamin West, and shown his pictures at the Royal Academy. Two great English noblemen became his allies in scientific studies. Napoleon, as First Consul, bargained with him over his invention of torpedoes. Finally he sent the little Clermont up the Hudson under steam. There was a man of rare ability, one who had many hostages to give to fortune. He was the artist turned inventor, as many another has done, and if he was not as great an artist as Leonardo da Vinci neither was Leonardo as great an inventor as Robert Fulton.

Fulton invented a machine for cutting marble, one for spinning flax, a double inclined plane for canal navigation, a machine for twisting rope, an earth-scoop for canal and irrigation purposes, a cable-cutter, the earliest French panorama, a submarine torpedo boat, and the steamboat. Other men had worked over steamboats, but he reached the goal. He made the steamboat practicable, as Watt had the steam-engine. Above all, he was very fortunate; he found his countrymen ready to welcome the Clermont, and to fall in with his plans, an attitude which had not faced certain men in England and in France who had built similar boats earlier than Fulton. Some engineers have been tempted to call him a lucky amateur, a talented artist who happened to become interested in new methods of navigation. If one grants all this there is still the fact that it was the Clermont’s success that opened the watercourses of the world to steam.

“Quicksilver Bob” he was called as a boy in Lancaster, because he used to buy all that metal he could for experiments. Even then he was many-sided. He made designs for firearms and experimented with guns to learn the carrying distance of various bores and balls. There was a factory in Lancaster where arms were being made for the Continental troops, and “Quicksilver Bob” was given the run of the place. In addition he painted signs to hang before the village shops and taverns.

To simplify his fishing expeditions he made a model of a boat propelled by paddles, and later he built such a boat and used it on the Conestoga River. No one could tell what he would turn to next. When Hessian prisoners were kept in the neighborhood the town boys would go out to look at them, and Robert would make sketches of them. These sketches gave him a local reputation, and his friends were not surprised when at seventeen he left Lancaster to seek his fortune as a painter of portraits and miniatures in Philadelphia.

He was well liked in the city. He had a talent for friendship, which, combined with good looks, more than ordinary intelligence, and most uncommon industry, carried him far. He drew plans for machinery, he designed houses and carriages, he worked as professional painter. Franklin became his patron and adviser. Then illness sent him to the fashionable hot springs of Virginia, and there he heard so much talk of England and of France that he decided to see those countries for himself. Before he left America he bought a farm in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in order to insure a home for his mother and sisters. That done, he sailed for England, with a packet of letters of introduction, in 1786.

In London Fulton professed himself to be an artist, although his thoughts were constantly tending toward inventions. He lived at the house of Benjamin West, and painted, and his portraits were shown at the Royal Academy and at the Society of Artists. Betimes he enjoyed himself in society and in trips to the counties. He journeyed into Devonshire and stayed at Powderham Castle, copying famous pictures there. Wherever he went he made friends, and their influence was constantly helping him forward on what must have been a somewhat precarious career.

Two of these friends, the Duke of Bridgewater and the Earl of Stanhope, were scientists of repute. The Duke owned a great estate, of untold mineral wealth, which had never been properly worked because of lack of transportation facilities. He had recently built several canals on this property, and was at the head of a number of companies which were planning to intersect England with waterways. He interested Fulton in his schemes and gradually weaned his thoughts away from art to civil engineering. The Earl of Stanhope corresponded with him over the possibility of propelling boats by steam, and in these letters Fulton first gave the outlines of the plans he was later to perfect in the Clermont. The Earl was deeply interested, and encouraged the young American to persevere, but for the time Fulton left the steamboat to work out other problems.

The possibility of a great English canal system appealed to him strongly, and in 1794 he obtained an English patent for a double inclined plane for raising and lowering canal boats. Later he took English patents on a machine for spinning flax, and on a new device for twisting hemp rope. There followed others for a machine that should scoop out earth to make canals or aqueducts, for a “Market or Passage Boat” to use on canals, and for a “Dispatch Boat” that should travel quickly. He sent drawings of all these inventions to his influential friends, hoping that they would push them, and he also wrote and published “A Treatise on Canal Navigation.” By this time he would seem to have given up all thought of the artist’s career, and to have turned his talent with the pen to the aid of his mechanical drawings.

