89 
of Steam-Navigation. 
ject to solve. He had constructed a small and very handsome 
double vessel with wheels, to be used as a pleasure-boat on his 
lake at Dalswinton ; and in this little vessel he resolved to try 
the application of steam. On looking round for a practical en- 
gineer to execute the work, Mr Taylor recommended to his at- 
tention William Symington of the Wanlockhead Mines, whom 
he had known at school, and who had recently contrived a mode 
of applying the force of steam to wheel-carriages. My father 
was pleased with the ingenuity of his contrivances, and accord- 
ingly employed him, along with Mr Taylor, to superintend the 
construction of a small steam-engine, to be used in this pro- 
jected experiment. This was in the spring of 1788 ; and it 
was not till the following month of October that the engine 
and machinery were completed, and placed in the pleasure-boat 
on Dalswinton lake. Nothing could be more gratifying or 
more complete than the success of this first trial ; and while, 
for several weeks, it continued to delight my father and his nu- 
merous visitors, it afforded him the fullest assurance of the 
justness of his own anticipation of the possibility of applying to 
the propulsion of his vessels the unlimitable power of steam. 
On the approach of winter, the apparatus was removed from 
the boat, and placed as a sort of trophy in his library at Dal- 
swinton ; and, after his death in 1815, it came into my posses- 
sion, and has been fortunately preserved as a monument of the 
earliest instance of actual navigation by steam of which any 
evidence or record has been produced *. 
Of this experiment, an account, drawn up by Mr Taylor, 
was published in the Dumfries newspaper of the day. The 
experiment was also noticed in the Scots Magazine for Novem- 
ber 1788, in the following words : “ On October 14, a boat 
was put in motion by a steam-engine, upon Mr Miller of Dal- 
swinton’s piece of water at that place. That gentleman’s im- 
provements in naval affairs are well known to the public. For 
some time past his attention has been turned to the application 
of the steam-engine to the purposes of navigation. He has 
• This little engine (4 inches diameter cylinders) was constructed by 
George Watt, brass-founder, Low Calton, Edinburgh. The cylinders are of 
brass, and the workmanship does great credit to the artificer. 
