This brief sketch of what may be termed the preliminary history of steam navigation would be incomplete without referring to the ex periments of John Stevens, of Hoboken, near New York, who was connected with some of the earliest attempts of Livingstone to introduce steam navigation in North America. Stuart describes a small boat, twenty-five feet long and five feet wide, impelled by a steam-engine with a cylinder of four inches and a half diameter and nine inches stroke, which he tried about New York in 1804. The boiler, which was only two feet long, fifteen inches wide, and twelve inches high, consisted of eighty-one tubes of an inch diameter. This little steam boat had a velocity of about four miles an hour, or, for short distances, of seven or eight miles an hour. The subsequent vessels of Stevens and his son will be hereafter noticed. About the same time (1804) Oliver Evans, another early American improver of the steam-engine, constructed his " Orukter Amphibolos," or machine for removing mud from docks, with a steam-engine to work the buckets. It was a heavy flat-bottomed boat, thirty feet long and twelve feet broad. Evans constructed this machine at a distance of a mile and a half from the river Schuylkill, and exhibited his long-cherished project of steam llocomotion on land by mounting it upon wheels, and connecting them with the engine. After doing this to his satisfaction, he fitted a paddle wheel to the stern of the machine, and launched it on the river as a steam-boats It is not pretended that the above account embraces every project brought forward, or even every public) experiment nettle respecting navigation by stasis; but enough has been related to stow that its possibility had long been contemplated, and that many persons had expended much time and money upon the scheme before a single steam-vessel was regularly used for the purposes of commerce. Upon the subsequent history of steam navigation it is needless to treat at length; but, before entering upon it, It may be well to state that besides the claims to the invention which have been put forth on behalf of Spain, France, England, Scotland, and North America, one has been made also for an Italian, named Serapino Serrati, in a work published at Florence in 1706, in which it is stated that Watt was the inventor of steam-engiues in England in 1787, but that Serrati was " the first not only to conceive the design of a steam-boat, hut also to plaCe one upon the river Arno, which runs through Florence." Russell observes that he had no means of testing the truth of this statement, but that, like the narrative of Garay's performances, it may be either true or untrue, without affecting the history of steam navigation ; since it is evident that our present system of steam navigation has been in no may derived front either of them.
Fulton returned to America towards the latter end of 1806, and immediately commenced building a steam-boat for use upon the Hudson. This vessel was built at i:ew York, and was launched in the spring of 1807. The engines were mounted and ready for trial by August in that year, engineers from Soho assisting in the work, and when the vessel started, its success became immediately evident. Soon afterwards this vessel, which was named, from Livingstone's residence, the Clermont, made her first voyage from New York to Albany, a distance of about a hundred and forty-five miles; which distance it accomplished at the rate of about five miles an hour.
Satisfactory as was the performance of the Clermont, she did not, owing to the want of proper proportion, in the wheels, attain so great a speed as Fulton had anticipated. The dimensions of the boat, which wait of a hundred and sixty tons burden, were one hundred and thirty three feet long, eighteen feet wide, and seven feet deep. Her cylinder was two feet in diameter, and four feet stroke ; and the paddle-wheels were fifteen feet in diameter, with paddles four ,feet long, dipping two feet. into the water. These dimensions probably refer to the improved paddle-wheels used subsequent to the first trial, those originally used being too large, so that they dipped too deep into the water. The
wheels were of east iron, and had no support beyond the sides of the vessel, and consequently some trouble was occasioned by their frequent breakage in the earlier experiments. Until his death in 1815, Fulton continued to be actively engaged in building steam-vessels, and at that time he had just completed a large steam-frigate or floating battery, supported by two hulls, with a canal fifteen feet wide between them, in which the paddle-wheel worked. So highly were his services then appreciated, that besides other testimonies of respect, the members of both houses of the legislature wore mourning on occasion of his death.
Fulton had scarcely launched the Clermont before a rival appeared. Stevens of Hoboken bad a steam-vessel ready for trial in a few weeks after the triumph of Fulton ; but, as the monopoly of steam navigation in the state of New York was secured to Livingstone and Fulton, he could not employ it upon the Iludson, and therefore took it round by sea to the Delaware, thus becoming the first (unless the case of Garay be an exception) to venture to sea with a steam-vessel. To B. L. Stevens, his son, American steamlnavigation is deeply indebted. He, according to Russell, improved the form of the American vessels, by substituting a very long proportion, with a fine entrance and a fine run, for the full round bows and sterns of Fulton, whose boats were, lie says, mere boxes sharpened a little at both ends, which drove before them so large a heap of water as to limit their speed to about nine milts; an hour. The improvements of Stevens enabled him to rise to a velocity of thirteen miles an hour. He also adopted a different form of engine from that of Fulton ; using cylinders of very long stroke, with upright guides, instead of the old parallel motion, to ensure the accurate motion of the piston, and placing the working beam above the fleck, instead of altering the usual arrangement of the machinery in order to keep it below the deck, as done in Fulton's engines and in those common's used iu British steam-vessels.
The practical application of steam navigation in Scotland, though attributable to the experiments of Miller, Taylor, and Symington, at desist RA distinctly as were the operations of Fulton upon the rivers of North America, did not take place till a few years later, and was in MOMC degree suggested by them. Henry Bell, of Helensburgh, on the Clyde, the individual by whom steam-vessels were first used in Britain for commercial purposes, had been well acquainted with the experi ments at Dalawinton and on the Forth and Clyde canal; but he did not take any step for carrying into effect the important scheme of which they proved the practicability, until the proceedings of Fulton, combined with peculiar circumstances in his own case, urged him to do so. Owing to some misapprehension, it was erroneously stated in the Fifth Report of the Select Committee on the Roads from London to Holyhead, in 1822, that Bell went over to America to assist Fulton in establishing steam-boats in that country. In the minute and interest ing narrative of Russell, who, from residing in the neighbourhood, had peculiar facilities for obtaining correct information respecting the history of steam navigation upon the Clyde, it is stated that Bell was a house carpenter in Glasgow for many years, and was rather fond of what are called schema. In the year 1808 he engage(' in an undertaking some what of this character, by becoming proprietor of an establishment of the nature of an hotel, or bath-house, at lieleusburgh, a watering-place on tho Clyde, opposite to Greenock. To increase the facilities for reaching this place, and thereby to induce a larger influx of visitors from Glasgow, Bell endeavoured to introduce passage-boats moved by paddles impelled by manual labour ; but his experiments failed, and at length he determined upon the construction of a steam-boat to Meet the difficulty. Thus his connection with an undertaking of very different character, combined with his correspondence with Fulton, led him to take this important step.