Part 2

“In the meantime, I would wish to determine on our plan for placing the paddles in the stern of the boat and provide immediately to put it in execution. You and Stoudinger (a young man brought up by Roosevelt, and who subsequently became Fulton’s right hand man, and one of the first practical engineers in America,) and Smallman (another of Roosevelt’s employees) must lay your heads together on this subject; and, as soon as you have fixed upon the plan you conceive will be most eligible, I wish you would take a ride down and communicate it to me; and, at the same time, I can give you the result of my cogitations.”

The Stevens’ paddles, until they shook the boat to pieces, were far more successful than any one of the Chancellor’s inventions; and I remember, distinctly, seeing a boat propelled by paddles in the harbor of New York, as I crossed the Hudson on my way to West Point, in the fall of the year 1818. The paddles I refer to, however, were on the sides, and not at the stern, and were literally paddles, being square floats attached to upright shafts, which a crank motion caused to rise and fall.

It is not difficult to understand why the Chancellor told Roosevelt that his vertical wheels were not to be thought of, and why Stevens, confessedly a man of ability and mechanical ingenuity, preferred his own suggestion. They doubtless believed that the percussion of the floats of the vertical wheel as they strike and then enter the water, and before they exert their greatest power; which is when they are at right angles with the surface, was objectionable and would be fatal to their usefulness. They feared also, most probably, the further loss of power consequent upon the lifting of the water as the floats emerged from it; and, wedded to their own schemes, they refused to subject the matter to the test of experiment. The paddles of Stevens, and the floats on the endless chains, to which Fulton gave the preference, entered the water perpendicularly, or nearly so, and were free from what was regarded, it is to be supposed, as the objection to Roosevelt’s vertical wheels over the sides. That both Stevens and Fulton were wrong, and that Roosevelt was right, time has conclusively established.

Unwilling to abandon the idea of steam navigation, even after so complete a failure, the Chancellor devised still another plan, which was executed under Roosevelt’s direction at the works on the Passaic, of the details of which I have no account. In this Roosevelt had no interest. It proved a failure. From all that I can gather, from the documents in my possession, the efforts here described were made in 1798, 1799 and 1800, almost uninterruptedly, and were controlled by the Chancellor, who was, evidently, the moneyed man of the concern, and whose dictum, as we have said, was regarded as conclusive by his associates. So promising did the matter seem after Roosevelt had commenced the engine for the boat, that, in March, 1798, the Legislature of New York, granted the Chancellor, “the exclusive right of navigating all boats that might be propelled by steam on all the waters within the territory, or jurisdiction, of the State for the term of twenty years, provided he should, within a twelvemonth, build such a boat, the mean of whose progress should not be less than four miles an hour.” The month of March, 1799, elapsed, however, without the condition of the grant having been complied with. At a later date, a similar grant was made to Livingston and Fulton.

In the latter part of the year 1800, Mr. Jefferson appointed the Chancellor minister to France, where he remained until 1804, having in the meanwhile negotiated the treaty which ceded Louisiana to the United States, and where he made the acquaintance of Robert Fulton. In 1804, the Chancellor made the tour of Europe, and returned the following year to the United States.

In Colden’s Life of Fulton, there is an account, in the Chancellor’s own words, of the commencement of his acquaintance with Fulton. I quote: “Robert R. Livingston, Esquire, when minister in France, met with Mr. Fulton, and they formed that friendship and connection with each other to which a similarity of pursuits generally gives birth. He communicated to Mr. Fulton the importance of steamboats to their own country; informed him of what had been attempted in America, and of his resolution to resume the pursuit on his return, and advised him to turn his attention to the subject.”

We have already seen that Mr. Fulton’s plan, after making calculations as to the efficiency of paddles and ducks’ feet, was to use endless chains with resisting boards upon them as propellors. With these he made a course of experiments on a little rivulet that runs through the village of Plombiéres, in France, in 1802; and “addressed several letters to Mr. Livingston and Mr. Barlow, giving them a minute account of his experiments and assurances of the certainty of success which they afforded him.”

That the Chancellor had informed Fulton of what had been attempted in America, is admitted by Colden; and this, too, prior doubtless, to the experiments at Plombiéres. That Roosevelt’s pertinacity in regard to wheels over the sides was communicated with other information is not to be doubted; that the Chancellor should have told him, as he told Roosevelt, in the letter of October 28th, 1798, “that they were not to be thought of,” it is most reasonable to suppose; and that Fulton agreed with the Chancellor is proved by the “assurance of certain success” which he entertained, of endless chains and floats, or resisting boards.

