Steamboat company

“ Along the outer edge of these wheels a platform and rail are formed quite round the vessel, projecting over the sides, and supported by timbers reaching 760down to the vessel’s side. This steamboat runs at the rate of four or four and a half miles per hour in calm weather; but against a considerable breeze, three miles only. It can accommodate two hundred and fifty passengers, and is wrought by five men. The engine consumes twelve hundred weight of coals per day. The funnel of the boiler is twenty-five feet high; and carries a square-sail twenty-two feet in breadth. ”

“ Steamboats were first run on the Great Lakes by enterprising Buffalo citizens who, 132 in 1818, secured rights from the Fulton-Livingston monopoly to build the Walk-in-the-Water, the first of the great fleet of ships that now whiten the inland seas of the United States. Regular lines of steamboats were now formed on the Ohio to connect with the Cumberland Road at Wheeling, although the steamboat monopoly threatened to stifle the natural development of transportation on Western rivers. ”

“ Owing to the nature of her cargo a steamship that carries oil is far more liable to disaster through combustion than even a cotton-ship. Oil is carried not in barrels, but in bulk. At one time it used to be carried by sailing ships in barrels, but this meant that a great deal of trouble and space were unnecessarily expended. The first tank steamer was built in 1886 by Sir W. G. Armstrong, Mitchell and Company. Carrying a cargo of petroleum in bulk is obviously a fairly risky proceeding. Firstly, there is the terrible risk of fire, more especially as the ship must have engines and furnaces ”

“ Not merely, then, in North America, but in Northern Europe the steamship had become a practical and interesting success. On the Clyde the impetus given by the Comet had caused the development of the steamboat to be more rapid. Vessels larger than Bell’s boat were being built and put into actual service, and in 1815 one of them was sent round to the Mersey and thus began the important river steamboat service which is now so significant a feature of the port of Liverpool. The River Thames, in like manner, was to yield to the coming of the steamboat. ”

“ A steamer could carry ten times as much as a barge, could go five [pg 166] times as fast, and required fewer men; it traveled at night, quickly passing from one port to another, pausing only to discharge or receive cargo; its owners and officers were men of character and responsibility, with much wealth in their charge, and insisted on discipline and correct deportment. The flatboat and the keel-boat were soon laid up to rot on the banks; and the boatmen either became respectable steamboat hands and farmers, or went into the Far West, where wild life was still possible. ”

“ In 1818 he owned two or three of the finest coasting schooners in New York harbor, and had a capital of nine thousand dollars. Seeing that steam-vessels would soon win supremacy over those carrying sails only, he gave up his fine business to become the captain of a steamboat at one thousand dollars a year. For twelve years he ran between New York city and New Brunswick, N. J. In 1829 he began business as a steamboat owner, in the face of opposition so bitter that he lost his last dollar. But the tide turned, and he prospered so rapidly that he at length owned over one hundred steamboats. ”

“ The reporter, however, does not think it would be advisable to have fewer than three landing-places at each station, as even the steamboat itself is more or less liable to fall short or to be driven past its port by adverse winds and strong currents; and, in a great public measure of this kind, it is proper to be prepared for the worst that is likely to happen. Regarding the adoption of the steamboat in preference to sailing-boats, the reporter is not however prepared to give any very decided opinion upon the subject. ”

“ Chancellor Livingston, U.S. Minister to France, was aware of the enormous advantages which would accrue to America (and to the happy inventor) if steam propulsion could be achieved economically. With Fulton’s aid he decided on building an experimental steam vessel in France, with a view to transferring to America for commercial enterprise the perfected results of their labour. A partnership was formed, the work proceeded; but the experimental steamboat, whose scantlings were unequal to supporting the weight of the 8-horsepower machinery placed on board, sank at her moorings in a storm. ”

“ And so, arriving at Münden, the watermen, either through fear that this new self-propelling craft would take away their livelihood through inaugurating a fresh era, or, being envious of a success which no man had ever before obtained, they attacked this steamboat, smashed it to pieces, and Papin himself barely escaped with his life. Thus, a craft and its engines, which to-day would be welcomed by any museum in the world, was annihilated by the men who had the privilege of witnessing the first steamship. ”

“ This is important as being the first occasion in history when the steamship took to the sea, for it was not until the James Watt achieved her distinction in 1811 that a British ship had shown her full confidence in steam. Impelled by the impetus which had been given by Fulton and Stevens, the North American continent, with its vast extent of waterways, quickly realised the possibilities of the steamboat, so that in the next decade this novel type of craft became familiar in many parts. ”

“ The boiler burst before the afternoon was over, but not before the inventor had demonstrated the complete practicability of his invention.
For ten years, struggling the while against cruel poverty, John Fitch labored to perfect his steamboat, and to force it upon the public favor, but in vain. Never in the history of invention did a new device more fully meet the traditional "long-felt want." Here was a growing nation made up of a fringe of colonies strung along an extended coast. No roads were built. ”

“ The Florio line, the Mediterranean fleet of the Anchor line, and the Mediterranean and New York Steamship Company, handle nearly all of this class of trade.
The tank steamship, for carrying oil in bulk, is an American invention. Ship-builders declared for years that no vessel with a shifting cargo, like oil in bulk, would live through a gale, but an enterprising Yankee demonstrated the fact that petroleum could be244 pumped from the pipe line directly into the hold of a steamship and transported across the ocean in safety. ”

“ It is not alone Fitch's development of the devices of the endless chain, paddle wheel, and screw 105 propeller and of his puzzling earth-and-water creature that gives luster to his name. His prophetic insight into the future national importance of the steamboat and his conception, as an inventor, of his moral obligations to the people at large were as original and striking in the science of that age as were his models.
The early years of the national life of the United States were the golden age of monopoly. ”

