Source:Fleming-fulton-2/content
THE story of the first steamboat on the Western waters of the United States, the New Orleans, in 1811, brings to view the relations of Robert Fulton to Pittsburgh and Washington county, and incidentally we may remark that Fulton is a well-commemorated name throughout the Union. In Pittsburgh we find this expressed in the name of a building and of a North Side street, originally the borough of Manchester and later in Allegheny City before its annexation to Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh at that time had a Fulton street also, the well-known thoroughfare on the "Hill," extending from Colwell street to Cliff street, originally in the first Sixth Ward of the city, and in the renumbering of the wards in 1868 in the Eighth Ward. In the renaming of about 1,000 streets after the annexation of the North Side the name of this street was changed to Fullerton.
When Fulton was exploiting his steamboat here, and had moved his mother and sister from their old home in Lancaster, Pa., to his Washington county farm, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, there was no Allegheny town, later the North Side, and no Manchester borough. Pittsburgh's boundary line to the east was Washington street; this section including the original Fulton street was not annexed to the city until 1846. Then the name Fulton was bestowed on the street and maintained for more than half a century. It was in memory of and in honor of a great American who gave Pittsburgh early fame as a port and built here the New Orleans, whose wonderful voyage we have been interested in reading of 106 years later.
The name Fulton, applied first to an original street in the original Pittsburgh, wholly and solely commemorative, should have been permitted to remain. The name Fullerton stands for nothing and nobody. But the changers of names had a wearisome and thankless job and no doubt had authority, at least precedence, for their action in respect to the street name in question. They could point with peculiar satisfaction to "Ruth" in Gilbert and Sullivan's well-known opera, "The Pirates of Penzance," who, when instructed to apprentice the hero, Paul, to a pilot, instead had him indentured to a pirate. The names were so very much alike, she pleaded and was forgiven.
From all of which the inference is not wanting that commemoration in Pittsburgh is a fleeting, if not a wonderful thing. Imagine Wall street, New York, changed to Walter and our Penn avenue to Penner! But we've got Fulton street on the North Side and the world-famous inventor and artist is not wholly without notice in one of the places wherein success emblazoned high his fame. Further in the matter of incidence it should be known that several councilmen of the Annexation period, who succeeded in getting indicted, also succeeded in fastening their surnames upon streets in the city they had dishonored, one of whom at least had the decency to leave town afterward.
But this is digressing and we must get back to Fulton, the man and his deeds. Some biography is pertinent, because Robert Fulton was the inventor of the torpedo, the submarine and first man-of-war propelled by steam. He was not the inventor of the steamboat. Rumsey and Symington preceded him in the successful propulsion of a boat by steam power. Then there was John Fitch years before—in brief, Fulton made steamboating a commercial success and prosecuted the first long trip and built the first steamboats in the world that fulfilled all the expectations that their designer intended. Fulton's name has long been placed high among the immortals.
We can regard Fulton as a many-sided man: artist, engineer, mechanic, inventor, prophet and statesman, and find in all these phases of his career the highest measures of his genius. A talented artist, his world renown does not rest on his fame with the brush; an accomplished civil engineer in that branch of constructive profession, his achievements are scarcely ever referred to along that line, even by members of that craft; a skilled mechanic, the successful "Clermont," his first steamboat in America, fails to fully illustrate his genius in that direction.
The enterprise that appiled [sic] the discovery of Watt to practical purposes to a steam-propelled boat that would give commercial returns in its actual daily operation—therein lay the fruits of his genius. The opening of the line of steamboats on the Hudson and its success insured the building of the New Orleans at Pittsburgh and led to the continuous operation of steam vessels and all the marvelous consequences of the event.
Fulton can be called a prophet because he foresaw the outcome of his plans, the working of a grand revolution, a mighty step in progress. He was a statesman, we are told, because he had weighed justly and completely the enormous benefit to the world in the introduction of steam navigation and as an element of national greatness.
His fame rests on none of these phases of his character, and he is recognized neither as a prophet nor statesman. He is always referred to as the inventor of the steamboat—which he was not and never claimed to be.
A few words of biography: Fulton was born at Little Britain, Lancaster county, Pa., some time in 1765—the exact date not known. Little Britain township has long been called Fulton township in his honor. His father's name was Robert, who came from his native place, Kilkenny, Ireland, when a young man, settling first in Philadelphia, where he married Mary Smith, and later moved to Lancaster. He was first a tailor, later a farmer. He must have come to Lancaster first about 1759, for it is of record that he purchased a house in that town that year, which he subsequently sold to the renowned Edward Shippen in 1765, moving to the farm in Little Britain shortly before Robert, Jr., was born.
