Fund-Publication, No. 5.
A LOST CHAPTER
IN THE
History of the Steamboat.
THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
• 1844 •
BY
J. H. B. LATROBE.
_Baltimore, March, 1871._
Printed by John Murphy,
Printer to the Maryland Historical Society,
Baltimore, March, 1871.
A LOST CHAPTER
IN THE
HISTORY OF THE STEAMBOAT.
In the spring of 1828, my law office was in the Athenæum building, so
called, afterwards destroyed by fire. My business was scant, for I had
but recently been admitted to the bar. I was ruminating, no doubt, upon
my prospects, when the door was opened, and a handsome, elderly man, of
distinguished presence, entered and asked me, in rich unctuous tones,
and with a strong Irish accent, if my name was Latrobe, and if I
recollected him. His face was familiar, and so was his voice; but I
could not place him. Seeing that I hesitated, he said, “and it would be
strange if you did, for you were but a bit of a child when you last saw
me in your father’s house. I am John Devereux Delacy,” and he rolled out
his sounding name as though he was proud of it. I recollected him then.
Fourteen or fifteen years back it had been his fancy to pet me as a
child. It was this that had impressed him on my memory. “Ah, you know me
now,” he said: “you remember when I used to be so much with Fulton and
Roosevelt and Chancellor Livingston and Dr. Mitchell, at the Navy Yard
house.” This was the name given to my father’s residence in Washington,
not far from the Navy Yard. After recalling well remembered incidents
and indulging in general remarks for a while, Mr. Delacy took a survey
of my scantily furnished office, and said, “not overwhelmed with
business, my young friend: so much the better for me: you will have the
more time to attend to something I want you to undertake. If you
succeed, it will be the making of both our fortunes. I want suit brought
against every steamboat owner in the United States; and you must begin
with old Billy McDonald, here in Baltimore. See this;” and, suiting the
action to the word, my visitor drew from his breast pocket the original
parchment letters patent, now before me, signed by James Madison,
President, James Monroe, Secretary of State, and Richard Rush, Attorney
General, granting to Nicholas J. Roosevelt the exclusive right to his
‘new and useful improvement in propelling boats by steam.’ Dated
December 1st, 1814. The patent had still some months to run. The
specification contained the following description of the improvement:
“In a boat or vessel of any form, but of sufficient capacity to
contain the machinery, I place a steam engine of a power proportioned
to the resistance to be overcome in propelling a boat or vessel a
given distance in a given time. This steam engine is supplied by a
boiler of the usual form, or made cylindric, one or more at pleasure,
so as to be of sufficient capacity to feed the engine. I next place
two wheels over the sides, on the axles of which I put fliers,
dispense with them, or otherwise, contrive them at pleasure, either to
regulate motion, or to give additional velocity; or, they may be
connected with the valve shaft and steam engine by wheels, so as to
give any number of revolutions that may be desired. The arms of the
water wheels I would make of wood, to which I attach floats or paddles
of cast iron or thick boiler plate sheet iron, though they may be made
of wood. These floats I make move up and down on the arms by means of
screws and holes, so as to make them deeper or shallower in the water,
in taking a hold on the water, agreeably to the depth of the water the
boat may draw, or the lading there may be on board, or agreeably to
other circumstances. The supporters of the outer ends of the water
wheel shaft to be made of iron with braces, though they may be made of
wood, if required.
Nicholas J. Roosevelt.
Witnesses:
Jeremiah Ballard,
John Dev’x Delacy.”
Delacy watched me closely as I read the letters patent; and, I remember,
placed his gloved finger on his own name at the bottom. I had not been
carried away by his promise of a case. He was remarkably well preserved;
but his habiliments approached what might have been called seediness;
although his air and carriage would have borne up against even longer
used apparel. It was easy to be seen that a contingent fee was all that
could be expected: but the parchment, the accuracy of the description,
its perfect correspondence with the steamboats in use, and its date,
made the case look better than I had at first thought it would.
Taking the letters patent from me, Mr. Delacy placed in my hands a
carefully prepared assignment from Roosevelt to William Griffith, an
eminent lawyer of New Jersey, conveying them in trust for the benefit of
Roosevelt, for one-third interest, of Delacy, for one-third, and of
Griffith and Aaron Ogden, of a well known and distinguished family, for
the remaining third. The assignment gave Griffith the power to sell
rights and sue infringers; and excepted from its operation the
Shrewsbury and Jersey Stage Company and Ogden, who were already
licensees of Roosevelt, the latter running a boat between Elizabethtown
and New York.
