Part 216

"Whatever credit is due to the construction of the first railroad ever built in America is usually claimed for the State of Massachusetts. Every one who has ever looked into a school history of the United States knows something of the Quincy railway of 1826. Properly speaking, however, this was never—or at least, never until the year 1871,—a railroad at all. It was nothing but a specimen of what had been almost from time immemorial in common use in England, under the name of 'tram-ways.' … This road, known as the Granite railway, built by those interested in erecting the Bunker Hill Monument, for the purpose of getting the stone down from the Quincy quarries to a wharf on Neponset River, from which it was shipped to its destination. The whole distance was three miles, and the cost of the road was about $34,000. … Apart, however, from the construction of the Granite railway, Massachusetts was neither particularly early nor particularly energetic in its railroad development. At a later day many of her sister States were in advance of her, and especially was this true of South Carolina. {3031} There is, indeed, some reason for believing that the South Carolina Railroad was the first ever constructed in any country with a definite plan of operating it exclusively by locomotive steam power. … On the 15th of January 1831,—exactly four months after the formal opening of the Manchester & Liverpool road,—the first anniversary of the South Carolina Railroad was celebrated with due honor. A queer looking machine, the outline of which was sufficient in itself to prove that the inventor owed nothing to Stephenson, had been constructed at the West Point Foundry Works in New York during the summer of 1830—a first attempt to supply that locomotive which the Board had, with a sublime confidence in possibilities, unanimously voted on the 14th of the preceding January should alone be used on the road. The name of Best Friend was given to this very simple product of native genius. … In June, 1831, a second locomotive, called the West Point, had arrived in Charleston; and this at last was constructed on the principle of Stephenson's Rocket. In its general aspect, indeed, it greatly resembled that already famous prototype. There is a very characteristic and suggestive cut representing a trial trip made with this locomotive on March 5th, 1831. … About six months before …there had actually been a trial of speed between a horse and one of the pioneer locomotives, which had not resulted in favor of the locomotive. It took place on the present Baltimore & Ohio road upon the 28th of August, 1830. The engine in this case was contrived by no other than Mr. Peter Cooper. … The Cooper engine, however, was scarcely more than a working model. Its active-minded inventor hardly seems to have aimed at anything more than a demonstration of possibilities. The whole thing weighed only a ton, and was of one horse power. … Poor and crude as the country was, however, America showed itself far more ready to take in the far reaching consequences of the initiative which Great Britain gave in 1830 than any other country in the world. … It might almost be said that there was a railroad mania. Massachusetts led off in 1826; Pennsylvania followed in 1827, and in 1828 Maryland and South Carolina. Of the great trunk lines of the country, a portion of the New York Central was chartered in 1825; the construction of the Baltimore & Ohio was begun on July 4th, 1828. The country, therefore, was not only ripe to accept the results of the Rainhill contest, but it was anticipating them with eager hope. … Accordingly, after 1830 trial trips with new locomotives followed hard upon each other. To-day it was the sensation in Charleston; to-morrow in Baltimore; the next day at Albany. Reference has already been made to a cut representing the excursion train of March 5th, 1831, on the South Carolina Railroad. There is, however, a much more familiar picture of a similar trip made on the 9th of August of the same year from Albany to Schenectady, over the Mohawk Valley road. This sketch, moreover, was made at the time and on the spot by Mr. W. H. Brown."

_C. F. Adams, Jr., Railroads: Their Origin and Problems, chapter 1._

STEAM NAVIGATION: Start--------

STEAM NAVIGATION, The beginnings.

"The earliest attempt to propel a vessel by steam is claimed by Spanish authorities … to have been made by Blasco de Garay, in the harbor of Barcelona, Spain, in 1543. … The account seems somewhat apochryphal, and it certainly led to no useful results. … In 1690, Papin proposed to use his piston-engine to drive paddle-wheels to propel vessels; and in 1707 he applied the steam-engine, which he had proposed as a pumping-engine, to driving a model boat on the Fulda at Cassel. …

See STEAM ENGINE: THE BEGINNINGS, &c.