The French Revolution was imminent, and Fulton was busy studying the conditions that were leading to it. He believed that Free Trade would tend to abolish many of the difficulties that divided nations, and he wrote a paper on that subject, addressed to the French Directory. He believed in democracy, but he was strongly of the opinion that the young American republic should take no part in the struggle for liberty in Europe. In a letter written in 1794 he says, “It has been much Agitated here whether the Americans would join the French. But I Believe every Cool friend to America could wish them to Remain nuter. The americans have no troublesome Neighbors, they are without foreign Possessions, and do not want the alliance of any Nation, for this Reason they have nothing to do with foreign Politics. And the Art of Peace Should be the Study of every young American which I most Sincerely hope they will maintain.”

But Fulton himself was in a manner to be drawn into the turmoil. When France had quieted somewhat England began that policy of aggression on the sea toward American ships and crews that was to lead to the War of 1812. Fulton’s attention was drawn from canal-building to the possibility of some invention that might tend to subserve peace, and this in time led him to design and build the first torpedo.

Again Fulton’s talent for friendship stood him in good stead. When he had left London for Paris he called upon Joel Barlow, poet and American diplomat, and was urged to take up his residence first at the hotel where the Barlows were staying, and later at their house. For seven years Fulton lived with them, busy about the most diverse matters, and always keenly interested in the struggles of the new and hot-tempered republic. A rich American had bought a tract of central real estate in Paris and had built a row of shops arranged on the two sides of a cloister. Fulton suggested that he add a panorama to the other buildings, and the idea was adopted. Fulton was given charge, and by 1800 he had built and opened the first panorama that Paris had ever seen. The show made money, and the inventor, a perfect Jack-of-all-trades, added another feather to his varicolored cap.

In December, 1797, Fulton had interested his friend Barlow in a machine intended to drive “carcasses” of gunpowder under water. But his first experiments at exploding the gunpowder at a definite moment failed. Then he moved to Havre, where he would have greater opportunity to try out his torpedo-boats, as he christened them. His idea was that if his invention succeeded war would be made so dangerous that nations would be obliged to keep peace. Barlow was able to assist him with money until he had built and actually navigated some of his torpedoes along the coast. When he had satisfied himself, he wrote to the French government, the Directory, offering them his invention for use against their enemies.

The Directory was pleased with the offer, but the government was in so much of a turmoil that it was months before any positive action was taken. At length, on February 28, 1801, Fulton received word from Napoleon, the First Consul, to send his torpedo-boat against the English fleet. He set out; but the English fleet did not come his way, and he spent the summer vainly reconnoitering along the coast. To show the value of his invention he arranged to attack a sloop. This he described in his letter to the French Commission on Submarine Navigation. “To prove this experiment,” he wrote, “the Prefect Maritime and Admiral Villaret ordered a small Sloop of about 40 feet long to be anchored in the Road, on the 23rd of Thermidor. With a bomb containing about 20 pounds of powder I advanced to within 200 Metres, then taking my direction so as to pass near the Sloop, I struck her with the bomb in my passage. The explosion took place and the sloop was torn into atoms, in fact, nothing was left but the buye [buoy] and cable. And the concussion was so great that a column of Water, Smoke and fibres of the Sloop were cast from 80 to 100 feet in Air. This simple Experiment at once proved the effect of the Bomb Submarine to the satisfaction of all the Spectators.”

This exhibition took place in August, 1801, before a crowd of onlookers, and at once established the value of the torpedo. But, as he was unable to attack any English ships, the French government lost interest in his invention, and Napoleon’s scientific advisers reported to him that they regarded the young American as “a visionary.”

At the same time the British government awakened to the great possibilities of Fulton’s device. His old friend, Lord Stanhope, urged that suitable offers be made him. This was ultimately done, and in April, 1804, Fulton left France and returned to London. A contract was drawn up by which he was to put his torpedo at the service of the English government and receive in return two hundred pounds a month and one-half the value of all ships that might be destroyed by his invention.

