86 THE SEA. 



against the current of the Potomac. In 1787 he built another vessel, 12 feet beam and 

 45 feet long, with a 12-inch cylinder, which progressed at the rate of seven miles an hour. 

 In 1790 he completed another and larger boat, which was advertised and used for a time 

 as a regular passenger boat on the Delaware. The oars or paddles were worked from 

 the stern. 



Poor Fitch ! He, in common with many others of the day who did and did not give 

 their ideas to the world, was on the right track, but could not put them into practical 

 and practicable shape. He was really a man of remarkable genius. The son of a Con- 

 necticut farmer, he had been apprenticed to a watch and clock maker, where doubtless he 

 increased his knowledge of the mechanical arts. During the early part of the Revolutionary 

 War, he was armourer to the State of New Jersey, and later, became a land surveyor. 

 While acting in that capacity, the idea first suggested itself to him, as it did almost 

 simultaneously to Symington in Scotland, of propelling carriages by steam, but he soon 

 abandoned it on account of the roughness of the American roads. After that he turned 

 his attention almost exclusively to the propulsion of vessels by steam, visiting England 

 and France, but obtaining no pecuniary advantage from the experiments he proposed or 

 consummated. In a sketch of his life, which appeared a few years since, * the writer 

 describes Fitch's difficulties in raising the money to finish his second steam-boat : 

 "In a letter to David Roltenhouse, when asking an advance of 50 to finish the boat, he 

 says, 'This, sir, whether I bring it to perfection or not, will be the mode of crossing the 

 Atlantic for packets and armed vessels/ But everything failed, and the poor projector 

 loitered about the city for some months, a despised, unfortunate, heart-broken man. ' Often 

 have I seen him/ said Thomas P. Cope, many years afterwards, ' stalking about like a 

 troubled spectre, with downcast eyes and lowering countenance, his coarse soiled linen 

 peeping through the elbows of a tattered garment/ Speaking of a visit he once paid to 

 John Wilson, his boat-builder, and Peter Brown, his blacksmith, in which, as usual, he 

 held forth upon his hobby, Mr. Cope says : ' After indulging himself for some time in 

 this never-failing topic of deep excitement, he concluded with these memorable words : 

 ' Well, gentlemen, although I shall not live to see the time, you will, when steam-boats 

 will be preferred to all other means of conveyance, and especially for passengers ; and 

 they will be particularly useful in the navigation of the river Mississippi/ He then 

 retired, on which Brown, turning to Wilson, exclaimed, in a tone of deep sympathy, 

 ' Poor fellow ! what a pity he is crazy ! ' ' Fitch, reduced to utter poverty and despair, 

 threw himself into the Alleghany in 1798, and thus terminated his chequered life. 



The experiments of John Cox Stevens, of New York, were not particularly successful, 

 although made at an expense of some 20,000 dollars. His vessel was a " stern-wheeler/' 

 similar to those common enough on many American rivers to-day. But he deserves the 

 credit, apparently, of having been the first to practically apply a tubular boiler to marine 

 engines. His boiler, only 2 feet long by 15 inches wide and 12 inches high, consisted of 

 no less than 41 copper tubes, each an inch in diameter. While Fitch and Stevens were 

 experimenting, another American citizen, Oliver Evans, was endeavouring to mature a 



* Philadelpl'in Dispatch. February 9*h, 1873. 