Nor was this all. Delacy, who evidently was pleased with the impression
he saw he was making, next handed me an opinion on a case stated, given
by Mr. Wirt, in 1826, of which the following is an extract:
CASE.
In the year 1809, Robert Smith, Esquire, then being Secretary of
State, an application was made to him by the late Robert Fulton, Esq.,
for a patent for the using of vertical wheels with steam engines or
other power to propel boats through the water; but though he filed
such his application, &c., he neither subscribed nor swore thereto in
the manner prescribed, or required, by law; for the name, Robert
Fulton, is in the handwriting of another man.
In 1814, (under view of the circumstances,) a patent was granted to
Nicholas J. Roosevelt, for the using vertical wheels with steam
engines, or other acting power, to propel boats, &c., through water,
the patent or papers issued to Fulton being considered void, and but
as so much blank paper.
Public notice was given of the patent having been granted to
Roosevelt, and Fulton never urged his claim, but from that moment
abandoned it; and Roosevelt’s patent, though well and publicly known
to exist, and to be in existence for twelve years, has been neither
impeached nor impugned; neither does any other person lay claim to the
invention of the application of vertical wheels.
It is asked, if, under the within stated circumstances, the patent to
Roosevelt is not valid; and at this distance of time from being
issued, is not now unimpeachable?
Other questions were asked in connection with the assignment. Mr. Wirt’s
answer to the above is alone important however at this time. It is as
follows:
Baltimore, _July 11th, 1826_.
On the above statement I am of opinion, that the patent to Roosevelt
is valid. It is still subject to impeachment, however, on the ground
that he was not the first discoverer of the improvement which he has
patented. The distance of time since the date of the patent is
sufficient to bar a proceeding to set it aside by _scire facias_ under
the third section of the Act of 1793; but any defendant, against whom
an action may be brought under the patent, may impeach it at any
distance of time, under the sixth section of the Act of 1793.
Satisfied from this showing that Mr. Delacy’s case was not a bad one, I
agreed to undertake it, and wrote to Mr. Roosevelt, in the State of New
York, upon the subject. He corroborated all that I had heard, sent me
copies of important correspondence, and referred me to Richard S. Coxe,
Esq., of Washington, who was the executor of Mr. Griffith, the assignee
for the original papers. Mr. Griffith had then been for many years dead.
Among my clients, at this time, was the late Mr. John S. Stiles, who,
hearing what had taken place with Delacy, agreed, in consideration of
participating in my fee, to visit Washington, call on Mr. Coxe, obtain
the Griffith papers, and afterward go to Clermont, the residence of the
late Chancellor Livingston, who, I learned from Mr. Roosevelt, was
connected with the investigation I was about to make.
On the return of Mr. Stiles to Baltimore, and after an examination of
papers he had obtained, the case looked so strong, that I called on Mr.
Wirt, reminded him of his opinion, shewed him my documents, and asked
him if he would come into the case on a contingent fee. I called also on
Mr. Taney. Both gentlemen thought the prospect of success was fair; and
both agreed to participate in the trial, which was to take place in the
Circuit Court of the United States, in Baltimore. It was thought best,
on consultation, to begin the litigation by suing the company owning the
steamboats running from Baltimore to Frenchtown, at the head of which
was the late General William McDonald; and I addressed myself, at once,
to as thorough a preparation as I was capable of making, prior to
issuing a writ. Difficulties now presented themselves which I had not
appreciated when Mr. Delacy called on me, or while gathering the
documentary evidence. I am reminded of the first that occurred by Mr.
