90 Mr Miller on the Original Inventors of' Steam Navigation. 



and putting on board his double boat the first steam-engine ever 

 used for propelling a vessel : that this took place in the year 1788. 

 At that time Henry Bell, who was originally bred a stone-mason, 

 was working with Mr James Inglis, engineer, at Bellshill, and af- 

 terwards as an engineer superintending some public works in 

 Glasgow; and having been applied to by Mr Fulton from 

 America, for drawings of some of the machinery used in this 

 country, *' that gentleman," as Mr Bell says in a letter signed 

 by himself, and published in the Caledonian Mercury on 28th 

 October 1816, " begged me (Bell) to call on Mr Miller of 

 Dalswinton and see how he had succeeded in his steam-boat 

 plan, and if it answered the end I was to send him a full draw- 

 ing and description of it, along with my other machinery. This 

 led me to have a conversation with the late Mr Miller, and he 

 gave me every information I could wish for at the time," he. ; 

 and he adds, " Two years thereafter {i. e. in 1801), I had a let- 

 ter from Mr Fulton, letting me know that he had constructed a 

 steam-boat from the different drawings of machinery I had sent 

 him, which was likely to answer the end, but required some im- 

 provements on it." 



InJ1824, Bell gave a further account of his connection with Mr 

 Fulton, in a letter addressed by him to John Macneill, Esq. of 

 Glasgow, of which the following is a literal copy. It will not be 

 overlooked, that, in this account of his scientific correspondence 

 with the American engineer, he makes no allusion to his inter- 

 course with my father. 



*' Mr John McNeill Helensburgh 1st March 1924 



*' Sir — 1 this morning was fevered with your letter and in ansur to 

 your Inqueres anent the leat Mr Robert Fulton the Amerecan ingenair his 

 ather was from Areshair but what plass or famlay I canut tell but his self 



as much as any thing else, contributed to check the progress of steam-naviga- 

 tion ,in this country, from its introduction in 1788-9 till 1811, by damping 

 my father's ardour at the time he had resolved to build another vessel suffi- 

 ciently strong to undertake a sea voyage, and to support the weight of the 

 engine in which he proposed to have embarked at Leith for London ; and 

 thus at once to have made it manifest that steam was as applicable to coast- 

 ing as inland navigation. Such, however, was his bad fortune ; and both Mr 

 Taylor and he lived long to repent afterwards, the one for having given, and 

 the other for having attended to, the recommendation ; but my father always 

 felt stxongly disposed to encourage and support genius, when he found it 

 struggling with poverty ; and not unfrequently had he to regret his mistaken 

 kindness. 



