第25章 The Birth Of The Steamboat (1)

The crowds who welcomed the successive stages in the development of American transportation were much alike in essentials--they were all optimistic, self-congratulatory, irrepressible in their enthusiasm, and undaunted in their outlook.Dickens, perhaps, did not miss the truth widely when, in speaking of stage driving, he said that the cry of "Go Ahead!" in America and of "All Right!" in England were typical of the civilizations of the two countries.Right or wrong, "Go Ahead!" has always been the underlying passion of all men interested in the development of commerce and transportation in these United States.

During the era of river improvement already described, men of imagination were fascinated with the idea of propelling boats by mechanical means.Even when Washington fared westward in 1784, he met at Bath, Virginia, one of these early experimenters, James Rumsey, who haled him forthwith to a neighboring meadow to watch a secret trial of a boat moved by means of machinery which worked setting-poles similar to the ironshod poles used by the rivermen to propel their boats upstream."The model," wrote Washington, "and its operation upon the water, which had been made to run pretty swift, not only convinced me of what I before thought next to, if not quite impracticable, but that it might be to the greatest possible utility in inland navigation." Later he mentions the "discovery" as one of those "circumstances which have combined to render the present epoch favorable above all others for securing a large portion of the produce of the western settlements, and of the fur and peltry of the Lakes, also.">From that day forward, scarcely a week passed without some new development in the long and difficult struggle to improve the means of navigation.Among the scores of men who engaged in this engrossing but discouraging work, there is one whom the world is coming to honor more highly than in previous years--John Fitch, of Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky.As early as August, 1785, Fitch launched on a rivulet in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a boat propelled by an engine which moved an endless chain to which little paddles were attached.The next year, Fitch's second boat, operated by twelve paddles, six on a side--an arrangement suggesting the "side-wheeler" of the future--successfully plied the Delaware off "Conjuror's Point," as the scene of Fitch's labors was dubbed in whimsical amusement and derision.In 1787Rumsey, encouraged by Franklin, fashioned a boat propelled by a stream of water taken in at the prow and ejected at the stern.In 1788 Fitch's third boat traversed the distance from Philadelphia to Burlington on numerous occasions and ran as a regular packet in 1790, covering over a thousand miles.In this model Fitch shifted the paddles from the sides to the rear, thus anticipating in principle the modern stern-wheeler.

It was doubtless Fitch's experiments in 1785 that led to the first plan in America to operate a land vehicle by steam.Oliver Evans, a neighbor and acquaintance of Fitch's, petitioned the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1786 for the right of operating wagons propelled by steam on the highways of that State.This petition was derisively rejected; but a similar one made to the Legislature of Maryland was granted on the ground that such action could hurt nobody.Evans in 1802 took fiery revenge on the scoffers by actually running his little five-horse-power carriage through Philadelphia.The rate of speed, however, was so slow that the idea of moving vehicles by steam was still considered useless for practical purposes.Eight years later, Evans offered to wager $3000 that, on a level road, he could make a carriage driven by steam equal the speed of the swiftest horse, but he found no response.In 1812 he asserted that he was willing to wager that he could drive a steam carriage on level rails at a rate of fifteen miles an hour.Evans thus anticipated the belief of Stephenson that steam-driven vehicles would travel best on railed tracks.

In the development of the steamboat almost all earlier means of propulsion, natural and artificial, were used as models by the inventors.The fins of fishes, the webbed feet of amphibious birds, the paddles of the Indian, and the poles and oars of the riverman, were all imitated by the patient inventors struggling with the problem.Rumsey's first effort was a copy of the old setting-pole idea.Fitch's model of 1785 had side paddle wheels operated by an endless chain.Fitch's second and third models were practically paddle-wheel models, one having the paddles at the side and the other at the stern.Ormsbee of Connecticut made a model, in 1792, on the plan of a duck's foot.Morey made what may be called the first real stern-wheeler in 1794.Two years later Fitch ran a veritable screw propeller on Collect Pond near New York City.Although General Benjamin Tupper of Massachusetts had been fashioning devices of this character eight years previously, Fitch was the first to apply the idea effectively.In 1798 he evolved the strange, amphibious creation known as his "model of 1798," which has never been adequately explained.It was a steamboat on iron wheels provided with flanges, as though it was intended to be run on submerged tracks.What may have been the idea of its inventor, living out his last gloomy days in Kentucky, may never be known; but it is possible to see in this anomalous machine an anticipation of the locomotive not approached by any other American of the time.Thus, prior to 1800almost every type of mechanism for the propulsion of steamboats had been suggested and tried; and in 1804, Stevens's twin-screw propeller completed the list.