548 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



The frigate made a second experimental trip, on the 11th of 

 September, with her armament and stores on board, her draught 

 of water being eleven feet. She changed her course by re- 

 versing the motion of her wheels. She fired salutes as she 

 passed the forts, and performed manoeuvres around the United 

 States frigate Java. The machinery was not affected in the 

 slightest degree by the detonation of her guns. Her average 

 speed was five and a half miles an hour, — Fulton having con- 

 tracted to obtain three miles an hour only. The city of New 

 York now felt itself invulnerable ; but the cessation of hostilities, 

 which occurred soon after, precluded the necessity of employing 

 her as a means of defence. It is probable that such a con- 

 trivance, even in the present advanced state of naval warfare, 

 would be found useful in protecting the mouths of harbors, — 

 not as a frigate, but as a floating battery or movable fortress. 

 The fact that this vessel was built by Fulton makes him the 

 father not only of steam-navigation, but of the steam-navies 

 of the world as well. We shall have occasion to chronicle at 

 intervals, as we progress in our record, the successive steps of 

 improvement in the science, till we arrive at the era of steam 

 floating palaces upon American rivers, of steam pleasure-yachts 

 owned by American merchants, of commercial steam-leviathans, 

 American and English, bearing the names of continents and 

 oceans, and of the peerless steam-frigate to which we have 

 already alluded, — " a noble ship with a noble name, bound, in 

 1857, upon the noblest of missions." 



The history of the first ocean-steamer is very incompletely 

 and unsatisfactorily told in the annals of the time. The fol- 

 lowing is the substance of all that has been preserved of the 

 first transatlantic steam-voyage on record : 



The Savannah, a steamer of three hundred and fifty tons, 

 intended to ply between New York and Liverpool, under the 

 command of Captain Moses Rodgers, was launched at New 

 York on the 22d of August, 1818. She made a preliminary 