This arrangement, however, was of short duration. A change of ministry dampened his hopes, and in 1806 the government declined to adopt his invention on his terms. At the same time they tried to suppress this new method of warfare, and to that end made him another offer. Fulton, always an ardent patriot, answered, “At all events, whatever may be your reward, I will never consent to let these inventions lie dormant should my Country at any time have need of them. Were you to grant me an annuity of £20,000 a year, I would sacrifice all to the safety & independence of my Country. But I hope that England and America will understand their mutual Interest too well to War with each other And I have no desire to Introduce my Engines into practice for the benefit of any other Nation.”

He was already eager to return home to work upon his long cherished plans for a steamboat. He continues, “As I am bound in honor to Mr. Livingston to put my steamboat in practice and such engine is of more immediate use to my Country than Submarine Navigation, I wish to devote some years to it and should the British Government allow me an annuity I should not only do justice to my friends but it would enable me to carry my steamboat and other plans into effect for the good of my Country.—It has never been my intention to hide these Inventions from the World on any consideration, on the contrary it has been my intention to make them public as soon as consistent with strict justice to all with whom I am concerned. For myself I have ever considered the interest of America [n] free commerce, the interest of mankind, the magnitude of the object in view and the rational reputation connected with it superior to all calculations of a pecuniary kind.”

Satisfactory terms of agreement were reached, and in 1806 Fulton was free and ready to return to that native land from which he had been away twenty years.

The building of a practicable steamboat had long been in his mind. He had corresponded on the subject with Chancellor Livingston, who had devoted much time and money to new inventions. Fulton, when in Paris, had experimented with models of steamboats, and had studied the records of what had already been done in that line. In 1802 he had started a course of calculations on the resistance of water, and the comparative advantages of the known means of propelling vessels. He had rejected the plan of using paddles or oars, and also of forcing water out of the stern of the vessel, and had retained the idea of the paddle-wheel. This he tried successfully on a small model that he built and used on a river that ran through the village of PlombiÈres. He then built an experimental boat, sixty-six feet long and eight feet wide, and this he exhibited to a large audience of Parisians in August, 1803. His success led him to order certain parts of a steam-engine from the firm of Boulton and Watt in Birmingham, these to be shipped to America. Meantime Chancellor Livingston had obtained for himself and Fulton the exclusive right to navigate the waters of New York state by vessels propelled by fire or steam.

As soon as he reached America in December, 1806, Fulton started work on his boat. He engaged Charles Brownne, a ship-builder on the East River, to lay down the hull. He decided to name the vessel the Clermont, the name of Chancellor Livingston’s country-place on the Hudson, where Fulton had been a guest. The engine duly arrived from Birmingham and was carried to the shipyard. As a number of loafers and hangers-on about the docks threatened injury to “Fulton’s Folly,” as the building boat was called, he had to engage watchmen to guard his property. By August the boat was finished, and was moved by her own engine from the yards to the Jersey shore. She was one hundred and fifty feet long, thirteen feet wide, and drew two feet of water. Before she had gone a quarter of a mile both passengers and observers on the shore were satisfied that the steamboat was a thoroughly practicable vessel.

On Sunday, August 9, 1807, Fulton made a short trial trip of the Clermont, and wrote an account of it to Livingston. “Yesterday about 12 o’clock I put the steamboat in motion first with a paddle 8 inches broad, 3 feet long, with which I ran about one mile up the East River against a tide of about one mile an hour, it being nearly high water. I then anchored and put on another paddle 8 inches wide, 3 feet long, started again and then, according to my best observations, I went 3 miles an hour, that is two against a tide of one: another board of 8 inches was wanting, which had not been prepared, I therefore turned the boat and ran down with the tide—and turned her round neatly into the berth from which I parted. She answers the helm equal to anything that ever was built, and I turned her twice in three times her own length. Much has been proved by this experiment. First that she will, when in complete order, run up to my full calculations. Second, that my axles, I believe, will be sufficiently strong to run the engine to her full power. Third, that she steers well, and can be turned with ease.”

“The Clermont,” the First Steam Packet