Between the spring of 1802 and the fall of that year, Mr. Fulton changed his mind; for he and Livingston were building a boat, propelled by Roosevelt’s vertical wheels, in January, 1803. The Chancellor, by this time, had become convinced that vertical wheels were things “to be thought of.” That it was Roosevelt’s plan that was adopted after all their own plans had failed—the plan derived, with the details of its execution, from Roosevelt himself,—does not seem to admit of any reasonable doubt.

Biography is too often eulogy. The name of Fulton is irrevocably, and justly, the representative name in connection with steam navigation throughout all lands. For a while, and in the memory of the writer, the name of Livingston was connected with it in men’s mouths. But Livingston’s connection with the subject is fast being forgotten. Fulton’s never will be forgotten, not because he was the inventor of the steamboat however, not because he first suggested the combination that made success certain; but because, in his hands, it became a commercial success. He was the first who demonstrated its practical utility, when, in 1807, he made the first voyage in the Clermont from New York to Albany and back. Still he was indebted to others, in the first instance, for the elements of his success.

I have said that biography is too often eulogy. The biographer becomes jealous of the reputation of his hero. Colden was not exempt from the weakness common to his class; and instead of giving to Roosevelt the credit of having first put the idea of vertical wheels over the sides into a practical shape, by his detailed description of their mechanism, he says that the want of success of a French inventor, who had horizontal screws on either side of a boat, “it is probable,” induced Mr. Fulton again to resort to the wheels, which, in the original paper that he communicated to Lord Stanhope, in 1793, he proposed to use as propellors. Even had this been so, without any question having arisen as to the facts, Roosevelt’s model of a boat at Esopus, with its hickory and whalebone springs, would have been ten years ahead of the Frenchman.

But there are some matters connected with the letter to Lord Stanhope, which are not without interest in this connection.

We have seen that Roosevelt, in January, 1815, applied to the Legislature of New Jersey, for protection as an inventor of the vertical wheels over the sides, for which he had obtained letters patent from the United States in the preceding month of December, 1814, being the original document shewn to me by Delacy. Somewhere about this time, Mr. Fulton appeared as a witness before the Legislature in connection with this same subject of steam navigation; and Colden’s life contains a letter from Mr. Emmet, the celebrated lawyer, in which he states, that, in order to shew Mr. Fulton’s prior claim to invention, in the application of “water wheels to steamboats,” he examined him to prove a copy of the letter in question. Nothing was said, it would seem, of its being a copy, when this was first presented: but Governor Ogden noticed that the letter was written on _American paper_; and, subsequently, Mr. Fulton explained that the first copy having been considerably worn out and obscured, he had copied it over again and attached it to the old drawings. This was made the subject of uncomfortable criticism by the opposite counsel; and Mr. Emmet, in his letter, expresses great indignation at what he states was a malicious attempt to injure the honor of the dead, and regrets that he omitted to notice, in his reply, the insinuations which Mr., afterwards Judge, Hopkinson permitted himself to make. The occurrence was unquestionably an unfortunate one, whatever the real facts may have been; and respect for the memory of Mr. Fulton leads me to hope that Mr. Emmet was correct in his version of the transaction. His letter, however, is important in another aspect: it shews that the merit of the invention, at the time, was considered to be the application of vertical wheels over the sides, and that this was claimed for Fulton on the strength of the letter to Lord Stanhope and the accompanying drawings of 1793, notwithstanding the endless chains and floats already referred to as illustrating the convictions of 1793.

I have never seen the drawings or read the letter of Mr. Fulton; but it is difficult for me to believe that he had invented in 1793, what was unquestionably the solution of the difficulty, and yet, in 1802, have dwelt in his letters to Livingston and Barlow upon his assurances of the certainty of success with endless chains and resisting boards. It is with no want of charity, that it is suggested, that Mr. Colden, in writing a biography, overlooked the possibility of its logic being criticized when compared with its facts.

There is some light, however, to be obtained from Lord Stanhope’s reply to Mr. Fulton’s letter. It is as follows:

“Holdsworthy Devon, _October 7th, 1793_.

“Sir: I have received yours of the 30th September, in which you _propose to communicate to me_ the principles of an invention which you say you have discovered respecting the moving of ships by the means of steam. It is a subject on which I have made important discoveries. I shall be glad to receive the communication which _you intend_, as I have made the principles of mechanics my particular study, &c.” (There are no words italicised in the original. L.)

Certainly, it is only necessary to read this letter to be satisfied, that the one to which it is a reply, and it is not suggested that Mr. Fulton ever wrote another, could not have described the combination which made the steamboat the thing that it now is: or that it could have been accompanied by drawings shewing the plan finally adopted,—the Roosevelt plan, going back as far as 1782, and described in practical detail in the letter of 21st October, 1798.

