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STEAMBOATS.

"Against the wind, against the tide,

She breasts the wave with upright keel.”

In the year 1788, the bosom of the Delaware was first ruffled by a steamboat. The projector, at that early day, was John Fitch, a watch and clock maker by profession. He first conceived the design in 1785; and being but poor in purse, and rather limited in education, a multitude of difficulties, which he did not sufficiently foresee, occurred to render abortive every effort of his most persevering mind to construct and float a steamboat, called the Perseverance.

Applying to congress for assistance, he was refused; and then, without success, offering his invention to the Spanish government for the purpose of navigating the Mississippi. He at last succeeded in forming a company, by the aid of whose funds he launched his first rude effort as a steamboat, in the year 1788. The idea of wheels had not occurred to Mr. Fitch; but paddles, working in a frame, were used in place of them. The crude ideas which he entertained, and the want of experience, subjected this unfortunate man to difficulties of the most humbling character. Regarded by many as a mere visionary, his project was discouraged by those whose want of all motive for such a course rendered their opposition more barbarous; while those whose station in life placed it in their power to assist him, looked coldly on, barely listening to his elucidations, and receiving them with an indifference that chilled him to the heart. By a perseverance as unwearied as it was unrewarded, his darling project was at length sufficiently matured, and a steamboat was seen floating at the wharves of Philadelphia, more than fifty years ago. So far, his success, amid the most mortifying discouragements, had been sufficient to prove the merit of the scheme. But a reverse awaited him, as discouraging as it was unexpected. The boat performed a trip to Burlington, a distance of twenty miles, when, as she was rounding at the wharf, her boiler burst. The next tide floated her back to the city, where, after great difficulty, a new boiler was procured. In October, 1788, she again performed her trip to Burlington. The boat not only went to Burlington, but to Trenton, returning the same day, and moving at the rate of eight miles an hour. It is true, she could hardly perform a trip without something breaking; not from any error in Fitch's designs or conceptions, but, at that time, our mechanics were very ordinary; and it was impossible to have machinery, so new and complex, made with exactness and competent skill. It was on this account that Fitch was obliged to abandon the great invention, on which the public looked coldly. From these

failures, and because what is now so easy then seemed to be impracticable, the boat was laid up as useless, and rotted silently and unnoticed in the docks of Kensington. Her remains rest on the south side of Cohocksink creek, imbedded in the present wharf of Taylor's boardyard.

Fitch became more embarrassed by his creditors than ever; and, after producing five manuscript volumes, which he deposited in the Philadelphia Library, to be opened thirty years after his death, he died in Kentucky, in 1798. Such was the unfortunate termination of this early-conceived project of the steamboat. Fitch was, no doubt, an original inventor of the steamboat; he was certainly the first who ever applied steam to the propulsion of vessels in America. Though it was reserved to Fulton to advance its application to a degree of perfection which has made his name immortal, yet to the unfortunate Fitch belongs the honour of completing and navigating the first American steamboat.

His five manuscript volumes were opened about thirteen years ago. Although they exhibit him as an unschooled man, yet they indicate the possession of a strong mind, of much mechanical ingenuity. He describes his many difficulties and disappointments with a degree of feeling which cannot fail to win the sympathy of every reader, causing him to wonder and regret that so much time and talent should have been so unprofitably devoted. Though the project failed-and it failed only for want of funds-yet he never for a moment doubted its practicability. He tells us, that in less than a century, we shall see our western rivers swarming with steamboats; and that his darling wish is to be buried on the margin of the romantic Ohio, where the song of the boatman may sometimes penetrate into the stillness of his everlasting resting place, and the music of the steam engine echo over the sod that shelters him for ever!

In one of his journals, there is this touching and prophetic sentiment: "The day will come when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from my invention; but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do any thing worthy of attention!"

