74 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



of Fulton, had brought his vessel, the Comet, round from Greenock. It 

 seems that he had been driven from the Clyde by the competition of larger 

 and more perfect vessels. In passing between the two towns he had made 

 the first English voyage on the ocean by steam. This date, you will per- 

 ceive, is six years later than the similar voyage of Robert L. Stevens from 

 New York to Philadelphia. The length of the Comet's keel was no more 

 than forty feet, her engine was of but three-horse power. 



On the 21st of March, 1816, I left Southampton for Havre, in a cutter 

 packet of about forty tons. The following night was very stormy, and our 

 captain thought it prudent to return for some hours to Cowes, until the 

 violence of the gale had abated. On entering the basin at Havre, we were 

 moored alongside of a steam vessel of about the same size and similar 

 model, which had, during the gale we had feared to encounter, crossed the 

 channel from Brighton. This vessel ascended the Seine to Rouen, and, if I 

 am not mistaken, to Paris. I do not recollect her name, nor am I aware of 

 her fate; but she was unquestionably the first steam vessel specially built in 

 Great Britain for sea navigation. 



From this date onwards, the attempts at the navigation of the narrow seas 

 which surround England were frequent and partially successful. Private 

 enterprise and patronage were, however, insufficient to insure any important 

 results, and these were not attained until the Government, in 1820, stepped 

 in and established a line of mail steamers between Holyhead and Dublin. 

 The sound principle of aiding individual exertion by government funds and 

 government patronage was first exhibited in this line, and the method has 

 been copied in other English lines, and in the messageries of France. 



The navigation of the narrow seas by steam, as practised by England, 

 afforded but little hope of success hi the navigation of great distances upon 

 the ocean. So small was the expectation of its practicability, that a cele- 

 brated, if not a distinguished writer and lecturer of that country concluded, 

 that the result of English experience authorized him to prophesy that no 

 vessels could be built that could carry coal enough to make the passage 

 under steam from Europe to America. Yet at the time of this prophecy the 

 problem had been solved years before by American hands in 1820. With 

 funds chiefly furnished by David Dunham, under the inspection and partly 

 at the cost of Jaspar Lynch, with engines planned by Fulton himself and a 

 hull moulded by Eckford, a steamer was built in New York to run, via 

 Havana, from New York to New Orleans. This vessel attained what Fulton, 

 from an imperfect theory, had concluded to be the maximum speed of 

 steamboats nine nautical miles per hour. And this speed was not ex- 

 ceeded by steamers specially built for sea service before the brilliant opening 

 of the Collins line. The vessel of which I speak had sufficient capacity for 

 the stowage of fuel for each passage; sustained, under skilful management, 

 hurricanes of the utmost violence, and had room for many passengers. No 

 experiment could possibly have been more successful. But the enterprise 

 was a failure, because the cost of maintaining it was not defrayed by the 

 number of passengers who presented themselves. The enterprising Lynch 

 was ruined; the vast fortune of Dunham materially diminished; the vessel, 

 stripped of her machinery, was sold for a cruiser to a South American 

 government, in whose service her speed and sea-worthy qualities well sus- 

 tained the reputation of Eckford. Thus a triumph well deserved by New 

 York remained to be earned, after an interval of many years, by Bristol, in 

 the repeated voyages of the Great Western. 