It is true that Mr. Fulton obtained letters patent of the United States for his steamboat in 1809—in reference to which Mr. Colden says, as though to corroborate Fulton’s claim as inventor,

“They (the Chancellor and Mr. Fulton) entered into a contract, by which it was, among other things, agreed that a patent should be taken out in the United States in Mr. Fulton’s name, which Mr. Livingston well knew could not be done without Mr. Fulton _taking an oath that the improvement was solely his_.”

And a patent was in fact taken out, in those days when patents were had for the asking, and when none of that examination, which now protects the public, was required by law.

We have already seen, in the case stated for Mr. Wirt’s opinion, the allegation that Fulton neither subscribed nor swore to the specification; and that the name Robert Fulton was in the handwriting of another man. Unless this had been the fact, it would hardly have been alleged in a paper, prepared for the opinion of eminent counsel. But I have before me an original letter dated Trenton, January, 1815, addressed to Mr. Roosevelt by Delacy, in which the latter gives an account of the proceedings before the Legislature, and in which is this sentence:

“Fulton has the effrontery to avow his having got Fletcher to sign his name and makes light of it, as if he was entitled to violate the laws, as well as private rights, at pleasure.”

It is true, this is the letter of a partizan in a struggle before the Legislature. Still, the matter of fact would not be misstated in a private correspondence, where there was no conceivable motive to mislead.

The committee of the Legislature finally reported, and very wisely, that it was inexpedient to make any special provision in connection with the matter in controversy before that body.

It was in March, 1815, on the heel of the Legislative proceedings, that the deed of trust to Mr. William Griffith was made, and the fact of his accepting the trust, and that Aaron Ogden of New Jersey, was a party to the transaction, shews that the cause of Roosevelt as the inventor of vertical wheels over the sides under the patent of 1814, was deemed good as against the patent granted to Fulton four or five years previously. Had the letter to Lord Stanhope or the reply thereto, been regarded by the outside world, or by those interested in the subject, as sufficient to establish Fulton’s prior right to the invention of vertical wheels over the sides of steamboats, counsel of the standing of Mr. Griffith would not have become mixed up in the business, licenses to use Roosevelt’s patent would not have been granted, nor would I have made the acquaintance of John Devereux Delacy; for Roosevelt’s pretensions would have been nipped in the bud.

My tale is nearly ended. The object has been to shew that the merit of the practical suggestion of the employment of vertical wheels over the sides of steamboats was due to one who has been lost sight of in this connection, and wholly ignored in the biography of Fulton, who availing himself of the suggestion of another, in all its details, made it a great commercial success, and in so doing built upon it a lasting fame. That the papers I have referred to, now collated for the first time, shew this to be the fact, I think there can be no question.

It may be interesting to state something in regard to the subsequent career of Roosevelt. He was once asked why, with the secret of success in his possession, he allowed it to slumber. Why did not _he_ anticipate the Clermont in the first five years of the present century. I give the answer in his own words from a manuscript before me.

“_First_: At the time Chancellor Livingston’s horizontal wheel experiment failed, I was under a contract with the corporation for supplying the city of Philadelphia with water, by means of two steam engines; and, besides, I was under a contract with the United States to erect rolling works and supply government with copper, rolled and drawn, for six 74 gun ships, that were then to be built. The engines for the supplying of Philadelphia with water I completed, though with heavy loss. The rolling works I also brought into operation upon a very extensive scale, and a considerable quantity of copper was delivered. But the encouragement from government by which I had been led into this heavy expense was cut off by a change of men in the administration. The 74s were laid aside, and no appropriations were made, and embarrassment to me was the natural consequence.”

This embarrassment, in the then condition of the law, was imprisonment for debts contracted in getting ready to fulfil his contract. In truth, he was a broken man. In the meanwhile, on the return of Livingston and Fulton to America, the workmen that Roosevelt had brought from Germany and made what they were, entered into Fulton’s service, and to their skill was he indebted for the mechanical success of his earlier boats. In 1807, Roosevelt was introduced to him; and in a letter from the Chancellor, now before me, references to old times are pleasantly made; and, a year or two afterwards, we find Roosevelt associated with Fulton in the introduction of steamboats on the Western waters. Here, he built the New Orleans, the pioneer boat that descended the river in 1811—the year of the comet and the earthquake. The voyage of the New Orleans is, in itself, a romance; but time does not permit it to be told at present.[1] With all his merit, Fulton was not an easy man to get along with; and Roosevelt had his faults of temper too, no doubt; and after the successful voyage of the New Orleans, the two men parted, and Roosevelt disappeared from public life, and was lost in the quiet of the domestic circle of a numerous and happy family. He died at a very advanced age, not many years ago, forgotten by the world as he was forgotten by the biographer of Fulton. He appears again before me, as I write, as I remember to have seen him in my childhood, and in after years—a finished gentleman, energetic and sanguine, warm and generous in his temper, a devoted husband and father, and now made the hero of a lost chapter in the history of the steamboat.

