ten miles. On Wednesday I departed from the Chancellor's at nine in the morning, and arrived at Albany at five in the afternoon distance, forty miles; time, eight hours. The sum is one hundred and fifty miles in thirty-two hours, equal to near five miles an hour.

:

On Thursday, at nine o'clock in the morning, I left Albany, and arrived at the Chancellor's at six in the evening. I started from thence at seven, and arrived at New York at four in the afternoon time, thirty hours; space run through, one hundred and fifty miles, equal to five miles an hour. Throughout my whole way, both going and returning, the wind was ahead. No advantage could be derived from my sails. The whole has therefore been performed by the power of the steam-engine. I am, sir, your obedient servant,

To Joel Barlow:

ROBERT FULTON.

My steamboat voyage to Albany and back has turned out rather more favorably than I had calculated. The distance from New York to Albany is one hundred and fifty miles. I ran it up in thirty-two hours, and down in thirty. I had a light breeze against me the whole way, both going and coming; and the voyage has been performed wholly by the power of the steam-engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward, and parted with them as if they had been at anchor.

The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. The morning I left New York, there were not perhaps thirty persons in the city who believed that the boat would ever move one mile an hour or be of the least utility; and, while we were putting off from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic remarks. This is the way in which ignorant men compliment what they call philosophers and projectors.

Having employed much time, money, and zeal in accomplishing this work, it gives me, as it will you, great pleasure to see it answer my expectations. It will give a cheap and quick conveyance to the merchandise on the Mississippi, Missouri, and other great rivers, which are now laying open their treasures to the enterprise of our countrymen; and, although the prospect of personal emolument has been some inducement to ine, yet I feel infinitely more pleasure in reflecting on the

immense advantage my country will derive from the invention, etc.

THE FIRST VOVAGE OF THE CLERMONT.

Reminiscences of H. Freeland, in a letter to J. F. Reigart, 1856. .

It was in the early autumn of the year 1807 that a knot of vil lagers was gathered on a high bluff just opposite Poughkeepsie, on the west bank of the Hudson, attracted by the appearance of a strange, dark looking craft, which was slowly making its way up the river. Some imagined it to be a sea monster, while others did not hesitate to express their belief that it was a sign of the approaching judgment. What seemed strange in the vessel was the substitution of lofty and straight black smoke-pipes rising from the deck, instead of the gracefully tapered masts that commonly stood on the vessels navigating the stream, and, in place of the spars and rigging, the curious play of the working-beam and pistons and the slow turning and splashing of the huge and naked paddle-wheels met the astonished gaze. The dense clouds of smoke, as they rose wave upon wave, added still more to the wonderment of the rustics.

This strange looking craft was the Clermont on her trial trip to Albany, and of the little knot of villagers mentioned above, the writer, then a boy in his eighth year, with his parents, formed a part; and I well remember the scene, one so well fitted to impress a lasting picture upon the mind of a child accustomed to watch the vessels that passed up and down the river.

The forms of four persons were distinctly visible on the deck as she passed the bluff,- one of whom, doubtless, was Robert Fulton, who had on board with him all the cherished hopes of years, the most precious cargo the wonderful boat could carry.

On her return trip the curiosity she excited was scarcely less intense; the whole country talked of nothing but the sea monster belching forth fire and smoke. The fishermen became terrified and rowed homewards, and they saw nothing but destruction devastating their fishing grounds, while the wreaths of black vapor and the rushing noise of the paddle-wheels, foaming with the stirred up waters, produced great excitement among the boatmen, until it was more intelligent than before; for the character of that curious boat, and the nature of the enterprise which she was pioneering, had been ascertained. From that time, Robert Fulton, Esq., became known and respected as the author and builder of the first steam packet, from which we plainly see the rapid improvement in commerce and civilization. Who can doubt that Fulton's first packet boat has been the model steamer? Except in finer finish and greater size,

there is no difference between it and the splendid steamships now crossing the Atlantic. Who can doubt that Fulton saw the meeting of all nations upon his boats, gathering together in unity and harmony, that the "freedom of the seas would be the happiness of the earth"? Who can doubt that Fulton saw the world circumnavigated by steam, and that his invention was carrying the messages of freedom to every land, that no man could tell all its benefits, or describe all its wonders? What a wonderful achievement! What a splendid triumph!

The truth undoubtedly is that Fulton was not "the inventor of the steamboat," and that the reputation acquired by his successful introduction of steam navigation is largely accidental, and is principally due to the possession, in company with Livingston, of a monopoly which drove from this most promising field those original and skilful engineers, Evans and the Stevenses. No one of the essential devices successfully used by Fulton in the Clermont, his first North River steamboat, was new; and no one of them differed, to any great extent, from devices successfully adopted by earlier experimenters. Fulton's success was a commercial success purely. John Stevens had, in 1804, built a successful screw steamvessel; and his paddle-steamer of 1807, the Phoenix, was very possibly a better piece of engineering than the Clermont. John Fitch had, still earlier, used both screw and paddle. In England, Miller and Symington and Lord Dundas had antedated even Fulton's earliest experiments on the Seine. Indeed, it seems not at all unlikely that Papin, a century earlier (in 1707), had he been given a monopoly of steam navigation on the Weser or the Fulda, and had he been joyfully hailed by the Hanoverians as a public benefactor, as was Fulton in the United States, instead of being proscribed and assaulted by the mob who destroyed his earlier Clermont, might have been equally successful; or it may be that the French inventor, Jouffroy, who experimented on the rivers of France twentyfive years before Fulton, might, with similar encouragement, have gained an equal success.

