The Great American Steamboat Race (10 page)

At six o’clock in the evening, helped by only three persons, he [Fulton] put the boat in motion with two other boats in tow behind it, and for an hour and a half he afforded the strange spectacle of a boat moved by wheels like a cart, these wheels being provided with paddles or flat plates, and being moved by a fire engine.

As we followed it along the quay, the speed against the current of the Seine seemed to be about that of a rapid pedestrian, that is about 2,400 toises (2.90 miles) an hour; while going down stream it was more rapid. It ascended and descended four times from Les Bons Hommes as far as the Chaillot engine; it was maneuvered with facility, turned to the right and left, came to anchor, started again, and passed by the swimming school.

One of the [towed] boats took to the quay a number of savants and representatives of the Institute, among whom were Citizens Bossut, Carnot, Prony, Perier, Volney, etc . Doubtless they will make a report that will give this discovery all the celebrity it deserves; for this mechanism applied to our rivers, the Seine, the Loire, and the Rhone, would bring the most advantageous consequences to our internal navigation. The tows of barges which now require four months to come from Nantes to Paris would arrive promptly in from ten to fifteen days. The author of this brilliant invention is M. Fulton, an American and a celebrated engineer.
⁵

The two boats that Fulton’s craft had towed, in which Fulton had provided French government officials and other VIPs a ride to let them participate in the big, historic event, had no doubt slowed his steamboat and had partly accounted for its failure to reach the sixteen-mile-an-hour speed he had predicted. But Fulton was far from being discouraged by the boat’s performance. He would simply have to use a more powerful engine next time — and he would give up the idea of towing other craft.

There was a good reason for Fulton and Livingston to move promptly from their prototype, once it had passed its test, as it had, to the actual steampowered boat that would ply the Hudson on a regular schedule, as Livingston had long envisioned. Livingston had used his and his family’s powerful political influence to obtain from the New York State legislature the right to be sole operators of steamboats on the Hudson — a privilege Livingston and Fulton hoped to also gain on other American rivers. The Hudson monopoly had been first granted to Livingston in March 1798, its primary justification being to protect the Livingston boat from potential competition by imitators who would copy the designs of the craft in which Livingston had invested so much of his time and money.

The legislature granted Livingston a monopoly that would, under the terms specified by the legislation, last twenty years, but did so with conditions that the steamboat Livingston proposed must meet. It must : (1) have a capacity of not less than twenty tons; (2) attain a speed of not less than four miles an hour; and (3) be in operation within a year — that is, by March 1799. The boat that Nicholas Roosevelt had built for Livingston, and Stevens, during its test in October 1798, failed to meet the speed requirement and was eventually abandoned. Livingston managed to have the New York legislature extend its deadline — twice — and the latest deadline was April 1807. He must have a steamboat operating successfully by then in order to keep his monopoly rights.

It was not until April 1804 that Fulton made the move from Paris to pursue the construction of a boat that would meet the New York legislature’s conditions. He informed Livingston that he was leaving for England to oversee the manufacture of the Boulton and Watt steam engine that was intended to power a boat that would be built in the United States. He got Livingston to enlist fellow diplomat James Monroe’s help in obtaining from the British government the export license needed to ship the proposed engine to America. In so doing, Livingston emphasized to Monroe the importance of the engine to commerce on the Mississippi, over which, thanks in part to their efforts, the United States had so recently acquired complete control through the Louisiana Purchase.

Fulton left for London on April 29, 1804. He did not get to the United States till two and a half years later. Evidently unknown to Livingston, Fulton had been asked by British officials, through an American agent, to come to England to build and stage a demonstration of his submarine, or plunging boat, as it was called, and his mines, which were called torpedoes. Since hostilities between England and France had resumed and a French invasion of England had become a new possibility, the British war office had decided to give Fulton’s infernal machines a try in hopes they could be used to combat the menace of the expanding French fleet.

Fulton had leaped at that new chance for fortune and fame. The British government ended up paying him not exactly the fortune he sought but enough to make him richer than he had ever been. His weapons of war, though, failed the test of practicability, and the British government in 1806 at last abandoned its hope of using them to fight France.