There were three daughters in the family. Robert was the eldest son and the third child. The elder Fulton was not a success as a farmer, for he sold the farm a year later and moved back to Lancaster, where he died in 1768. His wife survived him 31 years, having died in 1799 on the Washington county farm, which had been purchased by her son, Robert, in 1786.
Robert was taught up to his eighth year by his mother, learning to read and write, with some slight knowledge of arithmetic. He early showed an aptitude for drawing. When at the age of 8 he was sent to a Quaker schoolmaster in Lancaster he was esteemed a dull pupil. Though backward in his lessons he was by no means idle. He cared less for his books than for his pencil, and often spent his recreation hours in drawing. He frequented the shops of the mechanics in the town and was heartily welcomed and with his skill with the pencil and his quickness in mechanical work he frequently rendered practical aid to persons older than himself.
Most interesting is the story of Fulton's boyhood. The bent of his genius was first indicated when he made his own lead pencil, so good that he was permitted to make sufficient for the other pupils. His model of the boat on Conestoga Creek, propelled by paddle wheels, used by himself and a companion in fishing excursions, was the first exemplification of his thoughts of new methods of boat propulsion.
It is to be remembered that the young genius passed his boyhood during our Revolution and the future engineer and artist was one of the most earnest of rebels and an honest foe to the Tories, or adherents of the King, many of these living in his neighborhood. For some time a body of Hessian troops were quartered near his home and these events turned Fulton's thoughts to warlike devices and military and naval inventions. His whole career most likely was influenced by the bent thus given his active brain.
His genius for painting first took him away from home at the age of 17, going to Philadelphia in 1782, and returning in 1786, on his twenty-first birthday. He had supported himself during this time by his pencil, showing himself most capable in drawing plans of machinery as well as painting portraits and landscapes. He drew also plans of buildings and carriages and all artistic work that came to him. He made many friends, including that great artist, Benjamin West, whose father had known the elder Fulton, living neighbors for some years.
Young Fulton not only supported himself, but sent occasional remittances to his mother and sisters, and at their urgent solicitation he decided to spend the date of his majority with them. How much money he had saved is not known, but he certainly had £80, about $400 "lawful money of the state aforesaid," which he paid Thomas Pollock and Margaret, his wife, for the farm in Hopewell township, Washington county, containing 84¼ acres.
The deed for this conveyance is of record in the office of the recorder of deeds in Washington in Book C, vol. I, page 56, date of record, May 8, 1786. In it the quaint old-time phraseology sets forth that the money was "in hand paid by Robert Fulton, miniature painter of the City of Philadelphia and state, yeoman, before the sealing and delivery of these presents the receipt whereof we do hereby acknowledge and ourselves therewith fully satisfied, contented and paid, have granted, bargained, sold and confirmed and by these presents do grant, bargain, sell, make over and confirm unto the aforesaid Robert Fulton, to his heirs and assigns.
"A certain parcel of land on the waters of Cross Creek, it being part of a tract of land granted by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania the 12th day of December A. D. 1785, to the Rev. Joseph Smith, his heirs and assigns, called Williome, situated on the waters aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, beginning at a certain white oak, etc., etc." The deed is duly signed and witnessed.
We may note in Dr. Alfred Creigh's History of Washington County that this land is in Hopewell township. Creigh is in error in stating that Fulton's father, mother and three sisters resided on it. The elder Fulton was dead 18 years when the farm was bought. Some writers state that Robert conveyed this farm to his mother; but in his will printed by Reigart in the appendix of his "Life of Fulton," we read that Fulton devised the farm to his sister Elizabeth, Mrs. Scott, and $1,000 besides, also all the stock on the farm, "during her life and at her death the farm to be sold and divided."
At his death two sisters survived, the other, Mrs. Isabella Cooke of Washington, to whom he bequeathed $2,000 and $500 to each of the children of his deceased sister, Mrs. Mary Morris, who also had been a resident of the town of Washington.
The Rev. Dr. Joseph Smith was a famous Presbyterian preacher of our pioneer days, the author of "Old Redstone," the pastor of the Upper Buffalo Church organized in 1779, serving until 1792. Dr. Smith was a truly great and good man. His name is perpetuated in Smith township, Washington county. The location of his grant of which the Fulton farm was a part can be best understood when it is remembered that West Middletown and Buffalo Village and Midway were parts of Hopewell township, which was the seventh of the 13 original townships of Washington county, Smith township the thirteenth.
