STEAM FERRY-BOATS. 



545 



and in his argument in behalf of Fulton Mr. Emmet thus 

 spoke of the Pendulum gentlemen: — "They are men who never 

 waste health and life in midnight vigils and painful study ; who 

 never dream of science in the broken slumbers of an exhausted 

 mind ; who bestow upon the construction of a steamboat just as 

 much mathematical calculation and philosophical research as on 

 the purchase of a sack of wheat or a barrel of ashes." Fulton 

 gained his cause, and the boat which was to go by clock-work 

 was prohibited from going even by steam. 



In 1812, Fulton built the Fire-Fly; and, as the town of New- 

 burgh, half-way to Albany, offered sufficient traffic to support 

 at least one boat, she was placed upon that route. In the same 

 year he constructed two ferry-boats for crossing the Hudson, 

 making them with rudder and bow at either end. He also 

 contrived floating docks for their reception, and a method 

 of stopping them without concussion. In 1813, he built a 

 steam-vessel of four hundred tons and unusual strength, to 

 ply in Long Island Sound between New York and New 

 Haven. She was the first steamboat constructed with a round 

 bottom. We quote a passage referring to her from a work 

 published in 1817 : — " During a great part of her route she 

 would be as much exposed as she could be on the ocean : it 

 was therefore necessary to make her- a perfect sea-boat. She 

 passes daily, and at all times of the tide, the dangerous strait 

 of Hell-Gate, where for the distance of nearly a mile she often 

 encounters a current running at the rate of at least six miles an 

 hour. For some distance she has within a few yards of her, on 

 each side, rocks and whirlpools which rival Scylla and Charybdis 

 even as they are poetically described. This passage, previously 

 to its being navigated by this vessel, was always supposed to be 

 impassable except at certain stages of the tide ; and many a 

 shipwreck has been occasioned by a small mistake in the time. 

 The boat passing through these whirlpools with rapidity, while 



the angry waters are foaming against her bows and appear to 

 35 



