Longitudinal Section of Thames Tunnel, showing its course under the river Longitudinal Section of Thames Tunnel, with an end view PAGE 434 UNIV AMERICAN MECHANICS. JOHN FITCH, AN EARLY STEAMBOAT INVENTOR. "The invention all admired, and each how he Who invented the first steamboat?-Early experimenters in steam.-Blasco de Garay.-Jonathan Hulls.-Fitch's manuscript.-Birth.-Character of his parents. Loses his mother.-Juvenile heroism.-Mother-in-law.-Schoolboy days.-Becomes a great arithmetician.-Father's austerity.-Hears of a wonderful book.-Great thirst for knowledge.-Self-denial and industry.-Makes a purchase.-Becomes a great geographer.-Father purchases him scale and dividers. Great joy thereat.-Studies surveying.-Surveys with the governor, and paid in glory.-Leaves school for the farm.-Brother's tyranny.-Desires to study astronomy.-Relaxes from studious habits.-Embarks as a cabin-boy in a coaster.-Cruel treatment.-Leaves, and enters another.-Makes a short voyage. Returns.-Accidental meeting with a clockmaker.-Wishes to enter his service.-Selfish opposition of his parents.-Kindness of his brother-inlaw.-Enters the clockmaker's service. His neglect.-Leaves in ignorance of his profession.-Enters the service of a clockmaker and watch repairer.Gross injustice.-Leaves.-New employment, and success.-A change, and misfortune.-Marries.-Unhappy life.-Abandons his wife.-Wanders.-Visits the Jerseys.-Sickly appearance a prevention to obtaining employment as a day laborer.-Turns button-maker.-Revolutionary war.-Repairs arms for the continental army.-Employed in Kentucky as a surveyor.-Taken prisoner by the Indians, and carried into captivity.-Release.-Returns to the east.-First idea of a steamboat.-Curious reflections.-Dr. Thornton's account of his experiments. Note,-Biographical Sketch of Rumsey.-Description of Fitch's boat.-Goes out to France.-Return.-Misfortunes.-Generosity of a relation. -Visits Kentucky.-Better prospects.-Death. "WHO invented the steamboat?" is a question which has excited great controversy,-an achievement of which nations as well as individuals have been covetous. Several of the early experimenters in steam appear to have conceived of the idea. The first account we have on the subject is given in a work recently published in Spain, containing original papers relating to the voyage of Columbus, said to have been pre ; served in the royal archives at Samancas, and among the public papers of Catalonia and those of the secretary at war for the year 1543. This narrative states that "Blasco de Garay, a sea captain, exhibited to the emperor and king Charles V., in the year 1543, an engine by which ships and vessels of the largest size could be propelled, even in a calm, without the aid of oars or sails. Notwithstanding the opposition which this project encountered, the emperor resolved that an experiment should be made, as in fact it was, with success, in the harbor of Barcelona, on the 17th of June, 1543. Garay never publicly exposed the construction of his engine, but it was observed at the time of his experiment, that it consisted of a large caldron or vessel of boiling water, and a moveable wheel attached to each side of the ship. The experiment was made on a ship of 209 tons, arrived from Calibre, to discharge a cargo of wheat at Barcelona; it was called the Trinity, and the captain's name was Peter de Scarza. By order of Charles V. and the prince Philip the Second, his son, there were present at the time, Henry de Toledo, the governor, Peter Cardona, the treasurer, Ravago, the vice-chancellor, Francis Gralla, and many other persons of rank, both Castilians and Catalonians and among others, several sea captains witnessed the operation, some in the vessel, and others on the shore. The emperor and prince, and others with them, applauded the engine, and especially the expertness with which the ship could be tacked. The treasurer Ravago, an enemy to the project, said it would move two leagues in three hours. It was very complicated and expensive, and exposed to the constant danger of bursting the boiler. The other commissioners affirmed, that the vessel could be tacked twice as quick as a galley served by the common method, and that at its slowest rate it would move a league in an hour. The exhibition being finished, Garay took from the ship his engine, and having deposited the wood work in the arsenal of Barcelona, kept the rest to himself. Notwithstanding the difficulties and opposition thrown in the way by Ravago, the invention was approved; and if the expedition in which Charles V. was then engaged had not failed, it would undoubtedly have been favored by him. As it was, he raised Garay to a higher station, gave him a sum of money (200,000 maravedies) as a present, ordered all the expenses of the experiment to be paid out of the general treasury, and conferred upon him other rewards." The editor of the Franklin Journal, from which this extract has been made, observes, "when the Public Records' shall appear in an authentic form, their evidence must be admitted; until then he should not be inclined to commence the history of the inven. tion of the steamboat so far back as 1543. For