THE CLYDE AND SHIP-BUILDING. 97 



" Two years after, a letter from Fulton arrived, stating- that he had constructed a steam- 

 boat from the drawings I had sent him, but improvements were required. This letter I also 

 sent to Miller." 



He goes on to say that he set on foot his steam-boat after making various models, and 

 when convinced they would answer, contracted with John Wood and Co., ship-builders, Port 

 Glasgow, to build the Comet, so called from a comet which appeared in Scotland at that 

 period. He claims that the Comet was the first steam-vessel built in Europe "that would 

 work/' but this is unfair to the memories of Miller and Symington. 



Oddly enough, while Bell was experimenting on the Clyde, Mr. Davvson was doing the 

 same in Ireland. He even claims that he built a fifty -ton steamer in 1811, and which, by a 

 coincidence simply, as it would seem, he had also named the Comet. He put the first steamer 

 for public accommodation on the Thames in 1818, to run between London and Gravesend. 

 Mr. Lawrence, of Bristol, introduced a steam-boat on the Severn shortly after Bell put the Comet 

 on the Clyde, and brought her to London, but so great was the opposition from the watermen 

 that he took her back to Bristol. She was afterwards taken to Spain, and long plied between 

 Seville and St. Lucar. These were the pi*ecursors of those grand steam-ship lines which now 

 run to every part of the habitable world. Bell's steamer was made, in the second year of its 

 career, a pleasure-boat to many parts of the coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and 

 may therefore count as one of the first ocean-groins- as well as river steamers. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE HISTORY OF SHIPS AND SHIPPING INTERESTS (continued}. 



The Clyde and its Ship-building Interests From Henry Bell to Modern Ship-builders The First Royal Naval Steamer 

 The First Regular Sea-going Steamer- The Revolution in Ship-building The Iron Age "Will Iron Float?" The 

 Invention of the Screw-propellerEricsson, Smith, and Woodcroft American 'Cuteness Captain ftockton and his 

 Boat The First Steamer to Cross the Atlantic Voyages of the Sirius and Great Western The International 

 Struggle The Collins and Cunard Lines Fate of the Arctic The Pacific never heard of more Why the Cunard 

 Company has been Successful Splendid Discipline on Board their Vessels The Fleets that Leave the Mersey. 



WHAT a contrast to the days of 'Henry Bell does the Clyde now present ! From 

 a mei-e salmon stream it has become, in little more than half a century, by far the 

 largest and most important ship-building river in the wide world. "Ancient historians 

 have told us that when the first Punic war roused the citizens of Rome to extraordinary 

 exertions in the equipment of a fleet for the destruction of the maritime supremacy of 

 Carthage, the banks of the Tiber resounded with the axe and the hammer, and that the 

 extent of the ship-building operations then carried on was a matter not merely of surprise, 

 but of wonder. How insignificant, however, was that sound when compared with that 

 of the steam-hammer and the anvil, and the din of the work now to be heard on the banks 

 of the Clyde. For miles on both sides of the river stupendous ship-building yards line 

 its banks, employing tens of thousands of hardy and skilled mechanics earning their daily 

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