SECTION OF STEAM TRANSPORTATION. loo 



the nation which was destined afterwards to have the greatest steam 



navy in the world, and a handsome lee was paid Fulton to return to 

 England, where he had alterations and additions made by Bolton and 

 Watt, at Soho, to one of their own engines, which was exported to 

 America and placed afterwards in the Clermont, the lucky boat which 

 gave Fulton fame and fortune. Thus we find that this celebrated in- 

 ventor, who designed what lives in history as the first successful steam- 

 boat in the world, pursued his investigations in France, completed his 

 engine in England, and won his laurels in America. 



There is little else in the French museums, either in the Conserva- 

 toire or the naval section of the Louvre, of interest to the section of 

 steam transportation. 



Naval Museum, Yenice. — This museum is full of the most interesting 

 models and relics, some of them of great age, but I could find nothing 

 to even suggest that the subjects of the Queen of the Sea had any 

 ideas in regard to paddle-wheel or propeller navigation by steam or 

 otherwise prior to this century. In Rome is to be seen a marine paint- 

 ing several centuries old representing oxen walking around a circle on 

 the deck of a vessel driving a windlass geared to a paddle-wheel in the 

 stern of the boat — a somewhat similar arrangement to the stern- wheel 

 boats used for shoal navigation on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. 

 In another painting two or three centuries old a sea-nymph sits float- 

 ing in a shell, with a paddle-wheel apparently revolving on one side. 

 It would seem, however, that the gilded floating palace, in which the 

 Doges performed the ceremony of wedding the sea each year, and 

 which was driven by the galley slave chained to his oar, was the most 

 advanced stage of marine architecture to which the Venetians — once 

 rulers of the sea — attained, until after the introduction of steam. 



PETITION TO CONGRESS. 



A description of the section, which was published in the Washing- 

 ton Star, January 16, 1886, having been widely circulated during my 

 absence abroad, I found upon my return that over thirteen hundred 

 gentlemen connected with railroads in all sections of the United States 

 had petitioned Congress for an appropriation to establish a section in 

 the National Museum devoted to the history of the railroad and steam- 

 boat. Neither at this session, nor during the next, was this request 

 complied with, and I have been compelled to do what little has been 

 done since my return, with my private means, during brief periods of 

 intermission from railway duties; short leaves of absence having been 

 granted through the kindness of the general manager of the Pennsyl- 

 vania Railroad Company, in whose service I have been employed for 

 nearly fifteen years consecutively. 



A copy of the petition to Congress, with the names of the more prom- 



