The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century. by Edward W. Byrn
CHAPTER XII.
559 words | Chapter 51
STEAM NAVIGATION.
EARLY EXPERIMENTS--SYMINGTON’S BOAT--COL. JOHN STEVENS’ SCREW
PROPELLER--ROBT. FULTON AND THE “CLERMONT”--FIRST TRIP TO SEA BY
STEVENS’ “PHŒNIX”--“SAVANNAH,” THE FIRST STEAM VESSEL TO CROSS THE
OCEAN--ERICSSON’S SCREW PROPELLER--THE “GREAT EASTERN”--THE
WHALEBACK STEAMERS--OCEAN GREYHOUNDS--THE “OCEANIC,” LARGEST
STEAMSHIP IN THE WORLD--THE “TURBINIA”--FULTON’S “DEMOLOGOS,” FIRST
WAR VESSEL--THE TURRET MONITOR--MODERN BATTLESHIPS AND TORPEDO
BOATS--HOLLAND SUBMARINE BOAT.
The application of steam for the propulsion of boats engaged the
attention of inventors along with the very earliest development of the
steam engine itself. Blasco de Garay in 1543, the Marquis of Worcester
in 1655, Savary in 1698, Denys Papin in 1707, Dr. John Allen in 1730,
Jonathan Hulls in 1737, Bernouilli and Genevois in 1757, William Henry
(of Pennsylvania) in 1763, Count D’Auxiron and M. Perier in 1774, the
Marquis de Jouffroy in 1781, James Rumsey (on the Potomac) in 1782,
Benjamin Franklin and Oliver Evans in 1786 and 1789, John Fitch in 1786,
and also again in 1796, and William Symington in 1788-89 were the early
experimenters. Papin’s boat was said to have been used on the Fulda at
Cassel, and was reported to have been destroyed by bargemen, who feared
that it would deprive them of a livelihood. Allen, Rumsey, Franklin, and
Evans (1786) proposed to employ a backwardly discharged column of water
issuing from a pump. Jonathan Hulls and Oliver Evans (1789) had stern
wheels. Bernouilli, Genevois, and the Marquis de Jouffroy used paddles
on the duck’s foot principle, which closed when dragged forward, and
expanded when pushed to the rear. Fitch’s first boat employed a system
of paddles suspended by their handles from cranks, which, in revolving,
gave the paddles a motion simulating that which the Indian imparts to
his paddle. Symington’s boat of 1788 (Patrick Miller’s pleasure boat)
had side paddle wheels. Symington’s next boat, built in 1789, and also
owned by Patrick Miller, was of the catamaran type, _i. e._, it had two
parallel hulls with paddle wheels between them.
Such was the state of this art when the Nineteenth Century commenced its
wonderful record. No practical steam vessel had been constructed, as
the efforts in this direction were handicapped by the crudeness of all
the arts, and were to be regarded as experiments only, most of which had
to be abandoned. The seed of this invention, however, had been sown in
the fertile soil of genius, conception of its great possibilities had
fired the zeal of the inventors in this field, and the new century was
shortly to number among its great resources a practical and efficient
steamboat.
[Illustration: FIG. 106.--SYMINGTON’S STEAMBOAT, 1801.]
The first steamboat of the Nineteenth Century was the “Charlotte
Dundas,” built by William Symington in 1801, see Fig. 106, and used on
the Forth and Clyde Canal in 1802. She had a double acting “Watt
engine,” which transmitted power by a connecting rod to a crank on the
paddle-wheel shaft. The boat had a single paddle wheel in the middle
near the stern, and was intended only for canal use, in the place of
horses. It was abandoned for fear of washing the banks.
[Illustration: FIG. 107.--STEVENS’ TWIN SCREW PROPELLER AND ENGINE,
1804.]
In 1804 Col. John Stevens constructed a boat on the Hudson, driven by a
Watt engine, and having a tubular boiler of his own invention and a twin
screw propeller. The engine, boiler, and twin screws are shown in Fig.
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