“ That instrument, after setting out the covenant of the vendors to warrant and defend the steamboat and all its appurtenances against all persons whomsoever, recited that 'it was understood and agreed' that the sale was 'upon the express condition' that the steamboat should not run, nor its machinery be used in running, any other steamboat, vessel, or craft, within ten years from the first day of May, 1867, on any of the routes of travel on the rivers, bays, or waters of the State of California, or on the Columbia River and its tributaries. ”

“ Like most important inventions, that of the steamboat was a long time in assuming a form capable of being profitably utilized, and, even when it had assumed such a form, the objections of commercial and scientific men had still to be overcome. The increase in the number of steamboats since the time when the Sirius first crossed the Atlantic has been very great. ”

“ The lowest, and by far the largest, hollow still remained, and to this we now directed all our energies. As there was no place on the bank sufficiently level to set up our engine, and as we had already experienced the inconvenience of a stationary support, we determined to build a flatboat large enough to contain the engine, pump, and all its appendages. The boat was christened by Capt. Sampson the Hoosier or Who za? and was, I believe, the first steamboat ever built on the American River, if not in California. ”

“ Nasmyth interviewed the directors of the Great Western Steamship Company with regard to the manufacture of some unusually powerful tools which they needed for forging the paddle-shaft of the Great Britain. As the invention of the steam-engine had demanded the improvement of turning methods, so now the increase in the size of steamboats showed the insufficiency of forging machinery. ”

“ Already, then, the steamboat had shown herself capable of doing her work on inland waters, and even for short voyages across Channel, as well as for coasting within sight of land. Independent of calms, currents and tides, she was a being of a91 different kind as compared with the sailing ship and was carving out for herself an entirely novel career of usefulness. ”

“ The Baxter steamboat, used on the Erie canal, was the outcome of a competition invited by the State of New York for a prize of 20,000l. for the steamer which best fulfilled the following, viz. a mean speed of 3 miles per hour with a load of 200 tons, small cost, and no wash or swell. This steamboat is 100 feet long, 171⁄2 feet wide, and about 9 feet deep, with a flat bottom and vertical sides, and, including engines and coal, weighs 52 tons. It carries a load of 200 tons, with a draught of 6 feet of water, and has an average speed of about 4 miles, but can work up to 71⁄2 miles an hour. ”

“ The steamboat was laid up in a creek at Bainsford, where it went to ruin, and the inventor himself died in poverty. Among those who inspected the vessel while at work were Fulton, the American artist, and Henry Bell, the Glasgow engineer. The former had already occupied himself with model steamboats, both at Paris and in London; and in 1805 he obtained from Boulton and Watt, of Birmingham, the steam-engine required for propelling his paddle steamboat on the Hudson. The Clermont was first started in August, 1807, and attained a speed of nearly five miles an hour. ”

“ That the proper management of the boilers and machinery of a steamboat requires skill, must be admitted. Indeed, by the act of Congress of August 30, 1852, great and unusual precautions are taken to exclude from this employment all persons who do not possess it. That an omission to exercise this skill vigilantly and faithfully, endangers, to a frightful extent, the lives and limbs of great numbers of human beings, the awful destruction of life in our country by explosions of steam boilers but too painfully proves. ”

“ The question now arises, how can we secure speed for the mails and passengers upon the ocean? With so many expenses and so small an income the fast ocean steamer can not become profitable to even the most thoroughly organized and best administered companies. Much less can it be successfully run by individuals and individual enterprise, which has never so many reliable resources at command as a strong, chartered company. It is true that there are a few prominent transatlantic routes where steamers [Pg 101] can run as auxiliary propellers ”

“ The steamboat was also in fault in not having a look-out at the time, properly stationed. The captain admits that no person was stationed on the deck as a look-out. He claims to have been on that duty himself, although he stood upon the upper deck, some fifteen feet above the water, and sixty feet from the bow of the steamer, and was at the time engaged in giving directions for the management of her and her tows. ”

“ Again, the mode in which the first Lake steamers were made to near the landing-place in the olden time, was something which would fill a modern steamboat captain with amazement. Accustomed as we are every day to see huge steamers guided without any ado straight up to the margin of a quay or pier, the process of putting in seems a simple affair. Not so was it, however, in practice to the first managers of steamboats. When t [542] he Frontenac or William IV. was about to approach the wharf at York, the vessel was brought to a standstill some way out in the harbour. ”

“ Not only was she built to the requirements of the Board of Trade and the insurance companies, but, as we have noted, she was constructed by the leading shipbuilding company of the world, under conditions which would inspire them to put into the world's greatest steamship the very best that the long experience and ample facilities of the yard could produce. ”

“ Popular history has ascribed to Robert Fulton the honor of building and navigating the first steamboat. Like claims to priority in many other inventions, this one is strenuously contested. Two years before Fulton's "Clermont" appeared on the Hudson, John Stevens, of Hoboken, built a steamboat propelled by a screw, the model of which is still in the Stevens Polytechnic Institute. Earlier still, John Fitch, of Pennsylvania, had made a steamboat, and urged it upon Franklin, upon Washington, and upon the American Philosophical Society without success ”

“ Livingston to put my steamboat in practice and such engine is of more immediate use to my Country than Submarine Navigation, I wish to devote some years to it and [Pg 119] should the British Government allow me an annuity I should not only do justice to my friends but it would enable me to carry my steamboat and other plans into effect for the good of my Country.—It has never been my intention to hide these Inventions from the World on any consideration, on the contrary it has been my intention to make them public as soon as consistent with strict justice to all with whom I am concerned. ”