a steamshipThe Story of the Steamship.CHAPTER I.
a steamship
The Story of the Steamship.
THE “COMET” APPEARS.
“Ifonly people could reach the place easier, I could do more business.”
So mused Henry Bell of Glasgow about the year 1810. He was an ingenious and enterprising man, and he had established a hotel or bathing-house at Helensburgh on the Clyde. But he wanted more visitors, and he puzzled his brain to discover how he could offer facilities for them to reach the place.
He tried boats, worked by paddles, propelled by hand; but these proved a failure. They had been in use years before, though perhaps he knew it not. Tradition says that boats fitted with paddle wheels and worked by oxen in the boat, were known to the Egyptians, but perhaps tradition is wrong. The Romans and the Chinese also are said to have known wheel boats, the wheels worked by men or by animals—in the case of the Chinese apparently by men alone. A similar kind of boat appears to have been tried on the Thames in the seventeenth century; but whether Bell knew of these things or not, his experiments ofthe same kind did not answer. What was to be done?
He determined to build a steamboat. At first sight there does not seem to be much connection between baths and steamboats, but apparently it was the ownership of the one which led Henry Bell to build the other, and to become the first man in Great Britain who used a steamboat for what may be called public and commercial purposes.
She was a queer craft. Her funnel was bent and was used also as a mast, and she poured forth quantities of thick smoke. But she was successful, and laboured along at the rate of five miles an hour. Up and down the river she plied, and whatever else she did, or did not, she made the good folk of those days understand that steam could be applied to navigation.
She was called theComet, not because, even in the opinion of her owner, she resembled a blazing meteor, but because, to use Bell’s own words, “she was built and finished the same year that a comet appeared in the north-west part of Scotland.”
“Whatever made you think of starting a steamship?” we can imagine a friend asking him as they stood on the bank and watched theCometwith her paddles shaped like malt shovels, splashing up the water.
“Partly it was Miller’s experiments, and partly it was a letter from Fulton. You know, Fulton has put theClermontsuccessfully on American waters. He had been over here talking with Symington, who had a steamer on the Forth and Clyde Canal you remember, and he wrote to me also asking about machinery and requesting me to inquire about Miller’s boats, and send him drawings.”
“And did you?”
“Oh ay, I did; but when he replied afterwards that he had made a steamboat from the drawings though requiring some improvements, I thought how absurd it was to send my opinions to other countries and not put them into practice in our own.”
“So you made theComet?”
“Well, I made a number of models before I was satisfied; but when I was convinced the idea would work, I made a contract with John Wood & Co., of Port-Glasgow, and they built me this boat, which I fitted up with engine and paddles, as you see. John Robertson actually set up the engine. We will go aboard presently, and you shall see her.”
BELL’S “COMET.”
BELL’S “COMET.”
They did so, and this is something of what they saw. They found a small vessel, forty feet long and ten and a-half wide, and only about twenty-five tons burthen. The furnace was bricked round, and the boiler, instead of being in the centre, was seated on one side of the ship, with the engine beside it. But the funnel was bent and rose aloft in the middle, and it answered the purpose of a mast—to carry sail.
“But look at the machinery,” we can imagine Bell saying to his friend. “We have one single cylinder, you see. The piston is attached to a crank on an axle. This axle carries a big cog wheel, which, working two more placed on the paddle axles, causes them to revolve.”
“And the paddles?”
“Well, you see, we have now two sets on each side, and each paddle is shaped something like a malt shovel; but I think I shall alter them, and have paddle wheels soon.”
Bell carried out his improvement, and in a short time he did adopt the better form of paddle wheel. The improvedComet, with a new engine, attained six or seven miles an hour. But before this, Mr. Hutchison, a brewer, built another boat, bigger than theComet, and her engine was of ten horse-power, while theComet’swas but three. She travelled at an average of nine miles an hour, and her fares were but a-third of those charged by coach.
The news of the steamers on the Clyde became noised abroad, and steamboats began to appear on other British rivers. The success of the new venture became assured.
But how had it been brought about? Bell had referred to the labours of others, and, indeed, his was not the first steamboat, though, doubtless, it was the first in Britain to ply for passengers.
The truth is, that as with the locomotive, several minds were working towards the same object. And among those early steamboat seekers Patrick Miller, of Dalswinton, and William Symington, of Wanlockhead Mines, are entitled to high place.
Indeed, Symington is said to have built the “first practically successful steamboat” in the world. She was called theCharlotte Dundas, and, in 1802, she tugged two barges, together of about 140 tons, nineteen and a-half miles, in six hours, with a strong wind against her.
