The Great American Steamboat Race by Benton Rain Patterson Page B

Livingston proposed must meet. It must : (1) have a capacity of not less than twenty tons; (2) attain a speed of not less than four miles an hour; and (3) be in operation within a year — that is, by March 1799. The boat that Nicholas Roosevelt had built for Livingston, and Stevens, during its test in October 1798, failed to meet the speed requirement and was eventually abandoned. Livingston managed to have the New York legislature extend its deadline — twice — and the latest deadline was April 1807. He must have a steamboat operating successfully by then in order to keep his monopoly rights.
    It was not until April 1804 that Fulton made the move from Paris to pursue the construction of a boat that would meet the New York legislature’s conditions. He informed Livingston that he was leaving for England to oversee the manufacture of the Boulton and Watt steam engine that was intended to power a boat that would be built in the United States. He got Livingston to enlist fellow diplomat James Monroe’s help in obtaining from the British government the export license needed to ship the proposed engine to America. In so doing, Livingston emphasized to Monroe the importance of the engine to commerce on the Mississippi, over which, thanks in part to their efforts, the United States had so recently acquired complete control through the Louisiana Purchase.
    Fulton left for London on April 29, 1804. He did not get to the United States till two and a half years later. Evidently unknown to Livingston, Fulton had been asked by British officials, through an American agent, to come to England to build and stage a demonstration of his submarine, or plunging boat, as it was called, and his mines, which were called torpedoes. Since hostilities between England and France had resumed and a French invasion of England had become a new possibility, the British war office had decided to give Fulton’s infernal machines a try in hopes they could be used to combat the menace of the expanding French fleet.
    Fulton had leaped at that new chance for fortune and fame. The British government ended up paying him not exactly the fortune he sought but enough to make him richer than he had ever been. His weapons of war, though, failed the test of practicability, and the British government in 1806 at last abandoned its hope of using them to fight France.
    Fulton did succeed in obtaining permission for Matthew Boulton (who had taken over the company following Watt’s retirement) to build him the needed machinery to his specifications, including the steam engine, the condenser and an air pump, all for the price of 548 pounds, or about $2,740. He also got a London firm to make him a two-ton copper boiler, for 477 pounds, about $2,385. Everything was completed by March 1805, whereupon Fulton was granted a permit to export the parts to America.
    With all necessary business taken care of and with no further gains to be realized from his war weapons in England, Fulton finally made preparations to return to the United States. He bought passage aboard a ship and sailed from Falmouth in October 1806. After seven turbulent weeks at sea he arrived safely in New York on December 13, 1806. He had been gone twenty years and was now forty-one years old. With Livingston’s deadline of April 1807 just four short months away, Fulton wrote to Livingston shortly after his arrival to tell him that he was ready to move ahead with their steamboat. But then he went to Philadelphia to be with the Barlows, who were living there at the time, and from Philadelphia the three of them went to Washington City, as the nation’s capital was then called, and stayed a month, entertaining and being entertained and joining in the celebration that welcomed Meriwether Lewis back from his epic journey across the North American continent.
    When he returned to Philadelphia, Fulton dawdled awhile longer, then at last went to New York to get started on the building of the boat. It was the middle