We learn from further perusal of the Fulton deed that Joseph Smith and Esther, his wife, conveyed the tract to Pollock and wife, September 30, 1785, a curious reservation in the deed as this paragraph shows:
"To have and to hold the tract or parcel of land, with the appurtances [sic], unto the said Robert Fulton, his heirs and assigns, to the use of him, the said Robert Fulton, his heirs and assigns forever, free and clear of all restrictions and reservations as to mines, royalties, quit rents, or otherwise, excepting and reserving only the fifth part of all gold and silver ore for the use of this commonwealth, to be delivered at the pit's mouth clear of all charges."
We can take it that the Commonwealth did not get this fifth; gold in Washington county is about as plenty as it is in Allegheny county. T. W. Knox, in his Life of Fulton, correctly states that although Mrs. Fulton remained on the place until her death, the title was vested in Robert, but he never lived there. Robert H. Thurston, in his admirable little book, "Robert Fulton, His Life and Its Results," makes the error of stating Fulton deeded the farm to his mother.
About the time of the settlement of his mother and sisters on this farm Fulton's health began to fail. Close confinement and intense application had sapped his strength and he was never rugged again, his lungs showing symptoms of weakness so pronounced that it was considered desirable that he go abroad for his health and, persuaded by his friends that an ocean voyage would benefit him also in the way of diversion and recreation, Fulton went to London where he found West already famous. West was a much older man than Fulton, but a sincere friend. He painted Fulton's portrait, which has been preserved and is the one from which most pictures of Fulton have been copied. Through West's influence Fulton obtained all the work in painting that he was able to do. Portraits and landscapes from his master touch can yet be found in the stately homes of England, many of the nobility of the time becoming remunerative patrons of the inventor-artist.
All this time with Fulton painting was but a diversion. His taste for mechanics and engineering had not weakened. His talent for engineering brought him in touch with the Earl of Bridgewater and Lord Stanhope, and these notable men became intimate with Fulton, to the latter's great advantage.
Hence we are not surprised to find that Fulton, while in England, became interested in canals because these influential friends were; also to learn that Fulton in 1795 had published a treatise in England on canal navigation and that early had conceived the idea of propelling vessels by steam. In 1794 Fulton obtained a patent from the British government for a double-inclined plane for raising and lowering boats from one level to another on a system of small canals he had planned. This system of inclines we have recently read of as applied to the successful operation of the Allegheny Portage Railroad of the Pennsylvania canal period.
Fulton's idea was that small canals without expensive locks and navigated by small boats were preferable to large canals and such canals could be made in many parts of the country where expensive work would be unremunerative. Ever looking to the practical, Fulton demonstrated the feasibility of his plans. He showed how he could raise and lower a boat without disturbing its cargo. He accomplished this by introducing water into the coffers from the upper levels so that the weight of the laden boat would be more than counterbalanced. We are familiar with the system in the use of hydraulic elevators.
We next find Fulton giving his attention to improvements in bridges and aqueducts and submitting plans and models to the British Board of Agriculture, which were most favorably received and complimented.
Deeply interested, he sent copies of his treatise to President Washington, the secretary of the treasury, alexander Hamilton, and to the Governor of New York, with a letter to each setting forth the advantages of canals to the United States. Though favorably received and acknowledged, these recommendations and suggestions were not fruitful until 10 years later, when Fulton had returned to the United States and was engaged in his projects of steam navigation, when a correspondence ensued between Albert Gallatin, then secretary of the treasury, and Mr. Fulton, in which Fulton set forth his views with considerable heat and which the Secretary included in his annual report, and of course preserved them.
A well-known application of power owes its origin to Fulton, the application of water to turbine and other wheels connecting with a revolving drum around which a cable attached to a boat was carried. By the power of the wheel the boat could be carried up while the empty boat was descending. Fulton did not claim this idea a novel one and patented only certain parts of the machinery, especially on the coffer, which he made to revolve in a perpendicular shaft or well, as shown in the illustration.
It was Fulton's custom never to make a model until he had completed a careful drawing in which every part was shown in detail and projected upon the proper scale. His work in this connection was intense. In everything relating to canals and roads his specifications were voluminous and exhaustive. Unfortunately the manuscripts of many of his plans were lost in 1804 during shipment from Paris to New York, the vessel having been wrecked and the papers ruined by submersion.
About 1795 Fulton had become so engrossed with his mechanical projects that he gave up painting as a profession and, except for amusement during leisure hours and as a relaxation from his strenuous labors as an engineer, he did not revert to painting again.
