THE LOG OF THE SAVANNAH. 615 



discovery is of vast importance and may be of the greatest usefulness 

 in our iuland navigation." 



Admiral Preble, in his valuable " History of Steam Navagation," 

 states that, '' the boiler and machinery for Ramsey's steamboat were 

 made at the Gatoctin Iron Furnace, in Frederick County, Maryland, 

 then owned by Johnson Brothers." 



Although Joseph Bramah, of London, took out a patent in May, 1785, 

 for a vessel with a propeller in the stern, which he describes as " a 

 wheel with inclined fans or wings, similar to the fly of the smoke-jack 

 or the vertical sails of a windmill," an examination of the drawings 

 attached to his patent shows clearly that he could not have put his in- 

 vention into practice by working his wheels by steam. 



To John Fitch, who from 1783 to 1791 experimented with steam on 

 several boats in the vicinity of Philadelphia, the credit is due in con- 

 structing the first steamboat that carried passengers and merchandise 

 for pay. 



A copy of the Federal Gazette and Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, 

 July 26, 1790, is preserved in the U. S. National Museum, and contains 

 the following advertisement : 



THE 



STEAMBOA T 



Sets out to-morrow morning, at ten o'clock, from Arch-street ferry, in order to take 

 passengers for Burlington, Bristol, Bordeutown, and Trenton, and return next day. 

 Philad.,Ju]y26, 1790. 



Under date of August 2G, 1791, the first patents issued by the Gov- 

 ernment of the United States for steamboats were issued simultane- 

 ously to John Fitch, Nathan Read, James Rumsey, and John Stevens. 



Read had as early as 1789 exhibited to a committee of the American 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences a model of his steamboat with paddle 

 wheels, which he designed to connect with a high-pressure engine. 



John Stevens's experiments took a wider range than those of any of 

 his predecessors, and embraced both the paddle wheel and the screw 

 propeller. 



His ideas were not visionary or chimerical, and he finally reduced 

 them to practice. Although he, in common with all other projectors, suf- 

 fered on account of not being able to obtain the services of competent 

 workmen, he succeeded in practically applying steam to the propeller. 

 The original engine which he designed and constructed (1804), was 

 the first steam engine to drive a screw propeller successfully, and is 

 preserved in the museum of the Stevens Institute, at Hoboken, New 

 Jersey. 



During the last years of the eighteenth century many experimental 

 steamboats were constructed on both sides of the water. The more 

 worthy of note were those built by Elijah Ormsbee and Samuel 

 Morley, both citizens of Connecticut, in 1794, and by Chancellor Liv- 

 ingston, who,, in 1797, assisted by the elder Brunell, afterwards engi- 