Roosevelt’s reply to my letter already mentioned. It was necessary that
we should have a meeting; but to bring this about required an hundred
dollars, which neither of us had to spare. Then, commissions were
necessary to collect the testimony of parties at a distance. In a word,
it was apparent that more means were needed than I, a young lawyer, just
beginning the world, could command; and Mr. Stiles had spent all _he_
could afford in his visits to Washington and Clermont. I was in trouble,
too, about Delacy. He had procured, on credit, from Patterson, the then
fashionable tailor in South street, a complete outfit; and not having
the money to pay for it, Patterson, who was unwilling to wait until our
success at law made my client’s fortune, put him in jail, in spite of
his sounding name and lofty bearing. I had to become security for him,
and ultimately to pay the debt. By this time, I had found out that he
had an aptitude for this sort of thing; and that it would be for my own
advantage, and the credit of the great case, to get him out of town as
soon as possible. Always buoyant in his feelings, gushing in his manner,
and intending to be honest, he was one of those men who are always in
trouble. As already intimated, therefore, I was not as hopeful at the
end of some months as I had been; and, when Mr. Taney asked me, one day,
how my preparation was getting on, I told him, candidly, all my
troubles, present and prospective. His advice was kind and prompt. The
case he still thought was a fair one, and if it went on he would go into
it with earnest zeal; but, he advised me not to hamper myself in the
commencement of my professional career. One thing was certain. I would
have against me every steamboat owner in the United States. Now-a-days,
combinations often carry on these great cases. It was not so then; and,
after discussing the matter with Mr. Stiles, I tied up my papers, and
abandoning the idea of suing General McDonald, placed them in the
pigeon-hole, where, with a single exception, they have remained
undisturbed for upwards of forty years, and now see the light, only that
this Lost Chapter may be written. The exception was this. In 1855 or
1856, I lent the package to Dr. Hamel, a Russian _savant_, who was about
preparing a history of steam navigation, and who visited America to
obtain information on this and other subjects. The papers remained in
his hands for some months. They were returned when he was on the eve of
departure for Europe. He has been dead for many years; and I am not
aware that he made any use of what he got from me. It is probable,
therefore, that what I am about to tell will be told for the first time,
now. It seems proper that it should not be wholly lost, and hence I tell
it.
To us, of to-day, it appears strange that the first suggestion of steam,
as a motive power for the propulsion of vessels was not accompanied by a
plan for using vertical wheels over the sides to which to apply it. And
yet, this was very far from being the case. Fitch, in 1783, propelled a
boat upon the Delaware by a steam mechanism that moved paddles, as an
Indian works the paddle in a canoe. Rumsey had a vertical pump, operated
by steam, in the middle of his boat, that drew in water at the stem and
expelled it at the stern, through an horizontal trunk in the bottom. Dr.
Franklin’s plan was to make a current of steam propel the vessel as it
issued from the stern. Then steam was applied to oars, and for a season
a boat was rowed by steam between Philadelphia and Bordentown. Dr.
Kensey built a steam engine that was to operate upon oars, paddles and
flutter wheels. Fulton himself, as stated by his biographer, Colden,
after subjecting Rumsey’s mode to the test of calculation, “thought of
paddles and duck’s feet, abandoning which, he took up the idea of using
endless chains with resisting boards upon them as propellers. His
calculations,” still using Colden’s language, “giving him a favorable
opinion of the mode; at least, he was persuaded it was greatly
preferable to any other method that had been previously tried.”
The above were notions, mere notions, all of them—all of them were utter
failures; and the enumeration of them, now, excites our astonishment
that any one of them should have been tried. Long before the day of
Fulton, long before the earliest period to which Fulton, at any time,
ever attempted to carry back the plan of steam navigation, it was, as I
have shewn, entertained and practically experimented on, here in
America, by Fitch, Rumsey, Kensey and others, all of whom failed to
succeed. What made it a success at last? _The use of vertical wheels
over the sides of the vessel._ Why had it not succeeded previously?
_Because vertical wheels were not combined with steam power_ in the
production of the desired result—a successful steamboat, as now
understood. The merit lies with him, therefore, who first suggested the
combination that produced success,—describing it in such a practical
shape that the task of invention was completed, leaving nothing to be
done but the mechanical execution. Was this the merit of Robert Fulton?
Unquestionably it was not; and the object of this writing is to
demonstrate the fact.
I have before me the original “petition of Nicholas J. Roosevelt to the
Honorable the Governor, the Councils and the Representatives, of the
State of New Jersey, in Legislative assembly convened,”—dated January
13th, 1815, in which he “asserts (I quote his words) with the modest and
manly firmness of honesty that he is the true and original inventor and
discoverer of steamboats with vertical wheels now in use.” And he prays
from the Legislature, “as the constitutional guardians of the rights of
their fellow-citizens and of the interests of the State,” such
privileges, as on examination and hearing he may be thought entitled to.
At this time, there were vague notions of the powers of the States over
their navigable waters, which the decision of the Supreme Court, in
connection with the steamboat controversy, dissipated at a later day.
