Length, one hundred and fifty-six feet.
Breadth, fifty-six feet.
Depth, twenty feet.
Water-wheel, sixteen feet diameter.
Length of bucket, fourteen feet.
Dip, four feet.
Engine, forty-eight inch cylinder, and five feet stroke.
Boiler, length, twenty-two feet; breath, twelve feet; and depth,
eight feet.
Tonnage, two thousand four hundred and seventy-five.
By June, eighteen hundred and fifteen, her engine was put on board, and
she was so far completed as to afford an opportunity of trying her
machinery. On the first of June, at ten o'clock in the morning, the
"Fulton the First," propelled by her own steam and machinery, left the
wharf near the Brooklyn ferry, and proceeded majestically into the
river; though a stiff breeze from the south blew directly ahead, she
stemmed the current with perfect ease, as the tide was a strong ebb. She
sailed by the forts and saluted them with her thirty-two pound guns. Her
speed was equal to the most sanguine expectations; she exhibited a novel
and sublime spectacle to an admiring people. The intention of the
Commissioners being solely to try her enginery, no use was made of her
sails. After navigating the bay, and receiving a visit from the officers
of the French ship of war lying at her anchors, the Steam Frigate came
to at Powles' Hook ferry, about two o'clock in the afternoon, without
having experienced a single unpleasant occurrence.
On the fourth of July, of the same year, she made a passage to the ocean
and back, and went the distance, which, in going and returning, is
fifty-three miles, in eight hours and twenty minutes, without the aid of
sails; the wind and tide were partly in her favor and partly against
her, the balance rather in her favor.
In September, she made another trial trip to the ocean, and having at
this time the weight of her whole armament on board, she went at an
average of five and a half miles an hour, with and against the tide.
When stemming the tide, which ran at the rate of three miles an hour,
she advanced at the rate of two and a-half miles an hour. This
performance was not more than equal to Robert Fulton's expectations, but
it exceeded what he had premised to the Government, which was that she
should be propelled by steam at the rate of from three to four miles an
hour.
The English were not uninformed as to the preparations which were
making for them, nor inattentive to their progress. It is certain that
the Steam Frigate lost none of her terrors in the reports or
imaginations of the enemy. In a treatise on steam vessels, published in
Scotland at that time, the author states that he has taken great care to
procure _full_ and _accurate_ information of the Steam Frigate launched
in New York, and which he describes in the following words:--
"Length on deck, _three hundred feet_; breadth, _two hundred feet_;
thickness of her sides, _thirteen feet_ of alternate oak plank and cork
wood--carries forty-four guns, four of which are _hundred pounders_;
quarter-deck and forecastle guns, forty-four pounders; and further to
annoy an enemy attempting to board, can discharge _one hundred gallons
of boiling water in a minute_, and by mechanism, brandishes _three
hundred cutlasses_ with the utmost regularity over her gunwales; works
also an equal number of heavy iron pikes of great length, darting them
from her sides with prodigious force, and withdrawing them every quarter
of a minute"!!
The war having terminated before the "_Fulton the First_" was entirely
completed, she was taken to the Navy Yard, Brooklyn, and moored on the
flats abreast of that station, where she remained, and was used as a
receiving-ship until the fourth of June, eighteen hundred and
twenty-nine, when she was blown up. The following letters from Commodore
Isaac Chauncey (then Commandant of the New York Navy Yard) to the
Honorable Secretary of the Navy, informing him of the distressing event,
concludes this brief history of the _first steam vessel of war ever
built_.
* * * * *
U. S. NAVY YARD, NEW YORK,
_June 5th, 1829_.