In the year 1736, Jonathan Hulls took out an English patent for, the use of a steam-engine for ship-propulsion, proposing to employ his steamboat in towing. … There is no positive evidence that Hull! ever put his scheme to the test of experiment, although tradition does say that he made a model, which he tried with such ill-success as to prevent his prosecution of the experiment further. … A prize was awarded by the French Academy of Science, in 1752, for the best essay on the manner of impelling vessels without wind. It was given to Bernouilli, who, in his paper, proposed a set of vanes like those of a windmill —a screw in fact—one to be placed on each side the vessel and two more behind. … But a more remarkable essay is quoted by Figuier—the paper of l' Abbé Gauthier, published in the 'Memoires de la Société Royale des Sciences et Lettres de Nancy.' … A little later (1760), a Swiss clergyman, J. A. Genevois, published in London a paper relating to the improvement of navigation, in which his plan was proposed of compressing springs by steam or other power, and applying their effort while recovering their form to ship propulsion. It was at this time that the first attempts were made in the United States to solve this problem. … William Henry was a prominent citizen of the then little village of Lancaster, Pa., and was noted as an ingenious and successful mechanic. … In the year 1760 he went to England on business, where his attention was attracted to the invention—then new, and the subject of discussion in every circle—of James Watt. He saw the possibility of its application to navigation and to driving carriages, and, on his return home, commenced the construction of a steam-engine, and finished it in 1763. Placing it in a boat fitted with paddle-wheels, he made a trial of the new machine on the Conestoga River, near Lancaster, where the craft, by some accident, sank, and was lost. He was not discouraged by this failure, but made a second model, adding some improvements. Among the records of the Pennsylvania Philosophical Society is, or was, a design, presented by Henry in 1782, of one of his steamboats. … John Fitch, whose experiments will presently be referred to, was an acquaintance and frequent visitor to the house of Mr. Henry, and may probably have there received the earliest suggestions of the importance of this application of steam. About 1777 … Robert Fulton, then twelve years old, visited him, to study the paintings of Benjamin West, who had long been a friend and protege of Henry. He, too, not improbably, received there the first suggestion which afterward … made the young portrait-painter a successful inventor and engineer. … In France, the Marquis de Jouffroy was one of the earliest to perceive that the improvements of Watt, rendering the engine more compact, more powerful, and, at the same time, more regular and positive in its action, had made it, at last, readily applicable to the propulsion of vessels. … {3032} Comte d' Auxiron and Chevalier Charles Mounin, of Follenai, friends and companions of Jouffroy, were similarly interested, and the three are said to have … united in devising methods of applying the new motor. In the year 1770, D'Auxiron determined to attempt the realization of the plans which he had conceived. He resigned his position in the army," obtained from the King a patent of monopoly for fifteen years, and formed a company for the undertaking. "The first vessel was commenced in December, 1772. When nearly completed, in September, 1774, the boat sprung a leak, and, one night, foundered at the wharf." Quarrels and litigation ensued, D'Auxiron died, and the company dissolved. "The heirs of D'Auxiron turned the papers of the deceased inventor over to Jouffroy, and the King transferred to him the monopoly held by the former. … M. Jacques Périer, the then distinguished mechanic, was consulted, and prepared plans, which were adopted in place of those of Jouffroy. The boat was built by Périer, and a trial took place in 1774 [1775] on the Seine. The result was unsatisfactory." Jouffroy was still undiscouraged, and pursued experiments for several years, at his country home and at Lyons, until he had impoverished himself and was forced to abandon the field. "About 1785, John Fitch and James Rumsey were engaged in experiments having in view the application of steam to navigation. Rumsey's experiments began in 1774, and in 1786 he succeeded in driving a boat at the rate of four miles an hour against the current of the Potomac at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, in presence of General Washington. His method of propulsion has often been reinvented since. … Rumsey employed his engine to drive a great pump which forced a stream of water aft, thus propelling the boat forward, as proposed earlier by Bernouilli. … Rumsey died of apoplexy, while explaining some of his schemes before a London society a short time later, December 23, 1793, at the age of 50 years. A boat, then in process of construction from his plans, was afterward tried on the Thames, in 1793, and steamed at the rate of four miles an hour. … John Fitch was an unfortunate and eccentric, but very ingenious, Connecticut mechanic. After roaming about until 40 years of age, he finally settled on the banks of the Delaware, where he built his first steamboat. … The machinery [of Fitch's first model] was made of brass, and the boat was impelled by paddle-wheels. … In September, 1785, Fitch presented to the American Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia, a model in which he had substituted an endless chain and floats for the paddle-wheels." His first actual steamboat, however, which he tried at Philadelphia in August, 1787, before the members of the Federal Constitutional Convention, was