Yet, although Fulton was not in any true sense "the inventor of the steamboat," his services in the work of introducing that miracle of our modern time cannot be overestimated; and, aside from his claim as the first to grasp success among the many who were then bravely struggling to place steam navigation on a permanent and safe basis, he is undeniably entitled to all the praise that has ever been accorded him on such different ground.

It is to Robert Fulton that we owe the fact that to-day the rivers of our own country, and those of the world as well, are traversed by steamers of all sizes and all kinds, and by boats suited to every kind

of traffic; that the ocean floats, in every clime and in all its harbors, fleets of great steamers, transporting passengers and merchandise from the United States to Europe, from Liverpool to Hong-Kong, from London to Melbourne, traversing the "doldrums" as steadily and safely and as rapidly as the regions of the trades or either temperate zone. Steam navigation without Fulton would undoubtedly have become an established fact; but no one can say how long the world, without that great engineer and statesman, would have been compelled to wait, or how much the progress of the world might have been retarded by his failure, had it occurred. The name of Fulton well deserves to be coupled with those of Newcomen and Watt, the inventors of the steam-engine; with those of George and Robert Stephenson, the builders of the railway; and with those of Morse and Bell, who have given us the telegraph and the telephone.- Robert H. Thurston.

"Robert Fulton has often, if not generally, been assumed to have been the inventor of the steamboat, as Watt is generally supposed to be the inventor of the steam-engine, which constitutes its motive apparatus. But this notion is quite incorrect. The invention of the steam-engine and that of the steamboat alike are the results of the inventive genius not of any one man nor of any dozen men. Fulton simply took the products of the genius of other mechanics, and set them at work in combination, and then applied the already known steamboat, in his more satisfactorily proportioned form, to a variety of useful purposes, and with final success. It is this which constitutes Fulton's claim upon the gratitude and the remembrance of the nations; and it is quite enough."

The early chapters of Admiral George H. Preble's "History of Steam Navigation" give a very complete account of the various efforts to construct and work steamboats before the time of Fulton. The account by Robert R. Livingston, in the January, 1812, number of the American Medical and Philosophical Register of New York, reprinted in the present leaflet, is of great historical value, as Livingston's own efforts in this direction, both in association with Fulton and earlier, were of such signal importance. It should be noted that in the April, 1812, number of the Register, Colonel John Stevens of Hoboken, the most active of Fulton's rivals, published a rejoinder to Livingston, criticising his letter for "numerous incorrect and defective statements" concerning himself, and showing that he had formed plans for the application of steam power to navigation as early as 1789, and was at work on construction as early, at least, as 1791. "Stevens," says Thurston, "was the greatest professional engineer and naval architect living at the beginning of the present century. He exhibited a better knowledge of engineering than any man of his time, and entertained and urged more advanced opinions and more statesmanlike views in relation to the economical importance of the improvement of the steam-engine, both on land and water, than seem to have been attributable to any other leading engineer of that time, not excepting Robert Fulton.” Livingston pays proper tribute to John Fitch for the first attempt in

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America to apply steam to navigation in 1783. The career of this man of marvellous inventive genius was a pathetic one. Only the lack of 'property," to which Livingston rightly ascribes so large a part of the success of the Clermont experiment, prevented John Fitch from achieving the triumph and the fame now associated with the name of Fulton. "The day will come," he wrote in his autobiography, "when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from my invention; but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention." He constructed steamboats with paddles, and also successfully applied the screwpropeller. "This," he wrote to David Rittenhouse in 1792, speaking of the steam-engine, "whether I bring it to perfection or not, will be the mode of crossing the Atlantic, in time, for packets and armed vessels." There is a Life of Fitch by Thompson Westcott, containing many selections from his autobiography. The Life in Sparks's "American Biography "is by Whittlesey, who also wrote an impressive paper, "Justice to the Memory of John Fitch," for the Western Literary Journal and Monthly Review for February, 1845, reprinted in pamphlet form. There is much interesting matter concerning Fitch, largely communicated by Daniel Langstreth, the younger, in Watson's "Annals of Philadelphia." See also Fitch's own pamphlet, "The Original Steamboat Supported," a reply (1788) to the claims of J. Rumsey.

The earliest important Life of Fulton is that by his friend Cadwallader D. Colden, published in 1817. The Life by Reigart (1856), for the most part a plagiarism from Colden, is a fulsome work, which derives its value from some original letters included (one from H. Freeland, reprinted in the present leaflet, describing the appearance of the Clermont in her first trip up the Hudson) and the reproduction of many of Fulton's sketches and pictures, including his colored illustrations to Barlow's "Columbiad." The Life in Sparks's series is by James Renwick. There is an admirable brief biography by Robert H. Thurston, in the "Makers of America" series; and a capital book for the young people is the “Life of Robert Fulton, and History of Steam Navigation," by Thomas W. Knox. Preble's "History of Steam Navigation" contains original accounts of the first voyage of the Clermont not found in the other books. The date of this historical voyage was Monday, August 17, 1807; for an account of the curious confusions as to the date, see the Editor's Table of the New England Magazine, September, 1900. Fulton became involved in litigation concerning his patents and various rights; and it was in connection with this that he wrote the letter addressed to Aaron Ogden, printed in the present leaflet, which is the most interesting statement of his claim as inventor of the steamboat.

PUBLISHED BY

THE DIRECTORS OF THE OLD SOUTH WORK, Old South Meeting-house, Boston, Mass.