Fulton went to France about 1797. His treatise on the improvement of canal navigation, published in London in 1796, was illustrated by many neatly made plates and was quarto in size. Several forms of boat for his special purposes were therein shown, each adapted to its peculiar purpose as for rapid or slow speed, for light or heavy freighting, for mounting on wheels and transportation on land. Hence he was a well-known man in scientific and engineering circles by that time.
Fulton was one of the most active advocates of the Erie Canal in New York and made the estimate of its cost, $10,000,000. Begun in 1817, this great work was completed in 1825, and is still in operation. It cost $6,700,000, an instance where the estimate of an engineer was higher than the actual amount spent on construction.
Fulton in Paris took lodgings in the hotel occupied by Joel Barlow and the two became associated in many projects and enterprises, notably an unsuccessful experiment on the Seine, the object of which was to impart motion to cases of gunpowder under water to certain points where the cases were to be exploded. This seems to have been the inception of the modern torpedo.
Fulton in Paris learned French and acquired a knowledge also of German and Italian. Barlow and he became the closest of companions. Barlow was an author and diplomat, serving as minister of the United States in Paris from 1805 until 1811, during the great wars of that period. He died the latter year while on a visit to Napoleon at Wilna.
Fulton studied assiduously chemistry and mechanics. He found time to paint a panorama, the first exhibited in Paris, in the exhibition of which he and Barlow made a snug sum. Fulton proceeded with his projects. He could not be discouraged, but worked on. He was hampered by lack of means and haunted the French Directory, setting forth the usefulness of his torpedo invention.
We have studied him as an artist, an engineer, a bridge and aqueduct constructor, an author, a statesman, an inventor of canal improvements, an experimentor in torpedo warfare. We come now to view him as the inventor of the submarine, then called the diving boat. "He came to direct the whole force of his mind to mathematical learning and mechanical philosophy; plans of defense against maritime invasion and sub-aquatic navigation occupied all his reflections," says Reigart, one of his biographers.
To go into details of his first submarine, the Nautilus in the harbor of Brest, made with mast and bowsprit to fold down, his successful experiments with submarine bombs and his larger submarine built later, is impossible today in the space remaining; also to give the details of his successful destruction of the brig, Dorothea, in 1805 by a torpedo. Pages have been written of these events. Neither can we present the story of his last sickness, untimely death, public funeral and interment in Trinity Church yard, New York, February 25, 1815.
It has been stated that Nicholas J. Roosevelt, associated with Fulton in the construction of and making the successful voyage of the steamer New Orleans at Pittsburgh in 1811, preceded Fulton in the construction and operation of a steamboat. This claim is set forth by J. H. B. Latrobe, Roosevelt's brother-in-law, in a paper read before the Maryland Historical Society and published in 1871 under the title, "A Lost Chapter in the History of the Steamboat."
It appears that Roosevelt in 1815 sent a petition to the New Jersey Legislature in which he stated that he was the true and original inventor and discoverer of steamboats with vertical wheels. In an affidavit attached, Roosevelt deposes that in 1781 or 1782 the [sic] made a wooden model of a boat with vertical wheels which were propelled by springs of hickory or whalebone attached to a cord passing between the wheels, that in 1798 he agreed with Robert R. Livingston and John Stevens to build a boat on joint account, the engines of which were constructed by Roosevelt, the propelling power on the plan of Mr. Livingston. This power was an endless chain with floats and paddles. The boat was built and tried, making a speed of three miles an hour with wind and tide in its favor.
Roosevelt proposed to Livingston that vertical wheels be put over the sides of the boat but Livingston replied that such wheels were out of the question. Experiments continued for two years, closing in 1800 upon the appointment of Livingston as Minister to France in that year.
We note from this that Livingston, better known as Chancellor Livingston, and Roosevelt were associated long before Fulton came on the scene.
The few boats on the Ohio and Mississippi were of material assistance to the government during the War of 1812. The Enterprise, built at Pittsburgh in 1814, carried a large consignment of ordnance and other munitions to Gen. Jackson at New Orleans.
We have some additional history of Fulton's Mississippi River boats, built here in 1813. That year Fulton made a contract with the government for the employment of his boats as transports on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. These boats were the New Orleans, Vesuvius, Aetna, Natchez and Buffalo. George H. Thurston is authority that this latter boat was built at Pittsburgh in 1814. The Natchez is not on his list of first steamboats at Pittsburgh.
Though all the boats were not completed at the time this contract was made, some were likely in process of construction. We have no data fixing the number actually completed when the contract was signed. The Vesuvius was at New Orleans at the time of the famous battle, January 8, 1815, and was of great service to Gen. Jackson in his arrangements for the defense of the city.