fitted with neither paddle-wheels nor floats, but with a set of oars or paddles on each side, worked by the engine. His second boat, finished in 1788, was similarly worked, but the oars were placed at the stern. This boat made a trip to Burlington, 20 miles from Philadelphia. "Subsequently the boat made a number of excursions on the Delaware River, making three or four miles an hour. Another of Fitch's boats, in April, 1790, made seven miles an hour. … In June of that year it was placed as a passenger-boat on a line from Philadelphia to Burlington, Bristol, Bordentown, and Trenton. … During this period, the boat probably ran between 2,000 and 3,000 miles, and with no serious accident. During the winter of 1790-'91, Fitch commenced another steamboat, the 'Perseverance,'" which was never finished. Although he obtained a patent from the United States, he despaired of success in this country, and went, in 1793, to France, where he fared no better. "In the year 1796, Fitch was again in New York City, experimenting with a little screw steamboat on the 'Collect' Pond, which then covered that part of the city now occupied by the 'Tombs,' the city prison. This little boat was a ship's yawl fitted with a screw, like that adopted later by Woodcroft, and driven by a rudely made engine. Fitch, while in the city of Philadelphia at about this time, met Oliver Evans, and discussed with him the probable future of steam-navigation, and proposed to form a company in the West." Soon afterwards, he settled on a land-grant in Kentucky, where he died in 1798: "During this period, an interest which had never diminished in Great Britain had led to the introduction of experimental steamboats in that country. Patrick Miller, of Dalswinton, had commenced experimenting, in 1786-'87, with boats having double or triple hulls, and propelled by paddle-wheels placed between the parts of the compound vessel." On the suggestion of James Taylor, he placed a steam-engine in a boat constructed upon this plan, in 1788, and attained a speed of five miles an hour. The next year, with a larger vessel, he made seven miles an hour. But for some reason, he pursued his undertaking no further. "In the United States, several mechanics were now at work besides Fitch. Samuel Morey and Nathan Read were among these. Nicholas Roosevelt was another. … In Great Britain, Lord Dundas and William Symington, the former as the purveyor of funds and the latter as engineer, followed by Henry Bell, were the first to make the introduction of the steam-engine for the propulsion of ships so completely successful that no interruption subsequently took place in the growth of the new system of water-transportation. … Symington commenced work in 1801. The first boat built for Lord Dundas, which has been claimed to have been the 'first practical steamboat,' was finished ready for trial early in 1802. The vessel was called the 'Charlotte Dundas,' in honor of a daughter of Lord Dundas. … Among those who saw the Charlotte Dundas, and who appreciated the importance of the success achieved by Symington, was Henry Bell, who, 10 years afterward, constructed the Comet, the first passenger-vessel built in Europe. This vessel was built in 1811, and completed January 18, 1812. … Bell constructed several other boats in 1815, and with his success steam-navigation in Great Britain was fairly inaugurated." Meantime this practical success had been anticipated by a few years in the United States, through the labors and exertions of Stevens, Livingston, Fulton, and Roosevelt. Fulton's and Livingston's first experiments were made in France (1803), where the latter was Ambassador from the United States. Three years later they renewed them in America, using an engine ordered for the purpose from Boulton & Watt. "In the spring of 1807 the 'Clermont,' as the new boat was christened, was launched from the ship-yard of Charles Brown, on the East River, New York. In August the machinery was on board and in successful operation. {3033} The hull of this boat was 133 feet long, 18 feet wide, and 9 deep. The boat soon made a trip to Albany, running the distance of 150 miles in 32 hours running time, and returning in 30 hours. … This was the first voyage of considerable length ever made by a steam vessel; and Fulton, though not to be classed with James Watt as an inventor, is entitled to the great honor of having been the first to make steam-navigation an everyday commercial success. … The success of the Clermont on the trial-trip was such that Fulton soon after advertised the vessel as a regular passenger-boat between New York and Albany. During the next winter the Clermont was repaired and enlarged, and in the summer of 1808 was again on the route to Albany; and, meantime, two new steamboats—the Raritan and the Car of Neptune—had been built by Fulton. In the year 1811 he built the Paragon. … A steam ferry-boat was built to ply between New York and Jersey City in 1812, and the next year two others, to connect the metropolis with Brooklyn. … Fulton had some active and enterprising rivals." The prize gained by him "was most closely contested by Colonel John Stevens, of Hoboken," who built his first steamboat in 1804, propelling it by a screw with four blades, and his second in 1807, with two screws. He was shut out from New York waters by a monopoly which Fulton and Livingston had procured, and sent his little ship by sea to Philadelphia. "After Fulton and Stevens had thus led the way, steam-navigation was introduced very rapidly on both sides of the ocean." Nicholas J. Roosevelt, at Pittsburgh, in 1811, built, from Fulton's plans, the first steamer on the western rivers, and took her to New Orleans. "The first steamer on the Great Lakes was the Ontario, built in 1816, at Sackett's Harbor."

