While Fitch was making his experi ments, Patrick Miller, a banker of Edin burgh, succeeded in developing at Dals winton in Dumfriesshire a paddle boat driven by steam-power, which attained a speed of 7 miles per hour on the Forth and Clyde Canal. In 1801 Symington, the engineer of Miller's boat, built for Lord Dundas a steamer for towing barges with machinery very highly developed for the time. In Salem, Mass., Nathan Read in 1791 patented the multitubular boiler and built a successful paddle-wheel steamboat. John Stevens and Oliver Evans were making successful experi ments about the same period. A boat built by Stevens in 1804 had twin screws. His steamboat "Phoenix" carried passen gers on the Raritan river between New Brunswick and New York City, and later navigated the Delaware for six years.
New possibilities were opened up with the appearance of the "Clermont" built by Robert Fulton. In 1797 Fulton went to France and experimented with sub marine torpedoes and torpedo boats. In 1801 he built a small steamer and in 1804 procured from Watt in England machinery for a large vessel which was built in New York and launched in 1807.
This was the famous "Clermont." From New York City she navigated the Hudson to Clermont, 110 miles away, and 20 hours later went to Albany. On the following day she began her return trip to New York City, and covered the distance in 30 hours at an average speed of five miles an hour. After an interval of a month she started running regularly be tween Albany and New York. This marked the start of steam navigation as a commercial undertaking. From that time forward the building of steamboats increased rapidly. The United States took the lead, but other countries were not far behind. The Dublin-Holyhead line began in 1819 and in the following year a beginning was made with the Calais-Dover service. The "Savannah," a vessel built in the United States, was the first steamer to cross the Atlantic. She had a length of 100 feet, and a dis placement of 350 tons, and she crossed from Savannah to Liverpool in 25 days. She was provided with sails and these were used when the wind was favorable. When the sea was smooth the paddle wheels were used and during an unfavor able sea they were taken on deck. In 1828 the steamer "Curacao," built in Hol land, successfully navigated the Atlantic and she was followed in 1832 by the Canadian "Royal William." The "Sirius" and "Great Western" registered a great step forward. Both started in April, 1838, arriving in New York in the same month within a day from each other. The "Great Western" averaged 208 miles per day and at her topmost speed she aver aged 247 miles. She continued running as a regular transatlantic vessel, and may be said to have initiated the transatlantic steam service. It was left, however, to Samuel Cunard to make the service a paying commercial proposition. In 1839 he established the Cunard line with the help of a government subsidy. The Cu nard line carried the bulk of the freight, passengers, and mail for ten years and was almost without a competitor till the Inman and Collins lines were started. The loss of a subsidy from the United States Government obliged the Collins line, which was purely American, to with draw in 1858 after the service had been continued for eight years. In 1850 two
other American lines, the Vanderbilt line and the New York and Havre Steamship Company, were started and both of them continued to run till British competition during the Civil War swept American commerce from the seas. The Inman line from the beginning used vessels of iron propelled by screws, and its example was followed by the Cunard line, with which the screw gradually displaced the paddle wheel. The building of the "Princeton" by the U. S. Navy, had proved the availability of the screw, the chief advantage of which was getting the propelling machin ery below the water line. The develop ment of the propelling machinery re sponded to the demand for increased speed and the tricompound and triple-ex pansion engine was evolved. The evolu tion of the water-tube boiler led to the quadruple-expansion engine until at last the turbine and similar forms of steam and internal combustion engines brought the development of steam-shipping to the modern types in transatlantic service. From the middle of the last century the transatlantic service has naturally led in the development of shipping, size and speed being in nearly every case the gov erning considerations. Vessels like the "Germanic" have marked the milestones of progress reducing to about eight days the average length of passage between New York and Queenstown. The "Maure tania" and the "Lusitania" showed the development of a generation, reducing the voyage in favorable weather to about five days. The White Star Line led the way in the development of vessels of large dimensions. The "Olympic" (46,000 tons) launched in 1910, marked the high water mark, and this was outclassed by the Hamburg-American "Imperator" (52, 000 tons) in 1913. The World War had the result of retarding the construction of great passenger vessels, but the inten sive competition in warship building had its bearing on commercial steamship ser vice. As a result of the larger knowledge furnished by the experiences of the war, oil-burning vessels are likely to be the predominant type of the near future, and the scramble for oil-lands by the great nations is largely occasioned by future needs in that direction.
A development of the war is the United States Shipping Board which was author ized by Congress in 1916 with power to investigate, regulate and fix the rates in United States marine business. The board has authority to issue bonds not exceeding $50,000,000 to build, purchase or lease vessels for a merchant marine. It constitutes the head of a corporation to endure for a period not to exceed five years after the war. The annual salary of the members of the board was fixed at $7,500. During the war the Board operated the merchant marine as a na tional enterprise. As a result American shipping has promised to be as important in peace as in war. The decisive manner in which the United States entered the world of shipping during the war has awakened the most sanguine hopes of those interested in the development of an American mercantile marine, and legis lation looking to the promotion of Ameri can shipping is looked for under the new Republican administration.