On the night of the second of July, 1798, a man at a little old tavern
in Bardstown, Kentucky, committed suicide. If ever there was a
justifiable case of self-destruction, it was this. No human being is
permitted to take his own life, but there are instances in which the
burden of existence becomes well-nigh intolerable. In the case just
mentioned, the man went to his room and took poison. He was a little
more than fifty-five years of age, but was prematurely old from the
hardships to which he had been subjected. He had not a penny. His
clothes were worn out. A dirty shirt, made of coarse materials, was
seen through the rags of his coat. His face was haggard, wrinkled,
written all over with despair, the lines of which not even the
goodness of death was able to dispel.
The man had seen the Old World and the New, but had never seen
happiness. He had followed his forlorn destiny from his native town
of South Windsor, Connecticut, where he was born on the twenty-first
of January, 1743. His body was buried in the graveyard of Bardstown,
then a frontier village. No one contributed a stone to mark the
grave. Nor has that duty ever been performed. The spot became
undistinguishable as time went by, and we believe that there is not a
man in the world who can point out the place where the body of John
Fitch was buried. The grave of the inventor of the steamboat, hidden
away, more obscurely than that of Jean Valjean in the cemetery of
Père-Lachaise, will keep the heroic bones to the last day, when all
sepulchres of earth shall set free their occupants and the great sea's
wash cast up its dead!
The life of John Fitch is, we are confident, the saddest chapter in
human biography. The soul of the man seems from the first to have gone
forth darkly voyaging, like Poe's raven,
--"Whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster, till his song one burden bore,
Till the dirges of his hope the melancholy burden bore,--
Of 'Nevermore--nevermore!'"
Certainly it was nevermore with him. His early years were made
miserable by ill-treatment and abuse. His father, a close-fisted
farmer and an elder brother of the same character, converted the
boyhood life of John Fitch into a long day of grief and humiliation
and a long night of gloomy dreams. Then at length came an ill-advised
and ill-starred marriage, which broke under him and left him to wander
forth in desolation.
He went first from Connecticut to Trenton, N.J., and there in his
twenty-sixth year began to ply the humble trade of watch-maker. Then
he became a gunsmith, making arms for the patriots of Seventy-six,
until what time the British destroyed his shop. Then he was a soldier.
He suffered the horrors of Valley Forge; and before the conclusion of
the peace he went abroad in the country as a tinker of clocks and
watches. His peculiarity of manner and his mendicant character made
him the butt of neighborhoods. In 1780 he was sent as a
deputy-surveyor from Virginia into Kentucky, and after nearly two
years spent in the country between the Kentucky and Green rivers, he
went back to Philadelphia. On a second journey to the West his party
was assailed by the Indians at the mouth of the Muskingum, and most
were killed. But he was taken captive, and remained with the red men
for nearly a year. But he escaped at last, and got back to a
Pennsylvania settlement.
Fitch next lived for a year or two in and did approve of the
invention, he withheld any public endorsement of it.
Month after month went by, and no helping hand was extended. Fitch got
the reputation of being a crazy man. To save himself from starvation,
he made a map of the territory Northwest of the river Ohio, doing the
work of the engraving with his own hand, and printing the impressions
on a cider-press! Early in 1787 he succeeded in the formation of a
small company; and this company supplied, or agreed to supply, the
means requisite for the building of a steamboat sixty tons' burden.
The inventor also secured patents from New Jersey, New York,
Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia, granting to him the exclusive
right to use the waters of those States for fourteen years for
purposes of steam navigation.
Hereupon a boat was built and launched in the Delaware. It was
forty-five feet in length and twelve feet beam. There were six oars,
or paddles on each side. The engine had a twelve-inch cylinder, and
the route of service contemplated was between Philadelphia and
Burlington. The inventor agreed that his boat should make a rate of
eight miles an hour, and the charge for passage should be a shilling.
He who might have been in Philadelphia on the twenty-second of August,
1787, and did approve of the invention, he withheld any public
endorsement of it.
Month after month went by, and no helping hand was extended. Fitch got
the reputation of being a crazy man. To save himself from starvation,
he made a map of the territory Northwest of the river Ohio, doing the
work of the engraving with his own hand, and printing the impressions
on a cider-press! Early in 1787 he succeeded in the formation of a
small company; and this company supplied, or agreed to supply, the
means requisite for the building of a steamboat sixty tons' burden.
The inventor also secured patents from New Jersey, New York,
Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia, granting to him the exclusive
right to use the waters of those States for fourteen years for
purposes of steam navigation.
Hereupon a boat was built and launched in the Delaware. It was
forty-five feet in length and twelve feet beam. There were six oars,
or paddles on each side. The engine had a twelve-inch cylinder, and
the route of service contemplated was between Philadelphia and
Burlington. The inventor agreed that his boat should make a rate of
eight miles an hour, and the charge for passage should be a shilling.
He who might have been in Philadelphia on the twenty-second of August,
1787, would have witnessed a memorable thing. The Convention for the
framing of a Constitution for the United States of America was in
session. For some time the body had been wearing itself into
exhaustion over this question and that question which seemed
impossible of solution. On the day referred to, the convention, on
invitation, adjourned, and the members, including the Father of his
country, who was President, went down to the water's edge to see a
sight. There Fitch's steamboat was to make its trial trip, and there
the trial trip was made, with entire success.
They who were building the ship of state could but applaud the
performance of the little steamer that sped away toward Burlington.