Belonging to an old New York family, whose worth had been illustrated
then, as it has been since, by the honorable positions that its members
have held in that great State, Mr. Roosevelt was a gentleman of
character and education, of an active enterprising temper, and addicted
all his life to matters connected with civil engineering and mechanics.
Appreciated by all who knew him as a person of unblemished honor, his
word was independent of his oath; but, attached to the petition just
referred to is an affidavit, not without interest, of which the
following is an extract:
“In or about the year 1781 or 1782, this deponent resided with a
certain Joseph Oosterhaudt, about four miles above Esopus on the
North, or Hudson river, in the State of New York. That he did at that
time make very many actual experiments, as well upon mill machinery as
upon the motion and buoyancy of bodies in and through water; and did
then and there make, rig and put in operation, on a small brook near
the house of the aforesaid Oosterhaudt, a small wooden boat or model
of a boat with vertical wheels over the sides, each wheel having four
arms or paddles, or floats, made of pieces of shingle attached to the
periphery of the wheels whereby to take a purchase on the water; and
that these wheels being acted upon by hickory and whalebone springs
propelled the model of the boat through the water by the agency of a
tight cord passed between the wheels and being re-acted on by the
springs.”
Soon after the evacuation of the city by the British, Mr. Roosevelt
returned to New York; and following the bent of his inclinations, we
find him, some years afterward, becoming interested in the Schuyler
Copper mines in New Jersey, on the Passaic, then called Second river.
Here he found some parts of an old atmospheric engine, which he used in
completing a perfect machine of that description; and meeting with an
engineer from the establishment of Bolton & Watt, whom he employed to
make improvements, he built engines for various parties, and constructed
for the water works in Philadelphia, the ponderous machines, which, for
many years, supplied that city with water, by pumping from the
Schuylkill into the distributing reservoir at Centre Square. During all
this time, the subject of steam navigation seems never to have been lost
sight of. He wanted to substitute for the hickory and whalebone of his
Esopus experiment the mighty agent with whose multitudinous uses the
world was then beginning to be familiar.
Among other persons who had heard of Mr. Roosevelt’s views in this
direction, was the late Robert R. Livingston, better known as Chancellor
Livingston, who, on the 8th of December, 1797, wrote to him (I quote
from the original letter now before me) as follows:
“Mr. Stevens mentioned to me your desire to apply the steam machine to
a boat. Every attempt of this kind having failed, I have constructed a
boat on perfectly new principles which, both in the model and on a
large scale has exceeded my expectations. I was about writing to
England for a steam machine, but hearing of your wish, I was willing
to treat with you on terms which I believe you will find advantageous
for the use of my invention.”
The Chancellor was an inventor, but unlike most inventors was a man of
large wealth; and the result of the correspondence, thus commenced, all
of which is before me, was an agreement between the Chancellor,
Roosevelt, and John Stevens of Hoboken, to build a boat on joint
account, for which the engines were to be constructed at Second river by
Roosevelt, while the propelling agency employed was to be on the plan of
the Chancellor.
I have not been able to make out, from the very voluminous
correspondence, the precise character of the Chancellor’s contrivance;
but I infer that it consisted of wheels with vertical axes, submerged at
the stern, that forced a stream of water outward from between them, and
so propelled the vessel. The inventor’s own idea of it must have been
vague in the first instance; for there is scarcely a letter to Roosevelt
from the time the work was commenced, until it was abandoned, that does
not suggest changes and alterations. Steam appears to have been applied
to the machinery about the middle of the year 1798, unsuccessfully; and
the Chancellor, charging the failure to want of power in the engine,
proposes to throw the cost of it upon the builder. This is of course
resisted. Further improvements in the propellers are made. The engine is
then alleged to be _too_ powerful: and so matters go on, until the 21st
of October, 1798, when Roosevelt writes to the Chancellor, giving him an
account of a trial trip, on which the speed attained was equivalent to
about three miles in still water; though, with wind and tide, the
Spanish Minister, who was on board and highly elated, estimated the
actual speed at double that amount.
In the meanwhile however, on the 6th of September, 1798, Roosevelt wrote
to the Chancellor an important letter in this connection, in which,
after referring to a change in the plan, he says:
“I would recommend that we throw two wheels of wood over the sides,
fastened to the axes of the flys (fly wheels) with eight arms or
paddles; that part which enters the water of sheet iron to shift
according to the power they require either deeper in the water, or
otherwise, and that we navigate the vessel with these until we can
procure an engine of the proper size, which, I think, ought not to be
less than 24 inch cylinder.”
