rope-making machine, an idea that failed a year later when he ran out of money and financial backers. Perier had also collaborated with Fulton on the construction of the submarine Fulton had conceived, another scheme that failed. Perier had not only visited the Boulton and Watt foundry and machine shop in Birmingham and observed its operations but had also acquired a Watt engine and installed it in a Paris waterworks. Now he agreed to build the engine that Fulton — and Livingston — needed for their experimental boat. Etienne Calla, the man who had built the three-foot model, would put together the boiler and some parts of the engine.
This time Fulton would use vertical paddle wheels for propulsion, one mounted on each side of the boat, instead of the rotating chain he had used on the model. As for the hull, he boned up on the studies made by others, including renowned French mathematician Charles Bossut and English researcher Charles Mahon, Earl Stanhope, to determine the most efficient shape, the one likely to effect the least resistance as the craft moved through the water. Fulton further had the advantage of having seen drawings of the steamboat model designed by a French inventor named Desblancs — which had been on exhibit at the Paris Conservatory of Arts and Trades and of which Joel Barlow had made a sketch that he had sent to Fulton at Plombières. Fulton might also have seen the plans for Claude Jouffroy’s boat, which were in Jacques Perier’s possession, and he knew about John Fitch’s experimental boats, plans for which Fitch had left in Paris. And of course he knew about the creations of Livingston, Stevens and Roosevelt, as well as about the attempts of others.
After much contemplation, Fulton, a painstakingly careful worker, finally decided on a flat-bottomed, keelless hull with a tapered bow and stern. The boat would be steered with a rudder and tiller. Its two paddle wheels would each have ten spokes with rectangular boards attached at their farthest ends to serve as paddles. The engine, held in place and supported by a special framework, would be positioned amidships, mounted on the boat’s bottom planks, which would be reinforced beneath the piston and the boiler. The engine and its components would take up about half of the space in the hold.
His intention, he said, was to employ the craft upon America’s long rivers, making of them thoroughfares of transportation where roads were nonexistent and where conditions were such as to make the hauling of boats by men or beasts laborious, hazardous and expensive or, in some places, impossible. He evidently had the Mississippi River in mind — not, as Livingston did, the Hudson.
By May of 1803 the hull, fifty-six and a half feet long and ten and a half feet in the beam and lying tied up in the Seine near Perier’s plant, was ready to receive Perier’s engine, which along with the boat’s other machinery was installed sometime that month. The craft, in public view, made quite a spectacle. One Paris journalist described it as having “two large wheels mounted on an axle, like a cart” and behind the wheels rose “a kind of large stove with a pipe.” The creation born in Fulton’s imaginative mind had at last become a reality, floating as a curiosity on the Seine, nearing completion and the crucial test voyage that would follow.
Then tragedy struck. Fulton was awakened one night to be told that the boat had been damaged and had sunk to the bottom of the river, possibly the work of saboteurs — Seine boatmen bent on destroying what they saw as a threat to their livelihood. Another possible cause, though, was that the heavy machinery had simply broken through a hull inadequate to support it. Fulton quickly roused himself and hurried to the riverfront, enlisting help to recover the machinery from the water. Working through the night and deep into the next day, Fulton and his helpers managed to raise the engine, boiler and condenser and salvage as
This time Fulton would use vertical paddle wheels for propulsion, one mounted on each side of the boat, instead of the rotating chain he had used on the model. As for the hull, he boned up on the studies made by others, including renowned French mathematician Charles Bossut and English researcher Charles Mahon, Earl Stanhope, to determine the most efficient shape, the one likely to effect the least resistance as the craft moved through the water. Fulton further had the advantage of having seen drawings of the steamboat model designed by a French inventor named Desblancs — which had been on exhibit at the Paris Conservatory of Arts and Trades and of which Joel Barlow had made a sketch that he had sent to Fulton at Plombières. Fulton might also have seen the plans for Claude Jouffroy’s boat, which were in Jacques Perier’s possession, and he knew about John Fitch’s experimental boats, plans for which Fitch had left in Paris. And of course he knew about the creations of Livingston, Stevens and Roosevelt, as well as about the attempts of others.
After much contemplation, Fulton, a painstakingly careful worker, finally decided on a flat-bottomed, keelless hull with a tapered bow and stern. The boat would be steered with a rudder and tiller. Its two paddle wheels would each have ten spokes with rectangular boards attached at their farthest ends to serve as paddles. The engine, held in place and supported by a special framework, would be positioned amidships, mounted on the boat’s bottom planks, which would be reinforced beneath the piston and the boiler. The engine and its components would take up about half of the space in the hold.
His intention, he said, was to employ the craft upon America’s long rivers, making of them thoroughfares of transportation where roads were nonexistent and where conditions were such as to make the hauling of boats by men or beasts laborious, hazardous and expensive or, in some places, impossible. He evidently had the Mississippi River in mind — not, as Livingston did, the Hudson.
By May of 1803 the hull, fifty-six and a half feet long and ten and a half feet in the beam and lying tied up in the Seine near Perier’s plant, was ready to receive Perier’s engine, which along with the boat’s other machinery was installed sometime that month. The craft, in public view, made quite a spectacle. One Paris journalist described it as having “two large wheels mounted on an axle, like a cart” and behind the wheels rose “a kind of large stove with a pipe.” The creation born in Fulton’s imaginative mind had at last become a reality, floating as a curiosity on the Seine, nearing completion and the crucial test voyage that would follow.
Then tragedy struck. Fulton was awakened one night to be told that the boat had been damaged and had sunk to the bottom of the river, possibly the work of saboteurs — Seine boatmen bent on destroying what they saw as a threat to their livelihood. Another possible cause, though, was that the heavy machinery had simply broken through a hull inadequate to support it. Fulton quickly roused himself and hurried to the riverfront, enlisting help to recover the machinery from the water. Working through the night and deep into the next day, Fulton and his helpers managed to raise the engine, boiler and condenser and salvage as
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