But the applause was of that kind which the wise and conservative folk
always give to the astonishing thing done by genius. The wise and
conservative folk look on and smile and praise, but do not commit
themselves. Most dangerous it is for a politician to commit himself to
a beneficial enterprise; for the people might oppose it!
The facts here referred to are fully attested in indisputable records.
There are files of Philadelphia newspapers which contain accounts of
Fitch's boat. A line of travel and traffic was established between
Philadelphia and Burlington. There was also a steam ferryboat on the
Delaware. A second boat, called the "Perseverance," was designed for
the waters of the Mississippi; but this craft was wrecked by a storm,
and then the patent under which the Ohio river and its confluent
waters were granted, expired, and the enterprise had to be abandoned.
On the fourth of September, 1790, the following advertisement of the
"Pennsylvania Packet" appeared in a Philadelphia paper:
"The Steamboat will set out this morning, at eleven o'clock, for
Messrs. Gray's Garden, at a quarter of a dollar for each passenger
thither. It will afterwards ply between Gray's and middle ferry, at
11d each passenger. To-morrow morning, Sunday, it will set off for
Burlington at eight o'clock, to return in the afternoon."
This Pennsylvania Packet continued to ply the Delaware for about three
years. The mechanical construction of the boat was not perfect; and
shortly after the date to which the above advertisement refers the
little steamer was ruined by an accident. The story is told by Thomas
P. Cope, in the seventh volume of Hazard's _Register_. He says: "I
often witnessed the performance of the boat in 1788-89-90. It was
propelled by paddles in the stern, and was constantly getting out of
order. I saw it when it was returning from a trip to Burlington, from
whence it was said to have arrived in little more than two hours.
When coming to off Kensington, some part of the machinery broke, and I
never saw it in motion afterward. I believe it was his [Fitch's] last
effort. He had, up to that period, been patronized by a few
stout-hearted individuals, who had subscribed a small capital, in
shares, I think, of six pounds Pennsylvania currency; but this last
disaster so staggered their faith and unstrung their nerves, that they
never again had the hardihood to make other contributions. Indeed,
they already rendered themselves the subjects of ridicule and derision
for their temerity and presumption in giving countenance to this wild
projector and visionary madman. The company thereupon gave up the
ghost, the boat went to pieces, and Fitch became bankrupt and
brokenhearted. Often have I seen him stalking about like a troubled
spectre, with downcast eye and lowering countenance, his coarse,
soiled linen peeping through the elbows of a tattered garment."
With the breakdown of his enterprise, John Fitch went forth penniless
into the world. The patent which he received from the United States in
1791, was of small use. How little can a pauper avail himself of a
privilege! Presently his patent was burned up, and a year afterward,
namely in 1793, he went to France. There he would--according to his
dream--find patronage and fame; but on his arrival in the French
capital he found the Reign of Terror just beginning its work. It was
not likely that the Revolutionary Tribunal would give heed to an
American dreamer and his proposition to propel by steam a boat on the
Seine. However, Fitch went to L'Orient and deposited the plans and
specifications of his invention with the American consul. Then he
departed for London.
In the following year a man by the name of Robert Fulton took up his
residence with the family of Joel Barlow, in Paris. There he devoted
himself to his art, which was that of a painter. Whoever had passed by
the corner of Second and Walnut streets, in Philadelphia while Fitch
was constructing his first steamboat, might have seen a little sign
carrying these words: "Robert Fulton, Miniature Painter." But now,
after nearly ten years, he was painting a panorama in France. While
thus engaged, the American consul at L'Orient showed to Fulton Fitch's
drawings and specifications for a steamboat. More than this, _he
loaned them to him, and he kept them for several months_.
A thrifty man was Robert Fulton; discerning, prudent and capable!
Meanwhile, poor Fitch, in 1794, returned to America. On the ship he
worked his way as one of the hands. Getting again to New York he
determined to make his way into that region of country where he had
been a surveyor in 1780. He accordingly set out from New York for
Kentucky, but not till he had invented, or rather constructed, a
steamboat, which was driven by _a screw propeller_! This, in 1796, he
launched on the Collect Pond, in what is now Lower New York. The boat
was successful as an experiment; but the people who saw it looked upon
its operation and upon the thing itself as the product of a crazy
man's brain.
He who now passes along the streets of the metropolis will come upon a
vendor of toys, who will drop upon the pavement an artificial
miniature tortoise, rabbit, rat, or what not, well wound up; and the
creature will begin to crawl, or dance, or jump, or run, according to
its nature. The busy, conservative man smiles a superior smile, and
passes on. It was in such mood that the old New Yorker of 1796
witnessed the going of Fitch's little screw propeller on the Pond. It
was a toy of the water.
After this the poor spectre left for the West. The spring of 1798
found him at Bardstown, with the model of a little three-foot
steamboat, which he launched on a neighboring stream. There he still
told his neighbors that the time would come when all rivers and seas
would be thus navigated. But they heeded not. The spectre became more
spectral. At last, about the beginning of July, in the year just
named, he gave up the battle, crept into his room at the little old
tavern, took his poison, and fell into the final sleep.
We shall conclude this sketch of him and his work with one of his own
sorrowful prophecies: "The day will come," said he in a letter, "when
some more powerful man will get fame and riches from _my_ invention;
but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of
attention." Than this there is, we think, hardly a more pathetic
passage in the history of the sons of men!