No better description of a side wheel steamboat has ever been given than
is contained in this letter of the 6th of September, 1798, the original
draft of which, with all its interlineations, is now before me; _and
this is the first practical suggestion of the combination which made
steam navigation a commercial success_, that there is a record of in
America; and this also, when, as late as 1802, four years later, Fulton,
as we are informed by his biographer, had become assured, that endless
chains and floats were alone to be relied on!
Receiving no reply to the suggestion, thus made, Roosevelt writes to the
Chancellor on the 16th of September, 1798, saying: “I hope to hear your
opinion of throwing wheels over the sides;” when the Chancellor answers:
“I say nothing on the subject of wheels over the sides, as I am
perfectly convinced from a variety of experiments of the superiority of
those we have adopted.”
Again, on the 21st October, in the letter giving an account of the trial
trip with the Spanish Minister on board, Roosevelt says, “he would wish
the Chancellor’s wheels to be tried, contrasted with paddles on Mr.
Stevens’ plan, or with wheels over the sides, so as to ascertain the
difference in the application of the power.” To which the Chancellor
answers on the 28th October, 1798, referring to the Stevens’ paddles,
“they are too inconvenient and liable to accidents to be used—AND, AS
FOR VERTICAL WHEELS, THEY ARE OUT OF THE QUESTION!”
Roosevelt was at this time so strongly impressed with the plan that the
Chancellor thus peremptorily put aside, that in a letter of the 21st to
the same John Stevens already mentioned, who, as we have seen, was one
of the partners in the adventure, he says, “I am firmly of opinion that
a vessel may be propelled at the rate of _eight_ miles an hour.”
Not even the praise of the Spanish Minister seems to have been
sufficient to vitalize the Chancellor’s boat; and we are led to suppose
that it was recognized by all as a failure; for Stevens, who seems to
have had more influence than Roosevelt, persuaded the Chancellor to
adapt the engine to his contrivance of a set of paddles in the stern,
pushing the boat forward as they were made by a crank motion to rise and
fall. A rough sketch of this contrivance in a letter from Stevens, dated
July 15th, 1799, is before me. The experiment so racked the Chancellor’s
boat as to make it unfit for use altogether. We wonder now that such
things could have been thought of even.
In Mr. Stevens’ letter there is a passage that indicates the reliance
that was placed on Roosevelt by this, the most practical of his
associates, and shews him to have been the party on whose skill the
others depended. He says:
“In the meantime, I would wish to determine on our plan for placing
the paddles in the stern of the boat and provide immediately to put it
in execution. You and Stoudinger (a young man brought up by Roosevelt,
and who subsequently became Fulton’s right hand man, and one of the
first practical engineers in America,) and Smallman (another of
Roosevelt’s employees) must lay your heads together on this subject;
and, as soon as you have fixed upon the plan you conceive will be most
eligible, I wish you would take a ride down and communicate it to me;
and, at the same time, I can give you the result of my cogitations.”
The Stevens’ paddles, until they shook the boat to pieces, were far more
successful than any one of the Chancellor’s inventions; and I remember,
distinctly, seeing a boat propelled by paddles in the harbor of New
York, as I crossed the Hudson on my way to West Point, in the fall of
the year 1818. The paddles I refer to, however, were on the sides, and
not at the stern, and were literally paddles, being square floats
attached to upright shafts, which a crank motion caused to rise and
fall.
It is not difficult to understand why the Chancellor told Roosevelt that
his vertical wheels were not to be thought of, and why Stevens,
confessedly a man of ability and mechanical ingenuity, preferred his own
suggestion. They doubtless believed that the percussion of the floats of
the vertical wheel as they strike and then enter the water, and before
they exert their greatest power; which is when they are at right angles
with the surface, was objectionable and would be fatal to their
usefulness. They feared also, most probably, the further loss of power
consequent upon the lifting of the water as the floats emerged from it;
and, wedded to their own schemes, they refused to subject the matter to
the test of experiment. The paddles of Stevens, and the floats on the
endless chains, to which Fulton gave the preference, entered the water
perpendicularly, or nearly so, and were free from what was regarded, it
is to be supposed, as the objection to Roosevelt’s vertical wheels over
the sides. That both Stevens and Fulton were wrong, and that Roosevelt
was right, time has conclusively established.
