94 THE SEA. 



shrunk beneath their decks from the terrific sight, and left their vessels to go on shore, 

 while others prostrated themselves, and besought Providence to protect them from the 

 approaches of the horrible monster which was marching on the tides and lighting its path 

 by the fires which it vomited." 



The Clermont was soon afterwards lengthened and considerably improved in appearance 

 and usefulness. Her hull was covered from stem to stern with a flush deck, beneath which 

 two cabins were formed, surrounded by double ranges of berths, and fitted up with great regard 

 to comfort. Her dimensions now were length, 130 feet; breadth, 16| feet; diameter of 

 paddle-wheels, 15 feet, the paddles dipping into the water 2 feet. Fulton afterwards built a 

 number of steam-boats, and, it will be well understood, encountered a vast deal of opposition 

 from the owners of sailing craft and ferry-boats. Attempts were also made to put forward 

 rival inventions, and a company was started who proposed to navigate boats on the Hudson 

 by the following somewhat incomprehensible mode of propulsion. The quotation is from 

 the biography of Fulton* by his friend, C. D. Golden: 



"The opposition boats on the Hudson, which the owners had built to rival the steam- 

 boats, were at first to have been propelled by a pendulum, which, according to the calculations 

 of some ingenious gentlemen, would give a greater power than steam, but when their boat 

 came to be put in the water they soon found that their wheels, which were turned with 

 great facility and velocity while their vessel was on the stocks, could not be made to perform 

 their functions without the application of a great power to the pendulum. The projectors 

 were utterly at a loss to account for so extraordinary a phenomenon, and could not conceive 

 why the wheels, which had moved so much to their satisfaction when they were resisted 

 only by the air, should require so much force when they turned in the water, and were to 

 drag the weight of the vessel. But having by actual experiment determined that a pendulum 

 would not supply the place of steam, and knowing no other way of supplying steam than 

 that which they saw practised in the Fulton boats, they adopted all their machinery with 

 some very insignificant alterations, which were made with no other view than to give those 

 persons who had set out by professing to make a pendulum-boat a pretence for claiming to 

 be the inventors of improvements in steam -boats." 



Fulton, without doubt, designed and superintended the construction of the first steam 

 war-vessel. On the 20th June, 1814, the keel was laid, and in little more than four months, 

 that is, on the 29th October, she was launched from the yard of Adam and Noah Brown, her 

 able and active architects. The scene exhibited on that occasion was magnificent. It 

 happened on one of the brightest autumnal days. " Spectators," says Golden, " crowded 

 the surrounding shores, and were seen upon the hills which limited the beautiful prospect. 

 The river and bay were filled with vessels of war, dressed in all their variety of colours, 

 in compliment to the occasion. In the midst of these was the enormous floating mass 

 whose bulk and unwieldy form seemed to render her as unfit for motion as the land 

 batteries which were saluting her. Through the fleet of vessels which occupied this part of 

 the harbour were seen gliding in every direction several of our large steam-boats, of the 

 burden of three or four hundred tons. These, with bands of music, and crowds of gay and 



"The Life of R. Fulton" is an American work, and so little known in England, that the present writer has 

 intentionally made the above copious extracts from it. 