APPENDIX.

N. J. ROOSEVELT TO R. R. LIVINGSTON.

Proposes Vertical Wheels with the Size of Cylinder and presses for Money Arrangements.

Second River, _Sept. 6th, 1798_.

Dr Sir,

I have your two letters of the 31st and 1st inst. before me. Since writing you the 27th, I made an experiment in order to ascertain as nearly as I could the power of the engine, and put on your wheels. This was done by laying the vessel on shore stern foremost so as to leave the wheels entirely out of the water. The Engine was then put to work at the rate of from 40 to 45 strokes and wheels turned from 160 to 180 revolutions per minute. When the water first entered them it was thrown out with great violence; but before it got any considerable depth in them the motion of the engine was impeded and in a short time entirely stopped. By this experiment I was fully convinced that the wheels would require a power far greater than this engine possesses and that any attempts to proceed with the power we have and the present wheels would be fruitless. I was also farther convinced (by getting men whose strength was ascertained to turn the wheels by hand before the operation of the engine) tho’ she has her full power and indeed considerably more than as first mentioned, I expected we would have. Now, Sir, to proceed with the experiment you recommended of closing the openings with doors will be doing nothing more than what we have already done by the last trial. I would therefore recommend that we throw two wheels of wood over the sides fastened to the axes of the flys with 8 arms or paddles, that part which enters the water of sheet iron to shift according to the power they require either deeper in the water or otherwise and that we navigate the vessel with those until we can procure an Engine of proper size which I think ought not to be less than 24 inches cylinder. The Barometer to ascertain the exact power of the engine has not as you observe been left to depend entirely on Mr. Van Ness, although I looked upon him as your Representative according to the tenor of your own letter; but Mr. Mark and Mr. Speyer have both been on the search for one and have not yet succeeded. The copper pipe for it is made and we will I believe be obliged to wait for the glass until we can get it from the glass house above Albany. I have requested Mr. Speyer, who has gone up to the Oneida country, to call on Mr. Dezang for that purpose. If you know of any to be had in New York please to inform me and I will immediately get it.

As to your charge of my want of candor and my possessing too much distrust, those Sir are charges which have never before been laid to me and which I feel perfectly free from and I will recommend to the Chancellor to meet me in future upon equally candid and fair ground. I can assure him he shall never have reason to complain of me on that score again.[2] We have as you observe put our hands to the oars and ought not to look back until we reach port. This I am for, Sir, with all my heart, and firmly believe that with this determination we have nothing to fear, as I think, _with the wheels I have recommended_, that the State patent may be secured. We will then have time to prepare for your wheels, and if they should not have the effect you promise us, we can then adopt such other plans as we may together think best. No bad consequences need be apprehended from what I communicated out of your letter to Smallman and Stoudinger as they are as anxious for the success of the business and your good opinion as I am. As to altering any of the wheels in the way you propose I cannot approve, as the alteration will be attended with considerable expense, and as I believe any alteration we can make with our present small Engine will be inadequate to driving the wheels to any advantage. In this the Chancellor will agree with me when he considers that when the Engine making 30 strokes per minute the horizontal wheels make 120 revolutions by which 3/4 is taken from the power to afford this.

I sincerely hope that Mrs. Livingston may soon recover from her accident so that you may not be detained long from thoroughly investigating everything appertaining to our present concern.

I am, dear Sir, &c., &c. N. J. ROOSEVELT.

N. B. I have not, upon overlooking what I have above written, been so particular in my objections to your proposed alterations as may be agreeable and will ask for a little of your patience. See how the alteration of the wheels on the connecting rod by being smaller will operate. They will most certainly shorten the stroke of the engine. This therefore cannot take place unless we alter the wheels round which they move accordingly, which may be done. At the same time in doing it we shall be obliged to lengthen the spindle of the horizontal wheels and disturb the wooden work the whole of which will be attended with considerable expense and require a second alteration when we come to operate with power equal to what those wheels will require, and indeed, why should we go to any expense in alterations which can do us no service; as I clearly saw from actual experiment that about 1400 pounds will be necessary to be applied directly to the wheels independent of friction, which is equal to an engine of 24 inches Cylinder. An Engine of this size I find has 5424 pounds power independent of the friction of the machine and I think power enough for the air pumps (perhaps something more.) This I cannot however ascertain until I get a barometer and try our present engine, which I believe perfect. I was about trying the power by weights but found difficulties which I have not yet been able to get over, as her power is equal both ways, and to bring the weight only to the connecting rod would tear everything to pieces.

Yours, &c. N. J. ROOSEVELT.