VIEW THIS EMAIL AS A WEBPAGE >>

7 March 2024 — “Mr. Fulton’s Ingenious Steam Boat” Takes Her Place in History

Mr. Fulton’s Ingenious Steam Boat, invented with a view to the navigation of the Mississippi from New Orleans upward, sails today from the North River, near State’s Prison, to Albany. The velocity of the Steamboat is calculated at four miles an hour. It is said it will make a progress of two against the current of the Mississippi, and if so it will certainly be a very valuable acquisition to the commerce of Western States. –American Citizen

In the last edition of Sea History Today we remembered the Hudson-Fulton celebration, which featured the replica Clermont in honor of that steam pioneer. Festivities took a raucous turn when her fellow replica, the Half Moon, crashed into Clermont due to the inexperience of her crew. The inaugural voyage of the original craft 102 years earlier, departing her berth on 17 August 1807, started off with less of a bang, and more of a whimper. Fulton later described it in a letter:

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 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.”

This illustration from Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made, by James D. McCabe, Jr., Illustrated by G. Fand E. B. Bensell, accompanies a chapter with the wonderful title “Consternation at the sight of Fulton's monster.” PD, Project Gutenberg.

Fulton went below to inspect the works, and made a few adjustments; soon the craft was underway again. Within 24 hours she had completed the voyage from lower Manhattan to Clermont, the estate of his friend and business associate Robert Livingston. After overnighting at Clermont, Fulton and company departed for Albany, arriving at 5 PM. The speed for the journey, 150 miles covered in 30 hours underway, was five miles per hour. There were about 40 guests aboard for the journey, and Fulton, with an engineer’s efficiency, took advantage of the celebratory atmosphere to propose to Helen Livingston (a young cousin of his good friend). Livingston, who continued to be referred to as Chancellor Livingston (the Chancellor of New York was its highest judicial official until a reorganization of its judicial system in July 1847) even after stepping down, announced the engagement to the happy well-wishers.

The vessel itself was built in the shipyard of Charles Browne at Corlear’s Hook on the East River. She was 150 feet long, 13 feet wide. The engine was imported from England; for a time it was hinted—but later debunked—that the boiler had been built from melted pennies. She was called the “North River Steamboat” (“North River” was a colonial name for what we call the Hudson, or sometimes the lower part of the Hudson). A Custom House record of the period lists her as the North River Steamboat of Clermont, linking the ship to her home port. No contemporary accounts of the boat called her Clermont, but the Fulton biographer Cadwallader D. Colden used that name in his book, and the name stuck, much to the consternation of historians and indexers, who have to account for both names.  

Robert Fulton first aspired to be a painter, but turned his attention to a variety of technical ideas, including canals, torpedoes (contemporary term for what we would today call mines), and developing a working steamboat. Image: PD.

Now of course Fulton wasn’t the inventor of the first steamboat, google North River Steamboat and you’ll often find it described as the “first vessel to demonstrate the viability of using steam propulsion for commercial water transportation.” Engineers and tinkerers had been trying to create practical steam-propelled boats for some time, experimenting with engine designs and different systems to use that energy to move the boat, such as oars and jet propulsion. The two men who are perhaps most famous for their roles in the early development of steam boating in this country are John Fitch and James Rumsey. 

In addition to the actual challenges of exploring ways of making the new technology work, everyone striving to perfect the steamboat needed to secure and to keep financial backing and to protect what we call today their intellectual property. The task was made extremely difficult when the federal government of our very-new country was still hammering out its stance on patents and how to grant them—and on one day in August of 1791, the government awarded patents not just to both Fitch and Rumsey, but also to two other competing inventors, of similar systems, with so much overlap that some have described the patents as “effectively worthless.” Rumsey continued to pursue his work in Europe but died in 1792 without managing to develop a working steamboat with his latest ideas; Fitch lost his financial backing and died in Kentucky six years later. 

Not only did the North River Steamboat complete a round-trip from New York City to Albany without incident, but Fulton and his associate, Chancellor Livingston, had secured a state-issued monopoly on the North River route if they could operate a ship reliably. The Livingston-Fulton partnership ran a packet service on the river, adding to the fleet as business expanded. Their monopoly was dissolved in 1824 after their deaths, opening the river for robust competition. By being the first to carry passengers under steam in 1807, Fulton’s steamboat earned her place in the history books.   

Extra Credit

“Steam Navigation on the Hudson River”

Robert Fulton and the Clermont

Sea History Today is written by Shelley Reid, NMHS senior staff writer. Past issues can be read online by clicking here.