Unwilling to abandon the idea of steam navigation, even after so
complete a failure, the Chancellor devised still another plan, which was
executed under Roosevelt’s direction at the works on the Passaic, of the
details of which I have no account. In this Roosevelt had no interest.
It proved a failure. From all that I can gather, from the documents in
my possession, the efforts here described were made in 1798, 1799 and
1800, almost uninterruptedly, and were controlled by the Chancellor, who
was, evidently, the moneyed man of the concern, and whose dictum, as we
have said, was regarded as conclusive by his associates. So promising
did the matter seem after Roosevelt had commenced the engine for the
boat, that, in March, 1798, the Legislature of New York, granted the
Chancellor, “the exclusive right of navigating all boats that might be
propelled by steam on all the waters within the territory, or
jurisdiction, of the State for the term of twenty years, provided he
should, within a twelvemonth, build such a boat, the mean of whose
progress should not be less than four miles an hour.” The month of
March, 1799, elapsed, however, without the condition of the grant having
been complied with. At a later date, a similar grant was made to
Livingston and Fulton.
In the latter part of the year 1800, Mr. Jefferson appointed the
Chancellor minister to France, where he remained until 1804, having in
the meanwhile negotiated the treaty which ceded Louisiana to the United
States, and where he made the acquaintance of Robert Fulton. In 1804,
the Chancellor made the tour of Europe, and returned the following year
to the United States.
In Colden’s Life of Fulton, there is an account, in the Chancellor’s own
words, of the commencement of his acquaintance with Fulton. I quote:
“Robert R. Livingston, Esquire, when minister in France, met with Mr.
Fulton, and they formed that friendship and connection with each other
to which a similarity of pursuits generally gives birth. He communicated
to Mr. Fulton the importance of steamboats to their own country;
informed him of what had been attempted in America, and of his
resolution to resume the pursuit on his return, and advised him to turn
his attention to the subject.”
We have already seen that Mr. Fulton’s plan, after making calculations
as to the efficiency of paddles and ducks’ feet, was to use endless
chains with resisting boards upon them as propellors. With these he made
a course of experiments on a little rivulet that runs through the
village of Plombiéres, in France, in 1802; and “addressed several
letters to Mr. Livingston and Mr. Barlow, giving them a minute account
of his experiments and assurances of the certainty of success which they
afforded him.”
That the Chancellor had informed Fulton of what had been attempted in
America, is admitted by Colden; and this, too, prior doubtless, to the
experiments at Plombiéres. That Roosevelt’s pertinacity in regard to
wheels over the sides was communicated with other information is not to
be doubted; that the Chancellor should have told him, as he told
Roosevelt, in the letter of October 28th, 1798, “that they were not to
be thought of,” it is most reasonable to suppose; and that Fulton agreed
with the Chancellor is proved by the “assurance of certain success”
which he entertained, of endless chains and floats, or resisting boards.
Between the spring of 1802 and the fall of that year, Mr. Fulton changed
his mind; for he and Livingston were building a boat, propelled by
Roosevelt’s vertical wheels, in January, 1803. The Chancellor, by this
time, had become convinced that vertical wheels were things “to be
thought of.” That it was Roosevelt’s plan that was adopted after all
their own plans had failed—the plan derived, with the details of its
execution, from Roosevelt himself,—does not seem to admit of any
reasonable doubt.
Biography is too often eulogy. The name of Fulton is irrevocably, and
justly, the representative name in connection with steam navigation
throughout all lands. For a while, and in the memory of the writer, the
name of Livingston was connected with it in men’s mouths. But
Livingston’s connection with the subject is fast being forgotten.
Fulton’s never will be forgotten, not because he was the inventor of the
steamboat however, not because he first suggested the combination that
made success certain; but because, in his hands, it became a commercial
success. He was the first who demonstrated its practical utility, when,
in 1807, he made the first voyage in the Clermont from New York to
Albany and back. Still he was indebted to others, in the first instance,
for the elements of his success.