circumstantial as the account is, it seems to have been written since the days of Fulton." He is not alone in this opinion, as it is universally regarded as a mere fiction, the offspring of an individual jealous of his country's reputation. The most prominent and authentic account of the early projects of applying steam as a motive power to the propelling of vessels, is given in a treatise printed in London in 1737, entitled "Description and draught of a new-invented machine, for carrying vessels out of, or into any harbor, port, or river, against wind and tide or in a calm: for which his majesty George II. has granted letters patent for the sole benefit of the author, for the space of fourteen years; by Jonathan Hulls." The draught or drawing prefixed is a plate of a stout boat with chimney smoking, a pair of wheels rigged out over each side of the stern, moved by means of ropes passing round their outer rims; and to the axis of these wheels are fixed six paddles to propel the boat. From the stern of the boat a tow-line passes to the foremast of a two-decker, which the boat thus tows through the water. There is no evidence that Hulls ever applied his conceptions to practice. Since that time, down to the period of the great and successful experiments of Fulton, several attempts were made here and in Europe, with varied success. Among the most, if not the most conspicuous, were those made by the subject of this article. A few years previous to his death, Fitch prepared a memoir of himself, including a history of his experiments in steam. These papers were bequeathed to the Franklin Library of Philadelphia, with directions that they should be unsealed and perused thirty years from the time of his decease. At the appointed period they were opened, and found to contain a very full account of his life, particularly of that portion which related to his experiments in steam, including the progress of his operations from the time the thought first occurred to him, until the completion of the boat so far as to make numerous experiments on the Delaware, the subsequent alterations made, and the final abandonment of the scheme by the original stockholders. These manuscripts show but one tissue of discouragements and perplexities, and prove him to have been a strong-minded but unlettered man, with a perseverance almost unexampled, and a determination to let no difficulty in the execution of his plan prevent him from endeavoring to bring it to perfection, so long as the shareholders furnished the means of defraying the expenses. Indeed, disappointment and oppression appear to have borne him company from his very youth; and, as he himself remarks, it is the history of one of the most "singular," as well as one of the most "unfortunate men in the world!" From this narrative we shall make liberal quotations, especially from that portion relating to his younger days. It is the incidents of youth that give a tone and direction to character. We can all of us refer to some of the most apparently trivial events of earlier years that have completely changed the whole current of our thoughts and pursuits. In the memoir before us there can be traced, with a minuteness uncommon even in biography, those circumstances which moulded his strong mind into its peculiar model; and we can there perceive the origin of that misanthropical cast of thought, that eccentricity of character and that looseness of sentiment in regard to concerns of a serious nature, which so strongly marked the author of its pages. This memoir is addressed to the "worthy Nathaniel Irwin, of Neshamoney," in Pennsylvania, a clergyman and a gentleman of whose talents and kindness of disposition Fitch had formed the highest estimate, and who, it appears, once requested him to prepare something of the kind. The principal reason which Fitch gives for complying with this request was, that his life had been filled with such a variety of changes, affording such useful lessons to mankind, that he considered it a neglect of duty were he to suppress it. "The 21st of January, 1743, old style," says he, “was the fatal time of bringing me into existence. The house I was born in was upon the line between Hartford and Windsor (Connecticut.) It was said I was born in Windsor ;* but from the singularity of my make, shape, disposition, and fortune in the world, I am inclined to believe that it was the design of Heaven that I should be born on the very line, and not in any township whatever; yet am happy also that it did not happen between two states, that I can say I was born somewhere.' " Fitch's father was a farmer in good circumstances. His besetting sin seems to have consisted in a want of generosity in pecuniary affairs, so much so that his son observes, "I presume he never spent five shillings at a tavern during the whole course of his life." This, in our day, would be considered as a very singular and inapt illustration of that trait of disposition; but when we remember the customs of society at that period, and the total deprivation of every thing like "amusement," inseparable from the isolated condition of agriculturists, we shall comprehend some * Now East Windsor. |