The Vesuvius had been impressed into the service of the Government, December 30, 1814, before the knowledge of Fulton's contract became public at New Orleans. The boat remained in the Government's hand until March 12, 1815, during part of this period aground on a sandbar. A claim was made to the Government for compensation on behalf of its owners. Fulton had died February 24, 1815. The declaration of peace concluded December 24, 1814, at Ghent, in Flanders, was not known in the United States at the time of the battle of New Orleans and for some weeks afterward. We may note in this connection that Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin were among the five commissioners at this treaty on the part of the United States, and that their names were given to more than one boat on our Western rivers.
The Vesuvius was an unlucky boat. It had the misfortune to run aground and stay aground for many weeks during a lucrative Government contract, as we have seen. Its subsequent career was short. After being released from government employ it was in service on the Mississippi as a trading boat until August, 1816, when it met a fate that became too common on the rivers. August 10, that year, it was burned near New Orleans, involving a loss on boat and cargo estimated at $200,000.
The money-earning power of the early steamboats has been reverted to in previous articles. The rates for freight and passengers have been preserved in a report which accompanied the claim of the Fulton heirs during the time the Vesuvius was in government employ. These rates were established by the State of Louisiana soon after its admission in 1812 and were not reduced until 1819.
The rates ran thus:
From New Orleans to Louisville 4½ cents for heavy goods, and 6 cents for light, averaging 5¼ cents a pound, or a ton, $115.
From New Orleans to Natchez, ¾ cent a pound, or $1 50 a barrel, the same rates applying to all intermediate landings—Donaldsonville, 75 miles; Baton Rouge, 120 miles, etc., or a ton, $15.
From New Orleans to Louisville, passage, $125.
From New Orleans to Natchez, $30, and half price for passage down.
These seem now like wartime prices—and they were for part of the time. Witnesses testified during the trial of the suit that $600 a day would be a moderate allowance for the boat's services for the period of its impressment. It was shown also that the earnings of the New Orleans, which was of about the same tonnage of the Vesuvius, averaged $800 a day during 40 days while on a trip from New Orleans to Louisville and return.
Of this trip, which must have been a special one, we have no further account, and it is most likely this paying trip was made by some other boat. All records state that the New Orleans never returned to Louisville and was lost in 1814. Yet we find the statement regarding the New Orleans in the "Life of Robert Fulton and the History of Steam Navigation," by Thomas W. Knox, a noted writer, while on another page Knox records the trip of the Enterprise, which he states returned to Pittsburgh and was the first boat that made the up-river trip above Natchez. On such statements, which are most irreconcilable, the researcher often stumbles, and the best of authorities fall into errors. We may be sure of one point—early steamboating paid good profits.
In searching for contemporary mention of the first steamboats on the Western rivers the searcher is struck with the paucity of the notices. Even that great chronicler of events in the early days of the republic, H. Niles, has but a few short paragraphs in his Weekly Register, and one, the first mention, is erroneous. Thus in the Register of October 26, 1811, this paragraph occurs:
"Steamboat—a ship of 450 tons, has lately been launched on the Sciota; the steam vessel of the Ohio is to carry 400 tons."
It is quite evident that the chronicler has either been misinformed or has carelessly written the name Sciota for the Ohio. We know the Sciota is not a navigable stream for steamboats and that the New Orleans had left Pittsburgh on her maiden voyage six days before Niles' article was printed.
His first mention of the great comet occurred October 9, 1811. He has little of the great earthquake. The article taken from the Register of January 4, 1812, is quoted by him from the Orleans Gazette of November 24, 1811:
"Several severe shocks have been felt in various parts of the Southern and Western states which will be noted in detail later."
January 25, 1812, Niles printed a letter from a man (name not given) of date December 28, 1811, from Henderson, Ky., stating that the first shocks were felt there December 16, 1811, at 2:30 a. m., and that many chimneys were cracked by the motion. At sunrise a more severe shock occurred, which threw down most of the chimneys remaining. There followed a shock every day until Christmas. More particulars were promised, but a search for many issues of the Register thereafter revealed no further mention. The quake was then old and over.
Our Pittsburgh publisher, Zadok Cramer, it will be noted from the story of the perilous voyage of the New Orleans in Sunday's Gazette Times of November 18, has done much better in his issues of the Navigator subsequent to the earthquake. Cramer is particularly explicit about changed conditions along the Mississippi in the earthquake zone. Vestiges of the effects of this great convulsion were visible as late as 1846.
Most marvelous is the story of Fulton and steam navigation. The world today knows the terror of the submarine under its new power of propulsion, and its devastating torpedoes. Fulton passed to immortality before the horrors of war, as we know them, could rack his most active mind.