She was built under the patronage of Lord Dundas, and was intended to be used for towing on the Forth and Clyde Canal, but the proprietors of the canal would not adopt this new method of propulsion; they feared that the wash from the wheels would damage the canal banks. So theCharlotte Dundas, successful though she was to a certain extent, had to be beached and broken up. But Fulton and Bell both inspected her, and we may infer that what they saw, influenced their subsequent action.
The engine of theCharlotte Dundaswas of the “double action” character, introduced by Watt, and it turned a crank in the paddle wheel shaft. The wheel was placed at the stern; and boats with their wheels thus placed are still made for use in particular places. Thus Messrs. Yarrow built one in 1892, to voyage in the shallow rivers and lagoons on the west coast of Africa; the idea being that a screw-propeller would have been likely to become fouled with weeds.
TheCharlotte Dundas, we say, has been regarded as the “first practically successful steamboat ever built.” No doubt it was so, and the credit must be largely given to William Symington. But his success, and that which crowned the labours of others, were rendered possible by the inventions and improvements of James Watt.
Others had experimented before Symington. Thus, if royal records in Spain may be trusted, a certain Blasco de Garay exhibited a steam vessel, in 1543, at Barcelona. He placed a large cauldron of boiling water in the ship, and a wheel on each side. Certain opinions concerning it were favourable, and Blasco was rewarded; but the invention was kept secret, and appears to have died.
Then, in 1655, the Marquis of Worcester is said to have invented something like navigation by steam. Later on, Jonathan Hulls took out a patent for a paddle steam vessel in 1736; and among others, in England, France, and America, the Marquis de Jouffroy made a steamer which was tried at Lyons, in 1783.Then, in 1787, Patrick Miller is said to have patented paddle wheels in Britain.
Miller was a retired gentleman at Dalswinton, in Dumfriesshire, who took much interest in mechanical affairs. He experimented with paddle wheels, and he also endeavoured to improve naval building. At first the wheels appear to have been turned by men, and there came a day when a double boat of Miller’s, worked by a couple of wheels with two men to turn each wheel, sailed with a Custom House boat, and the need of more efficient motive power to revolve the wheels became very marked. Then the idea of steam navigation was born, or re-born.
There was a gentleman named Taylor, living with Miller, as tutor to his sons, and he often took part in the experiments with the boats. It is said that Taylor suggested the use of steam to propel the vessel, and that Miller doubted its practicability. However, he decided, at length, to try it, and in those summer days of 1787 the subject was much talked of at Dalswinton. Taylor mentioned the matter to Symington, who, it seems, was a friend of his, but it is not quite clear whether he had himself thought of this use of steam. However, in October, 1788, the experiment was tried on Dalswinton lake.
A boy was there who afterwards became Lord Brougham, and Robert Burns was also there; and, no doubt, the experiment was watched with much interest.
It appears to have been successful, and next year a bigger boat was tried on the Forth and Clyde Canal, again with some success. But whether Mr. Miller thought he had now spent enough money on these experiments—and Carlyle says Miller “spent his life and his estate on that adventure, and diedquasi-bankrupt and broken-hearted”—or whether he was satisfied with the results attained, he abandoned all further effort. Possibly he did not see any opportunity of utilising the invention further. At all events, the development of the steamboat made practically no progressuntil Symington commenced his experiments under Lord Dundas.
Russell is of opinion that the invention of steam navigation was the joint production of these three men. “The creation of the steamship,” says he, “appears to have been an achievement too gigantic for any single man. It was produced by one of those happy combinations in which individuals are but tools, working out each his part in a great system, of the whole of which no single one may have comprehended all the workings.”
ROBERT FULTON.
ROBERT FULTON.
To these three, however, must be added Henry Bell, in Britain, and Robert Fulton, in America. They carried the great enterprise further on, to something like assured success.
Miller’s boats had two hulls, and the paddle wheelsrevolved between. Symington placed his wheel astern. Bell placed his paddles on either side.
“Ah, she will work!” we can imagine the spectators saying, as they watched that strange craft, theCharlotte Dundas, with her double rudder, tugging along her barges.
“Ay, she will work, but the canal folk won’t let her; they think the wash from the wheels will wear away the bank!”
“Then I will take the idea where it won’t be so hindered,” said another. “We are not afraid of our river banks in America.”
That man, whom we imagine said this, and who appears, without doubt, to have inspected theCharlotte Dundas, was Robert Fulton, who, with his companion, Livingstone, claim to have invented steamboats in the United States.
This, then, in brief, seems to be the story. While bearing in mind the efforts of others, yet it would seem that Miller, Taylor, and Symington invented steam navigation, utilising improvements of Watt on the steam engine; but Fulton, in America, and Bell, in Britain, seeing something of these experiments, developed them to assured success.
What were Fulton’s adventures?