EAST AND SOUTH-EAST 91 



and observation should have seen so little and fancied 

 that he had anything to tell. 



In the public mind, Robert Fulton, Patrick Miller, 

 and Lord Stanhope are inseparably associated with 

 the invention of the steamboat, at a date between 

 1787, when Miller published his book on the steam- 

 engine, and 1807, when Fulton's steamboat was 

 placed on the Hudson. But the earliest inventor of 

 all appears to have been Jonathan Hulls,* who, as 

 far back as 1737, took out letters patent in London 

 for a paddle-wheel steamer, and wrote a descriptive 

 pamphlet. But it does not appear that Hulls was 

 able to do more than demonstrate on paper the 

 practicability of his scheme. It contemplated a con- 

 densing engine, which was to actuate a piston, by 

 vacuum following on condensation, and not by ex- 

 pansion or direct pressure of steam. But whether 

 the Symington engine, or another, was the first afloat, 

 steam was in no hurry to visit the English Channel. 



According to Mr. Paterson, 1820 saw the first 

 steamer put on the Dover station. In 1837 the 

 Admiralty took up the service which the Post-Office 

 had for many years maintained, and ran steamers 

 with the night mail, not only to Calais, but to Ostend. 

 Then, as now, the French Government provided for 

 the Calais day mail-service. Sometimes the passage 

 was accomplished in two hours. When I first crossed, 

 in the fifties, the steamship Queen took me over in 

 about two hours and ten minutes. My recollection 

 ■^ Quarterly Bevieiv, vol. xix., 1818. 



