Of the many triumphs of enterprise achieved by the agency of that
tremendous power which James Watt tamed and put in harness for his race,
perhaps the greatest and most momentous is that which has reversed the
old proverb, that "time and tide wait for no man," given ten-fold
meaning to the truth that "seas but join the regions they divide," and
enabled our ships to dash across the trackless deep in spite of opposing
elements,--
"Against wind, against tide,
Steadying with upright keel,"
in a fraction of the time, and with a fraction of the cost and peril of
the old mode of naval locomotion. How amply realized has been James
Bell's prediction more than half a century ago, "I will venture to
affirm that history does not afford an instance of such rapid
improvement in commerce and civilization, as that which will be effected
by steam vessels!"
Towards the close of the last century, a number of ingenious minds were
in travail with the scheme of steam navigation. The Marquis de Jouffroy
in France, and Fitch and Rumsey in America, were successful in
experiments of its feasibility; but it is to the efforts of Miller and
Symington in Scotland, followed up by those of Fulton and Bell, that we
are chiefly and more immediately indebted for the practical development
of the project.
Having a natural bent for mechanical contrivances, and abundance of
leisure and money to indulge his tastes, Mr. Miller of Dalswinton, in
Dumfriesshire, somewhere about the year 1785, was full of schemes for
driving ships by means of paddle-wheels,--by no means a novel idea, for
it was known to the Romans, if not to the Egyptians, and had often been
tried before.
All he aimed at originally was, to turn the wheels by the power of men
or horses; and this he managed to do successfully enough. Single,
double, and treble boats were often to be seen driving along Dalswinton
Lake, moved by paddle-wheels instead of oars. On one occasion, at Leith,
one of the double boats, sixty feet long, propelled by two wheels, each
of which was turned by a couple of men, was matched against a
Custom-house boat, which was reckoned a fast sailer. The paddle-wheels
did duty very well; but the men were soon knocked up with turning them,
and the want of some other motive power was strongly felt. A young man
named Taylor, who was tutor to Mr. Miller's boys, is said to have
suggested the use of steam; but whether this be so or not, it was not
till Miller met with James Symington that the idea assumed a practical
form.
In 1786 James Symington, then joint-engineer with his brother George, to
the Wanlockhead Mines, was struck with the idea which, as we have seen,
several other ingenious minds were also busy with about the same
time,--of rendering the steam-engine available for locomotion both on
land and sea. After much study and reflection, he succeeded in embodying
the idea in a working model. It was supported on four wheels, which were
moved in any direction by means of a small steam-engine, and could carry
16 cwt., besides coals, water, &c. It was exhibited in Edinburgh in the
summer of 1786, and made a considerable sensation. Mr. Miller, fond of
all such inventions, did not fail to get a sight of Symington's
locomotive engine, the first time he was in town. He was delighted with
its ingenuity and completeness, and procured an interview with the
author. Of course, Miller was full of his own experiments, and told
Symington the whole story of his efforts to propel vessels by
paddle-wheels, and the want of some stronger, and more constant power
than that of men to turn the capstan, upon which the motion of the
wheels depended. Symington at once expressed the opinion he had
formed,--that steam was equally available for vessels as for carriages,
and showed him how the steam-engine which he had devised for his
locomotive could be applied to the paddle-wheels. Miller was so much
struck by his statements, which he illustrated by reference to the
model, that he determined to have an engine made on the same plan, and
fitted into one of his double boats. Accordingly, an engine was built
under Symington's directions and superintendence, sent to Dalswinton,
and put together in October 1788. The engine, in a strong oak frame, was
placed in the one half of a double pleasure-boat, the boiler occupying
the other half, and the paddle-wheels being fixed in the middle.
The autumn was withering into winter, the yellow leaves were swirling to
the ground with every little breath of wind, and the boughs were
beginning to show forth bare and grim, when the little boat was launched
upon the bosom of Dalswinton Loch. At length all the preparations were
finished, and on the 14th November Mr. Miller had the delight of seeing
the vessel gliding over the mimic waves of the lake at the rate of five
miles an hour. The company on board the boat on that memorable occasion
were--Mr. Miller himself, of course, nervous with pleasure and
exultation; Taylor, the tutor; Alexander Nasmyth (the well-known
landscape painter, and father of the man who, in the next generation,
was to invent the wonderful steam-hammer, that knocks masses of iron
about like putty, and can yet so moderate its force as to crack a nut
without bruising the kernel); a brisk stripling with strongly marked
features, by name Harry Brougham, afterwards to be Lord Chancellor of
England, and perhaps the most many-sided genius of his time; and--last
and greatest of the group--there was one of Mr. Miller's tenants, the
farmer of Ellisland,--Robert Burns, the great bard of Scotland, enjoying
to the full, no doubt, the novelty of the expedition, but, we must
suppose, unconscious of its import and grand future consequences, since
he has accorded it no commemorative verse. "Many a time," says Mr. James
Nasmyth, son of the distinguished painter, "I have heard my father
describe the delight which this first and successful essay at steam
navigation yielded the party in question. I only wish Burns had
immortalized it in fit, clinking rhyme, for, indeed, it was a subject
worthy of his highest muse."
The experiment was next tried on a large scale with a canal boat, on the
Forth and Clyde Canal, but one of the wheels broke. Not to be balked,
Symington had stronger wheels made, and the next time the steam was put
on, the vessel went off at the rate of seven miles an hour. The
experiment was several times repeated with success. The vessel, however,
was so slight, that many more trips would have knocked it to pieces; and
it was therefore dismantled. The fitting up of these vessels, and the
working of them, formed a heavy drain upon Mr. Miller's purse; and
having laid satisfactory proof before the world that the thing could be
done, he relinquished the enterprise, and left it to be worked out by
others. Just then, however, no one came forward to fill his place; and
for some years the idea slumbered.
In 1801 Symington could not afford to indulge in further efforts at his
own expense, but he found a patron in Lord Dundas, who commissioned him
to construct a steam-tug for dragging canal boats. A stout, serviceable
tug was built; and a series of experiments entered upon to test her
efficiency, which cost upwards of L3000. One bleak, stormy spring-day in
1802, the people on the banks of the Forth and Clyde Canal might have
been seen staring with wonder, at the short, stumpy little tug pushing
gallantly on at the rate of three or four miles an hour, with a strong
wind right in her teeth, that no other vessel could make head against,
and two loaded vessels (each of more than 70 tons burden) in tow. By
itself, the tug could do six miles an hour without any great strain. The
company made some objection, however, about the banks of the canal being
injured, and the tug fell into disuse. It served an important end,
though, in giving both Fulton and Bell a basis for their operations, and
must be considered the parent of our modern steam-craft.