Part 22 (2/2)
Rumsey's claim to the idea of application of steam in 1785 does not seem to hold good. General Was.h.i.+ngton, to whom he referred as to a conversation in 1785, replied to a correspondent that the idea of Rumsey, as he remembered and understood it, was simply the propelling of a boat by a machine, the power of which was to be merely manual labor.
=Robert Fulton= was born in 1765, and at the time of Symington's experiment in Scotland, was twenty-three years of age. He was then an artist student of Benjamin West, in London, but, after several years of study, felt that he was better adapted for engineering, and soon thereafter wrote a work on ca.n.a.l navigation. In 1797 he went to Paris.
He resided there seven years and built a small steamboat on the Seine, which worked well, but made very slow progress.
It is remarkable that the two most practical achievements of our century have been consummated by artists,--the telegraph by Morse after a score of ”invented” failures, and the successful application of steam to navigation by Fulton.
I was glad to think that among the last memorable beauties which have glided past us were pictures traced by no common hand, not easily to grow old or fade beneath the dust of time--the Kaatskill Mountains, Sleepy Hollow and the Tappan Zee.
_Charles d.i.c.kens._
Soon after his return to New York he brought his idea to successful completion. His reputation was now a.s.sured, and his invention of ”torpedoes” gave him additional fame. Congress not only purchased these instruments of warfare, but also set apart $320,000 for a steam frigate to be constructed under his supervision.
Through Livingston's influence the legislature pa.s.sed an act granting to Fulton the exclusive privilege of navigating the waters of the State by means of steam power. The only conditions imposed were that he should, within a year, construct a boat of not less than ”twenty tons burthen,” which should navigate the Hudson at a speed not less than four miles an hour, and that one such boat should not fail of running regularly between New York and Albany for the s.p.a.ce of one year.
=”The Clermont,”= named after the ancestral home of the Livingstons, was built for ”Livingston and Fulton,” by Charles Brownne in New York.
The machinery came from the works of Watt and Bolton, England. She left the wharf of Corlear's Hook and the newspapers published with pride that she made in speed from four to five miles an hour. She was 100 feet in length and boasted of ”three elegant cabins, one for the ladies and two for the gentlemen, with kitchen, library, and every convenience.” She averaged 100 pa.s.sengers up or down the river. Every pa.s.senger paid $7, for which he had dinner, tea and bed, breakfast and dinner, with the liberty to carry 200 pounds of baggage.
The stars are on the running stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy-beam In an eel-like, spiral line below.
_Joseph Rodman Drake._
An original letter from Robert Fulton to the minister of Bavaria at the court of France, written in 1809, upon the question of putting steamboats on the Danube, is of interest at the present day: ”The distance from New York to Albany is 160 miles; the tide rises as far as Albany; its velocity is on an average 1 miles an hour.
”We thus have the tide half the time in favor of the boat and half the time against her. The boat is 100 feet long, 16 feet wide and 7 feet deep; the steam engine is of the power of 20 horses; she runs 4 miles an hour in still water. Consequently when the tide is 1 miles an hour in her favor she runs 5 miles an hour. When the tide is against her she runs 2 miles an hour. Thus in theory her average velocity is 4 miles an hour, but in practice we take advantage of the currents. When they are against us we keep near sh.o.r.e in the eddies, where the current is weak or the eddy in our favor; when the tide is in our favor we take the centre of the stream and draw every advantage from it. In this way our average speed is 5 miles an hour, and we run to Albany, 160 miles, in about 32 hours.” Previous to the invention of the steamboat there were two modes of conveyance.
One was by the common sloops; they charged 42 francs, and were on the average four days in making the pa.s.sage--they have sometimes been as long as eight days. The dread of such tedious voyages prevented great numbers of persons from going in sloops. The second mode of conveyance was the mail, or stage. They charged $8, or 44 francs, and the expenses on the road were about $5, or 30 francs, so that expenses amounted to $13. The time required was 48 hours. The steamboat has rendered the communication between New York and Albany so cheap and certain that the number of pa.s.sengers are rapidly increasing. Persons who live 150 miles beyond Albany know the hour she will leave that city, and making their calculations to arrive at York, stay two days to transact business, return with the boat, and are with their families in one week. The facility has rendered the boat a great favorite with the public.
Through many a blooming wild and woodland green The Hudson's sleeping waters winding stray.
_Margaretta V. Faugeres._
A telegram from Exeter, N. H., in 1886, recorded the death of Dr.
William Perry, the oldest person in Exeter and the oldest graduate of Harvard College, at the age of ninety-eight years. He was the sole survivor of the pa.s.sengers on Fulton's first steamboat on its first trip down the Hudson, and the connecting link of three generations of progress. He was born in 1788, was a member of 1811 in Harvard, and grandfather of Sarah Orne Jewett, the auth.o.r.ess.
The writer remembers his grandfather telling him of going to Hudson as a boy to see the ”steamboat” make its first trip, and how it had been talked of for a long time as ”Fulton's Folly.” One thing is sure it was a small cradle wherein to rock the ”baby-giant” of a great century. How Fulton would wonder if he could visit to-day the great steams.h.i.+ps born of his invention--successors of the ”Clermont” of ”Twenty tons burthen.” How he would marvel, standing on the deck of the ”Hendrick Hudson,” to see the water fall away from the prow cut by a rainbow scimitar of spray! at the great engines of polished steel, working almost noiselessly, and wonder at the way the pilot lands at the docks, even as a driver brings his buggy to a horse-block; for in his day, and long afterwards, pa.s.sengers were ”slued” ash.o.r.e in little boats, as it was not regarded feasible to land a steamboat against a wharf. It would surely be an ”experience” for us to see the pa.s.sengers at West Point, Newburgh, or Poughkeepsie ”slued ash.o.r.e” to-day in little rowboats.
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