I have said that biography is too often eulogy. The biographer becomes
jealous of the reputation of his hero. Colden was not exempt from the
weakness common to his class; and instead of giving to Roosevelt the
credit of having first put the idea of vertical wheels over the sides
into a practical shape, by his detailed description of their mechanism,
he says that the want of success of a French inventor, who had
horizontal screws on either side of a boat, “it is probable,” induced
Mr. Fulton again to resort to the wheels, which, in the original paper
that he communicated to Lord Stanhope, in 1793, he proposed to use as
propellors. Even had this been so, without any question having arisen as
to the facts, Roosevelt’s model of a boat at Esopus, with its hickory
and whalebone springs, would have been ten years ahead of the Frenchman.
But there are some matters connected with the letter to Lord Stanhope,
which are not without interest in this connection.
We have seen that Roosevelt, in January, 1815, applied to the
Legislature of New Jersey, for protection as an inventor of the vertical
wheels over the sides, for which he had obtained letters patent from the
United States in the preceding month of December, 1814, being the
original document shewn to me by Delacy. Somewhere about this time, Mr.
Fulton appeared as a witness before the Legislature in connection with
this same subject of steam navigation; and Colden’s life contains a
letter from Mr. Emmet, the celebrated lawyer, in which he states, that,
in order to shew Mr. Fulton’s prior claim to invention, in the
application of “water wheels to steamboats,” he examined him to prove a
copy of the letter in question. Nothing was said, it would seem, of its
being a copy, when this was first presented: but Governor Ogden noticed
that the letter was written on _American paper_; and, subsequently, Mr.
Fulton explained that the first copy having been considerably worn out
and obscured, he had copied it over again and attached it to the old
drawings. This was made the subject of uncomfortable criticism by the
opposite counsel; and Mr. Emmet, in his letter, expresses great
indignation at what he states was a malicious attempt to injure the
honor of the dead, and regrets that he omitted to notice, in his reply,
the insinuations which Mr., afterwards Judge, Hopkinson permitted
himself to make. The occurrence was unquestionably an unfortunate one,
whatever the real facts may have been; and respect for the memory of Mr.
Fulton leads me to hope that Mr. Emmet was correct in his version of the
transaction. His letter, however, is important in another aspect: it
shews that the merit of the invention, at the time, was considered to be
the application of vertical wheels over the sides, and that this was
claimed for Fulton on the strength of the letter to Lord Stanhope and
the accompanying drawings of 1793, notwithstanding the endless chains
and floats already referred to as illustrating the convictions of 1793.
I have never seen the drawings or read the letter of Mr. Fulton; but it
is difficult for me to believe that he had invented in 1793, what was
unquestionably the solution of the difficulty, and yet, in 1802, have
dwelt in his letters to Livingston and Barlow upon his assurances of the
certainty of success with endless chains and resisting boards. It is
with no want of charity, that it is suggested, that Mr. Colden, in
writing a biography, overlooked the possibility of its logic being
criticized when compared with its facts.
There is some light, however, to be obtained from Lord Stanhope’s reply
to Mr. Fulton’s letter. It is as follows:
“Holdsworthy Devon, _October 7th, 1793_.
“Sir: I have received yours of the 30th September, in which you
_propose to communicate to me_ the principles of an invention which
you say you have discovered respecting the moving of ships by the
means of steam. It is a subject on which I have made important
discoveries. I shall be glad to receive the communication which _you
intend_, as I have made the principles of mechanics my particular
study, &c.” (There are no words italicised in the original. L.)
Certainly, it is only necessary to read this letter to be satisfied,
that the one to which it is a reply, and it is not suggested that Mr.
Fulton ever wrote another, could not have described the combination
which made the steamboat the thing that it now is: or that it could have
been accompanied by drawings shewing the plan finally adopted,—the
Roosevelt plan, going back as far as 1782, and described in practical
detail in the letter of 21st October, 1798.
It is true that Mr. Fulton obtained letters patent of the United States
for his steamboat in 1809—in reference to which Mr. Colden says, as
though to corroborate Fulton’s claim as inventor,
“They (the Chancellor and Mr. Fulton) entered into a contract, by
which it was, among other things, agreed that a patent should be taken
out in the United States in Mr. Fulton’s name, which Mr. Livingston
well knew could not be done without Mr. Fulton _taking an oath that
the improvement was solely his_.”
And a patent was in fact taken out, in those days when patents were had
for the asking, and when none of that examination, which now protects
the public, was required by law.