The truth is, that Fitch, like Robert Morris, lived thirty or forty years too soon they were ahead of the condition of their country. These great projects of improvements, which we now see consummated, were beyond the means of the country to execute, and were therefore thought visionary and extravagant. Public opinion has since become better instructed, and the increase of wealth has enabled us to do what was then thought impossible.

I derive these facts from J. Fitch's MS. books in the Philadelphia Library, to wit: On the 27th of September, 1785, he gave his model and description to the Philosophical Society-which fact is also recorded on their minutes, and without proceedings or comment.-On the 1st of May, 1787, he first got his boat and works so far completed, as to make his boat perform an excursion to the satisfaction of the company then on board.-On the 12th of October, 1788, she again

made an excursion with many eminent citizens on board, who much admired at their sense of its satisfactory operation.-In that winter he left the concern, and made some journeys southward. He afterwards again joined the company, and got the boat to go well, on the 12th of April, 1790. She again made a satisfactory demonstration in the summer of that year, for her last time. There were many intervals, in the preceding times, in which she was laid by to make repairs and alterations, and many accidents to overcome and to rectify, all tending to show the first difficulties in a new enterprise, and displaying at once his indomitable perseverance and patience.-On the 19th of March, 1791, he signs his articles in behalf of the company, with Aaron Vail, the American consul in France, the terms not expressed but he speaks of his dissatisfaction therewith, and his fears of some intended injustice to himself.

On page 296, in my MS. Annals, in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, is a picture of his first boat, as he invented her in the year 1786, showing the propelling paddles on the side. He afterwards quite altered its appearance, by placing the paddles behind the stern. He thus spoke of his first scheme, saying, "It is in several parts similar to the late improved engines in Europe, though there are some alterations. Our cylinder is to be horizontal, and the steam to work with equal force at each end. The mode to procure a vacuum is, I believe, entirely new, as is also the method of letting the water into it, and throwing it off against the atmosphere without any friction. The engine is placed about one third from the stern, and both the action and reaction turn the wheel the same way. The engine is a twelve inch cylinder, and will move a clear force of 11 or 12 cwt. after the frictions are deducted, and this force acts against a wheel of eighteen inches' diameter."

As remembered to the eye when a boy, when seen in motion, she was graceful, and "walked the water like a thing of life." His predilections for watchmaking machinery was very manifest; for two or three ranges of chains of the same construction as in watches, were seen along the outside of his vessel, from stem to stern, moving with burnished glare, in motion proportioned to the speed of the boat; and ornamenting the waist, not unlike the adornments about an Indian bride.

It is melancholy to contemplate his overwhelming disappointment in a case since proved so practicable, and so productive to those concerned. Some of those thousands so useless to others, had they been owned by him, so as to have enabled him to make all the experiments and improvements his inventive mind suggested, would have set his care-crazed head at rest, and in time have rewarded his exertions: but for want of the impulse which money affords, all proved ineffective. "Slow rises worth by poverty depressed!"

After Fulton and Livingston had proved the practicability of a better completion, by their boat on the North river, the waters of the Delaware were again agitated by a steam vessel, called the Phoenix. She

was first started in 1809, and being since worn out, her remains, with those of Fitch's boat, repose in the mud flats of Kensington. The Phoenix, then deemed the ne plus ultra of the art, won the admiration of all, of her early day but as "practice makes perfect," it was frequently discovered that better adaptations of power could be attained; and although she underwent many changes in her machinery and gear, she soon saw herself rivalled, and finally surpassed, by successive inventions; till now, the steamboats can accomplish in two hours, what sometimes took six to perform in her. For instance, the Phoenix has been known to take six hours in reaching Burlington against the wind and tide.

Such, too, was the rapid progress in steam invention, that Mr. Latrobe, who wrote a paper for the Philosophical Society to demonstrate the impossibility of a momentum such as we now witness, became himself, in two years afterwards, a proselyte to the new system, and proved his sincerity and conviction by becoming the agent for the steam companies in the west!