Fulton did succeed in obtaining permission for Matthew Boulton (who had taken over the company following Watt’s retirement) to build him the needed machinery to his specifications, including the steam engine, the condenser and an air pump, all for the price of 548 pounds, or about $2,740. He also got a London firm to make him a two-ton copper boiler, for 477 pounds, about $2,385. Everything was completed by March 1805, whereupon Fulton was granted a permit to export the parts to America.

With all necessary business taken care of and with no further gains to be realized from his war weapons in England, Fulton finally made preparations to return to the United States. He bought passage aboard a ship and sailed from Falmouth in October 1806. After seven turbulent weeks at sea he arrived safely in New York on December 13, 1806. He had been gone twenty years and was now forty-one years old. With Livingston’s deadline of April 1807 just four short months away, Fulton wrote to Livingston shortly after his arrival to tell him that he was ready to move ahead with their steamboat. But then he went to Philadelphia to be with the Barlows, who were living there at the time, and from Philadelphia the three of them went to Washington City, as the nation’s capital was then called, and stayed a month, entertaining and being entertained and joining in the celebration that welcomed Meriwether Lewis back from his epic journey across the North American continent.

When he returned to Philadelphia, Fulton dawdled awhile longer, then at last went to New York to get started on the building of the boat. It was the middle of March 1807 when he reported that construction had started at the Charles Browne shipyard at Corlear’s Hook, on the East River in lower Manhattan. Not long after that, he took the steam engine and other machinery parts out of storage in the U.S. Customs warehouse, where they had been since November 1806. Near the end of March he reported, “I have now Ship Builders, Blacksmiths and Carpenters occupied at New York in building and executing the machinery of my Steam Boat.” He said the boat’s construction would take four more months to complete, well past the legislature’s deadline. Livingston responded by having the legislature extend the deadline once again, for another two years.

By the middle of July the hull was far enough along for the two paddle wheels to be mounted on its sides and for Fulton to plan a test for the boat at the end of July. The craft was one hundred and forty-six feet long, thirteen feet in the beam, flat-bottomed and straight-sided, but with a curved bow. Two masts, one fore and one aft, would allow the boat to be rigged with square sails that could be used if the engine failed. The cost of the boat’s construction had risen sharply, doubling to $10,000 the $5,000 that Fulton had originally estimated he and Livingston each would have to contribute.

The boat’s first test was held on Sunday, August 9, 1807, exactly four years since the trial run of Fulton’s experimental craft on the Seine. Following the new test, Fulton gave Livingston a brief written report : “I ran about one mile up the East River against a tide of about one mile an hour ... according to my best observations, I went 3 miles an hour.... Much has been proved by this experiment.” He told Livingston that he would overhaul the engine and make some adjustments to allow the vessel to make more speed. He predicted that it would achieve the required four miles an hour and said that he was planning to take it on its maiden voyage from New York to Albany on Monday, August 17, 1807.

Even while preparing for the voyage up the Hudson, though, Fulton was thinking ahead. “Whatever may be the fate of steamboats on the Hudson,” he told Livingston in the final sentences of his report, “everything is completely proved for the Mississippi.”
⁶
About that same time, he gave an interview to a reporter for the
American Citizen
, who, further revealing Fulton’s ambitions, commented in print that Fulton’s “Ingenius Steamboat, invented with a view to the navigation of the Mississippi from New Orleans upward ... [would] certainly make an exceedingly valuable acquisition to the commerce of the Western States.”
⁷

To make sure the boat would be ready for the August 17 run, Fulton put it through another trial on Sunday, August 16. He seemed to prefer Sundays for demonstrations, presumably because Sundays provided bigger crowds and he wanted to show off his creation to as many people as possible. He moved the boat, under steam, from the East River, around the Battery, at the lower tip of Manhattan, then steamed up a short distance on the North River, as the lower Hudson used to be called, and tied the boat up at a dock near Greenwich Village. With him on the short voyage were a number of Livingston’s friends and relatives, including United States senator Samuel Latham Mitchell, who when he was a member of the New York legislature had introduced the first bill to grant Livingston a steamboat monopoly on the Hudson.