We have already seen, in the case stated for Mr. Wirt’s opinion, the
allegation that Fulton neither subscribed nor swore to the
specification; and that the name Robert Fulton was in the handwriting of
another man. Unless this had been the fact, it would hardly have been
alleged in a paper, prepared for the opinion of eminent counsel. But I
have before me an original letter dated Trenton, January, 1815,
addressed to Mr. Roosevelt by Delacy, in which the latter gives an
account of the proceedings before the Legislature, and in which is this
sentence:
“Fulton has the effrontery to avow his having got Fletcher to sign his
name and makes light of it, as if he was entitled to violate the laws,
as well as private rights, at pleasure.”
It is true, this is the letter of a partizan in a struggle before the
Legislature. Still, the matter of fact would not be misstated in a
private correspondence, where there was no conceivable motive to
mislead.
The committee of the Legislature finally reported, and very wisely, that
it was inexpedient to make any special provision in connection with the
matter in controversy before that body.
It was in March, 1815, on the heel of the Legislative proceedings, that
the deed of trust to Mr. William Griffith was made, and the fact of his
accepting the trust, and that Aaron Ogden of New Jersey, was a party to
the transaction, shews that the cause of Roosevelt as the inventor of
vertical wheels over the sides under the patent of 1814, was deemed good
as against the patent granted to Fulton four or five years previously.
Had the letter to Lord Stanhope or the reply thereto, been regarded by
the outside world, or by those interested in the subject, as sufficient
to establish Fulton’s prior right to the invention of vertical wheels
over the sides of steamboats, counsel of the standing of Mr. Griffith
would not have become mixed up in the business, licenses to use
Roosevelt’s patent would not have been granted, nor would I have made
the acquaintance of John Devereux Delacy; for Roosevelt’s pretensions
would have been nipped in the bud.
My tale is nearly ended. The object has been to shew that the merit of
the practical suggestion of the employment of vertical wheels over the
sides of steamboats was due to one who has been lost sight of in this
connection, and wholly ignored in the biography of Fulton, who availing
himself of the suggestion of another, in all its details, made it a
great commercial success, and in so doing built upon it a lasting fame.
That the papers I have referred to, now collated for the first time,
shew this to be the fact, I think there can be no question.
It may be interesting to state something in regard to the subsequent
career of Roosevelt. He was once asked why, with the secret of success
in his possession, he allowed it to slumber. Why did not _he_ anticipate
the Clermont in the first five years of the present century. I give the
answer in his own words from a manuscript before me.
“_First_: At the time Chancellor Livingston’s horizontal wheel
experiment failed, I was under a contract with the corporation for
supplying the city of Philadelphia with water, by means of two steam
engines; and, besides, I was under a contract with the United States
to erect rolling works and supply government with copper, rolled and
drawn, for six 74 gun ships, that were then to be built. The engines
for the supplying of Philadelphia with water I completed, though with
heavy loss. The rolling works I also brought into operation upon a
very extensive scale, and a considerable quantity of copper was
delivered. But the encouragement from government by which I had been
led into this heavy expense was cut off by a change of men in the
administration. The 74s were laid aside, and no appropriations were
made, and embarrassment to me was the natural consequence.”
This embarrassment, in the then condition of the law, was imprisonment
for debts contracted in getting ready to fulfil his contract. In truth,
he was a broken man. In the meanwhile, on the return of Livingston and
Fulton to America, the workmen that Roosevelt had brought from Germany
and made what they were, entered into Fulton’s service, and to their
skill was he indebted for the mechanical success of his earlier boats.
In 1807, Roosevelt was introduced to him; and in a letter from the
Chancellor, now before me, references to old times are pleasantly made;
and, a year or two afterwards, we find Roosevelt associated with Fulton
in the introduction of steamboats on the Western waters. Here, he built
the New Orleans, the pioneer boat that descended the river in 1811—the
year of the comet and the earthquake. The voyage of the New Orleans is,
in itself, a romance; but time does not permit it to be told at
present.[1] With all his merit, Fulton was not an easy man to get along
with; and Roosevelt had his faults of temper too, no doubt; and after
the successful voyage of the New Orleans, the two men parted, and
Roosevelt disappeared from public life, and was lost in the quiet of the
domestic circle of a numerous and happy family. He died at a very
advanced age, not many years ago, forgotten by the world as he was
forgotten by the biographer of Fulton. He appears again before me, as I
write, as I remember to have seen him in my childhood, and in after
years—a finished gentleman, energetic and sanguine, warm and generous in
his temper, a devoted husband and father, and now made the hero of a
lost chapter in the history of the steamboat.