Most amazing invention! from a cause now so obvious and familiar! It is only by applying the principle seen in every house, which lifts the lid of the tea kettle and "boils over," that machines have been devised which can pick up a pin, or rend an oak; which combine the power of many giants with the plasticity that belongs to a lady's fair fingers; which spin cotton, and then weave it into cloth: which, by pumping sea-water and extracting its steam, send vessels across the Atlantic in fifteen days; and amidst a long list of other marvels," engrave seals, forge anchors, and lift a ship of war, like a bauble, in the air,"-presenting, in fact, to the imagination, the practicability of labour-saving inventions in endless variety, so that, in time, man, through its aid, shall half exempt himself from "the curse!" and preachers, through steam-press printing, shall find an auxiliary effecting more than half their work!

Much of our steam invention we owe to our own citizen, Oliver Evans. He even understood the application of it to wagons-(now claimed as so exclusively British.) As early as 1787, the legislature of Maryland granted him its exclusive use for fourteen years, and in 1781, he publicly stated he could by steam drive wagons, mills, &c. Finally, he published his bet of 3000 dollars, engaging "to make a carriage to run upon a level road against the swiftest horse to be found,"-none took him up! and Latrobe, as a man of science, pronounced the idea chimerical; others said the motion would be too slow to be useful, &c. He got no patrons, and others now take his fame! See Emporium of Arts, 1814, p. 205.

VOL. II.-3 G

"Of each wonderful plan

E'er invented by man,

This nearest perfection approaches

No longer gee-up and gee-ho,

But fiz-fiz!-off we go

38*

Nine miles to the hour,
With fifty horse-power,
By day time and night time,
Arrive at the right time,
Without rumble or jumble,
Or chance of a tumble,
As in chaise, gig, or whiskey,
When horses are frisky."

A friend of mine has lately seen in Philadelphia an original letter of Mr. Fitch to Dr. Franklin, dated 12th October, 1785. It was neatly written; had some few faults in spelling, and reads in part thus: "Steamboat navigation is, in the opinion of the subscriber," á matter of first magnitude, not only to the United States, but to every maritime power in the world, and he is full in the belief that it will answer for sea voyages, as well as for inland navigation-in particular for packets where there may be many passengers. She could make head off lea shore against the most violent tempests, because the machine can be made of almost omnipotent force, by the very simple and easy means of the screws or paddles, which act as oars— working on the oscillating motion of the old pumping engine, in a manner similar to that given by the human arm."

N. B. Boileau, of Montgomery county, asserts that he remembers John Fitch well as a frequent visiter at his father's house, and he knows that, although Fitch first used paddles to his boat, he also had the idea of wheels, for he actually showed Boileau his draught of them, and employed him as a boy to cut out of wood small water wheels as models, by which to construct large ones for his boat. He believes he only wanted the money to have had them made. He worked as a silversmith; learned to survey; went to Kentucky in 1780; left there in 1781; made a map of that country and the west, as a new land of enterprise; engraved the plate and struck off copies himself, and then sold them about the country-one of them is now with Mr. Boileau, and another is with Daniel Longstreth, at Warminster, Bucks county, Pennsylvania. For more of Fitch and steam power, see the article John Fitch, in the chapter Persons and Characters.

An elderly gentleman, of Philadelphia, communicates that he knew very well both John Fitch and Robert Fulton. The latter was, about the year 1770, and for several years, his schoolmate, in the town of Lancaster. His mother was a widow of limited circumstances. "I had (he said) a brother who was fond of painting. The war of the Revolution, which prevailed at that period, made it difficult to obtain materials from abroad, and the arts were at a low ebb in the country. My brother, consequently, prepared and mixed colours for himself; and these he usually displayed on muscle shells. His cast off brushes and shells fell to my lot; some of which I occasionally carried in my pocket to school. Fulton saw and craved a part. He pressed his suit with so much earnestness, that I could not refuse to

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