THE FIEST STEAMBOAT. 



541 



spent many years in England and France, and conceived the 

 idea of a vessel propelled by steam in 1793. He received no 

 countenance from Napoleon, and returned to the United States 

 in December, 1806. His mind was now occupied with two 

 projects, — the invention of submarine explosives and the con- 

 struction of a steamboat. He published a work entitled " Tor- 

 pedo War," with the motto, " The liberty of the seas will be the 

 happiness of the earth." He renewed his acquaintance with 

 Chancellor Livingston, whom he had known when ambassador 

 to Paris. This gentleman had long had entire faith in the 

 practicability of steam-navigation, and as early as 1798 had 

 obtained from the Legislature of New York a monopoly of all 

 such navigation upon the waters of the State, provided he 

 would within twelve months build a boat which should go four 

 miles an hour by steam. When they met in America, in 1806, 

 the two entered into a partnership and commenced the con- 

 struction of a boat. Finding the expenses unexpectedly heavy, 

 they offered to sell one -third of their patent ; but no one would 

 invest in an enterprise universally deemed hopeless. The boat 

 was nevertheless launched, in the spring of 1807, from the ship- 

 yard of Charles Brown, on the East River. She was supplied 

 with an engine built in England, and was driven by steam, in 

 August, from the New York side to the Jersey shore. The 

 incredulous crowd who had assembled to laugh stayed to wonder 

 and applaud. 



The Clermont soon after sailed for Albany, her departure 

 having been announced in the newspapers as a grand and un- 

 equalled curiosity. "She excited," says Colden, in his Life of 

 Fulton, "the astonishment of the inhabitants of the shores of 

 the Hudson, many of whom had not heard even of an engine, 

 much less of a steamboat. There were many descriptions of 

 the effects of her first appearance upon the people of the bank 

 of the river : some of these were ridiculous, but some of them 

 were of such a character as nothing but an object of real 



