About the same period, Oliver Evans, a very ingenious mechanic, and a townsman of Fitch, was endeavouring to mature a plan for using steam of a very high pressure ; chiefly with the view of propelling waggons on the common roads : and he states that he published, in 1785, adeacription of a mode of pro pelling vessels by steam; from which circumstance, he has been regarded by several authors as the contriver of "practicable " steam-boat ; his real claim, however, to that distinction, appears to us very slender, as we do not discover any propositions regarding steam-boats in his narrative, that had not been pre viously suggested ; and the only fact which be has adduced of his practice. is thus related by himselL " In the year 1804, I constructed at my works, situ ated a mile and a half from the water, by order of the Board of Health of the city of Philadelphia, a machine for cleansing docks. It consisted of a large flat, or lighter, with a steam-engine of the power of five horses on board, to work machinery to raise the mud into lighters. This was a fine opportunity to show the public that my engine could propel both land and water carriages, and I resolved to do it. When the work was finished, I put wheels under it, and though it was equal in weight to two hundred barrels of flour, and the wheels were fixed on wooden asletrees for this temporary purpose, in a very rough manner, and attended with great friction of course, yet with this small engine, I transported my great burthen to the Schuyllkill with ease; • and when it was launched into the water, I fixed a paddle-wheel at the stern, and drove it down the Schuylkill to Delaware, and up the Delaware to the city ; leaving all the vessels going up behind me, at least half-way, the wind being ahead.' Evans does not affect to consider that this clumsy make-shift experiment, entitled him to be considered the inventor of " practicable " steam-boats ; for he, as well as other able mechanics, were capable, at that period, of making a much more efficient display.
The claims to invention, of one of our countrymen, appear to us to be much stronger, in "A short Narrative of Fads, relative to the Invention and Practice of Steam Navigation, by the late Patrick Miller, Esq. of Dalswinton, drawn up by his eldest son," and published in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal for 1824. In 1787, Mr. Miller published a description and drawings of a triple vessel, moved with wheels, and gave a short account of the properties and advantages of the invention. "In the course of his explanations,' observes the son, "he suggested that the power of a steam-engine may be applied to move the wheels so as to give them a quicker motion, and consequently to increase that of the ship. It may readily be believed, that this hint of his intention to apply the power of steam to the wheels of his double and triple vessels, was not hastily thrown out. In the course of his various experiments on the comparative velocity of his vessels, with those propelled by sails, or by ordinary oars, which had given occasion to several interesting and animating contests for superiority, he had strongly felt the necessity of employing a higher force than that of the human arm, aided, as it might be, by the ordinary mechanical contrivances; and in this view, various suggestions were successively adopted, and, in their turn, laid-aside. Thus, at one time it occurred to him, that the power of horses
might be usefully employed ; while at another, the aid. of wind itself seemed to furnish the means of counteracting its own direction and ordinary operation. But among all the possible varieties of force, that of steam presented itself to his mind as at once the most potent, the most certain, and the most manageable." In Miller's family there was at this time, as tutor to his young children, Mr. James Taylor, who had bestowed much attention on the steam-engine, and who was in the custom of assisting Miller in his experiments on naval architec ture, and the sailing of boats. One day, in the very heat of a keen and breathless contest in which they were engaged on the Leith establishment, this individual called out to his patron, that they only wanted the assistance of a steam-engine to beat their opponents ; for the power of the heat did not move the wheels more than five miles per hour. This was not lost on Miller, and it led to many on the subject; and it was under very confident belief in its success, that the allusion was made to it in the book already mentioned.
In making his first experiments, Miller deemed it advisable, in every point of view, to begin upon a small scale, yet a scale quite sufficient to determine the problem which it was hisoNect to solve. He had constructed a very handsome double vessel, with wheels, to be used as a pleasure-boat on his lake at Dalswinton, and in this vessel he resolved to try the application of steam. On looking round for a practical engineer to execute the work, Taylor reconi mended a Mr. William Lymington to his attention, whom he had known at school, and who had recently contrived a mode of applying the force of steam to wheel carriages ; and he accompanied Miller to the house of Mr. Gilbert Mown, in Edinburgh, to see the model. Pleased with this specimen of Lymington's ingenuity, he employed him, in conjunction with his friend Taylor, to superintend the construction of a small steam-engine, to work a double or twin boat. And in the autumn of the same year, the engine, which had brass cylinders of four inches in diameter, was fixed in the pleasure boat, on Dalswinton Loch. Nothing could be more gratifying or complete than the success of the fint trial ; and while for several weeks it continued to delight Miller and his visitors, it afforded him the fullest assurance of the justness of his own anticipation, of the possibility of applying to the propulsion of his vessels, the unlimitable power of steam. On the approach of winter, the apparatus was removed from the boat, and placed as a sort of trophy in his library at Dalswinton, and is still preserved by his family, as a monument of the earliest instance of actual navigation by steam in Great Britain.