Monday, August 17, dawned bright and warm, promising a hot summer day, and the tide tables said that high tide, reaching up the river from the lower and upper New York bays, would be at eight o’clock that morning and the tide would flood again just before two that afternoon. With a small crew and about forty passengers, mostly Livingston relatives and friends, aboard with him, and a throng of onlookers lining the docks and riverbank, many of them hooting and jeering the ungainly-looking craft, Fulton shouted orders to his captain, Davis Hunt, and his engineer, George Jackson, and at about one o’clock in the afternoon Fulton’s boat, as yet unnamed, cast off its lines and slipped away from the wharf, its grist-mill-looking wheels churning through the water, moving the boat against the current and the ebbing tide, its white-pine fuel sending up columns of smoke and fiery sparks from the craft’s tall stacks.

After a short distance, with all seeming to go well, the boat’s engine abruptly stopped, setting off a wave of anxiety that swept through the passengers. Fulton described the incident and the reactions to it :

The moment arrived in which the word was to be given for the boat to move. My friends were in groups on the deck. There was anxiety mixed with fear among them. They were silent, sad, and weary. I read in their looks nothing but

The
North River Steam Boat
, also known as the
Clermont
, the pioneering creation of Robert Fulton and his financial backer, Robert Livingston, steams up the Hudson River from Manhattan and after three days reaches Albany about 5
P
.
M
. on August 19, 1807. “She is unquestionably the most pleasant boat I ever went in,” one of its passengers remarked. “In her the mind is free from suspense” (Library of Congress).

disaster, and almost repented of my efforts. The signal was given and the boat moved on a short distance and then stopped and became immovable. To the silence of the preceding moment now succeeded murmurs of discontent, and agitations, and whispers and shrugs. I could hear distinctly repeated —“I told you it was so; it is a foolish scheme; I wish we were well out of it.”

I elevated myself upon a platform and addressed the assembly. I stated that I knew not what was the matter, but if they would be quiet and indulge me for half an hour, I would either go on or abandon the voyage for that time. This short respite was conceded without objection. I went below and examined the machinery, and discovered that the cause was a slight maladjustment of some of the work. In a short time it was obviated. The boat was again put in motion. She continued to move on. All were still incredulous. None seemed willing to trust the evidence of their own senses. We left the fair city of New York.
⁸

From that time on, the voyage — and the steamboat — proceeded flawlessly. Onward the craft chugged and splashed, and as night came on, the women retired to a cabin near the stern. On cots provided them they tried to sleep despite the constant pounding of the engine. The men, most of them, stayed up, keeping themselves occupied by singing, their voices carrying across the water in the night air. They passed through Haverstraw Bay, churned past the Highlands and on beyond West Point. At daybreak the light revealed the many curious onlookers along the riverside. About the middle of the morning of Tuesday, August 18, the boat came round the river’s bend at Kingston, and the passengers could then make out the Catskill Mountains in the hazy distance.

At last, at one o’clock that afternoon, they reached the dock at Livingston’s Clermont estate, the one scheduled stop on the trip to Albany. Its safe arrival signaled a huge success for the boat. It had made the one-hundred-and-tenmile voyage to Clermont in twenty-four hours, achieving an average speed of slightly better than four and a half miles an hour. Waiting at the dock was a jubilant Robert Livingston, happy to see and eager to welcome the pioneer voyagers and the novel craft that had brought them to him.

At a little past nine o’clock the next morning, Wednesday, August 19, having left most of his passengers at Clermont, Fulton steamed off again. This time, Livingston was aboard. The boat, which later would be named simply the
North River Steam Boat
, but would become popularly, although mistakenly, known as the
Clermont
, arrived at Albany about five
P
.
M
. after an uneventful forty-mile trip. The governor of New York and a host of astonished citizens were at the waterfront to offer an enthusiastic welcome to the participants of the history-making voyage.

One of the passengers, an Anglican clergyman, reporting on the experience, summed up the remarkable success of Fulton’s boat : “She is unquestionably the most pleasant boat I ever went in. In her the mind is free from suspense. Perpetual motion authorises you to calculate on a certain time to land; her works move with all the facility of a clock; and the noise when on board is not greater than that of a vessel sailing with a good breeze.”
⁹

The next morning, Thursday, August 20, 1807, Fulton and his boat were ready to leave for the return trip to New York. This leg of the
North River Steam Boat
’s round trip, however, would not be a free ride. The boat overnight had become a commercial vessel. Fulton had a sign made and had it hung on the side of the boat. The sign announced that passage to New York was available to the public . The fare : seven dollars, meals included. Two courageous travelers bought tickets to become the
North River
’s first paying passengers.