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Steamer Built for Livingston and Fulton in i8i i, 

 the Paragon. She was the third steamboat built for the 

 Hudson River service, and the fourth designed b>- 

 Fulton. A flat-bottom vessel like the Cl'.rmont and 

 Raritan, her register dimensions were 167' x 26'io" x 

 7'g". She was built by Charles Brown. From D. T. 

 Valentine's y\/aWM/, 1852. {Smithsonian photo 447gi-a.) 



inches beam. The construction of steamboats spread 

 very rapidly; two had been built on the St. Lawrence 

 by 1813. The first steamer for Mississippi River 

 service was built in 1811. After about 1835 lars;er 

 diameter side wheels with narrow blades came into 

 use and experiments were made with blade shapes 

 and feathering buckets or blades. 



L. M'Kay in his Practical Shipbuilder shows the lines of 

 a steamer of 1838, a sharp river vessel 173 feet long 

 which he descriJDes as "being only" that length, sug- 

 gesting that she was small for the time and service. 

 She was 161 feet between perpendiculars, 20 feet 

 moulded beam and 12 feet 3 inches moulded depth. 

 The plan shows a long, narrow, low, shoal-draft \'essel 

 diagonally strapped (apparently with iron) along her 

 sides inboard above the bilge, straight sheer and keel, 

 upright stem with rounded forefoot, vertical post, 

 upper-and-lower transom, and round tuck. The 

 midsection is formed with slightly rising straight 

 floor, a low and hard bilge, and a vertical, straight 

 topside. There is no flare at bow, the sections there 

 being slightly V-shaped, with moderate curve from 

 rabbet to rail. The entrance is very long and sharp, 

 and convex, and the run is also long and very fine, 

 but shorter than the entrance. The designed mid- 

 ship section is abaft midiength, about 64 feet from 

 the after perpendicular, and the deadflat extends 

 from here forward for about 12 feet. 



The paddle-wheel shaft is about 61 feet from the 

 after perpendicular and the w^heel diameter is nearly 

 24 feet. The deckhouse extends from within some 

 6 feet of the extreme stern to about 109 feet forward, 

 leaving a long forward maindeck uncovered by any 

 structure; the small pilothouse is at the fore end of 

 the deckhouse, on its roof. A large boat on davits 

 was carried on each side, well aft. The side wheels 

 were operated with a walking beam and the stacks 

 and boilers were probably forward of this on the 



guards, as in the Empire of Troy, to trim the boat. 

 This plan is interesting in that it shows how early a 

 good form had been developed in the Hudson River 

 type of river steamer, a form that changed remarkably 

 little for seventy years. By 1838 some river steamers 

 were capable of a speed of 20 miles per hour. 



Ocean Steamers 



Americans were much slower than the English to 

 develop ocean-going steamers. The need for swift 

 river transportation over long distances and for 

 coastal services in relatively protected waters was, 

 of course, the reason why American steamers were 

 built almost entirely for such work; sailing vessels 

 that were large, well built, and cheap to operate, 

 were already in use in the ocean trade and as ocean 

 packets. In England there were no long navigable 

 rivers and little protected water; the nearby Conti- 

 nent was the attractive destination which required 

 open sea operation. Hence the early English steamers 

 were designed for ocean service. 



However, in 1818 an attempt was made to produce 

 an American ocean-going steamer. In that year a 

 company, formed under the name of the Savannah 

 Steamship Company, of Savannah, Georgia, pur- 

 chased a coastal packet ship under construction at 

 New York by Francis Fickett; one of the leading 

 builders of this class of vessel. The ship was fitted 

 with an inclined, direct-acting, low-pressure 9G-horse- 

 power engine made by Stephen \'ail at the Speedwell 

 Iron Works at Morristown, New Jersey. The boilers 

 were made by Dod, at Elizabeth, New Jersey. 



Side paddle wheels without wheelboxes were fitted; 

 and as it was expected that the ship would have 

 trouljle with the w heels in heavy weather, these were 

 designed to be readily dismounted at sea. Each wheel 

 had eight arms pivoted to the hub flanges; on these 



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