_R. H. Thurston, History of the Growth of the Steam Engine, chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _R. H. Thurston, Robert Fulton._

_C. D. Colden, Life of Robert Fulton._

_T. Westcott, Life of John Fitch._

STEAM NAVIGATION: On the Ocean.

"In 1819 the Atlantic was first crossed by a ship using steam. This was the Savannah, of 380 tons, launched at Corlear's Hook, New York, August 22, 1818. She was built to ply between New York and Savannah as a sailing packet. She was however, purchased by Savannah merchants [by a Mr. Scarborough] and fitted with steam machinery, the paddle-wheels being constructed to fold up and be laid upon the deck when not in use, her shaft also having a joint for that purpose. She left Savannah on the 26th of May, and reached Liverpool in 25 days, using steam 18 days. The log book, still preserved, notes several times taking the wheels in on deck in thirty minutes. In August she left Liverpool for Cronstadt. An effort was made to sell her to Russia, which failed. She sailed for Savannah, touching at Copenhagen and Arendal, and arrived in 53 days. Her machinery later was taken out, and she resumed her original character as a sailing packet, and ended her days by being wrecked on the south coast of Long Island. But steam-power had by 1830 grown large enough to strike out more boldly. The Savannah's effort was an attempt in which steam was only an auxiliary, and one, too, of a not very powerful kind. Our coastwise steamers, as well as those employed in Great Britain, as also the voyage of the Enterprise to Calcutta in 1825 (though she took 113 days in doing it), had settled the possibility of the use of steam at sea, and the question had now become whether a ship could be built to cross the Atlantic depending entirely on her steam power. It had become wholly a question of fuel consumption. The Savannah, it may be said, used pitch-pine on her outward voyage, and wood was for a very long time the chief fuel for steaming purposes in America. … In 1836, under the influence of Brunel's bold genius, the Great Western Steamship Company was founded as an off-shoot of the Great Western Railway, whose terminus was then Bristol." The Company's first ship was the Great Western. She was of unprecedented size—236 feet length and 35 feet 4 inches breadth—"determined on by Brunei as being necessary for the requisite power and coal carrying capacity. … The Great Western was launched on July 19, 1837, and was towed from Bristol to the Thames to receive her machinery, where she was the wonder of London. She left for Bristol on March 31, 1838; and arrived, after having had a serious fire on board, on April 2d. In the meantime others had been struck with the possibility of steaming to New York; and a company, of which the moving spirit was Mr. J. Laird, of Birkenhead, purchased the Sirius, of 700 tons, employed between London and Cork, and prepared her for a voyage to New York. The completion of the Great Western was consequently hastened; and she left Bristol on Sunday, April 8, 1838, at 10 A. M. with 7 passengers on board, and reached New York on Monday, the 23d, the afternoon of the same day with the Sirius, which had left Cork Harbor (where she had touched en route from London) four days before the Great Western had left Bristol. The latter still had nearly 200 tons of coal, of the total of 800, on board on arrival; the Sirius had consumed her whole supply, and was barely able to make harbor. It is needless to speak of the reception of these two ships at New York. It was an event which stirred the whole country, and with reason; it had practically, at one stroke, reduced the breadth of the Atlantic by half. … The Great Western started on her return voyage, May 7th, with 66 passengers. This was made in 14 days, though one was lost by a stoppage at sea." Within a few years following several steamers were placed in the transatlantic trade, among them the Royal William, the British Queen, the President, the Liverpool, and the Great Britain, the latter a screw steamer, built of iron and put afloat by the Great Western Company. In 1840 the long famous Cunard line was founded by Mr. Samuel Cunard, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in company with Mr. George Burns of Glasgow and Mr. David McIver of Liverpool. The screw propeller (taking the place of the paddle-wheel), which made its first appearance in ocean navigation with the Great Britain, obtained its practical introduction through the labors of the great Swedish engineer, John Ericsson, though an idea of it had been in the minds of many inventors for a century and a half. Ericsson, induced by Francis B. Ogden and Captain Robert F. Stockton, United States Navy, came to the United States in 1839, and the introduction of the screw-propeller occurred rapidly after that date, the paddle-wheel disappearing from ocean steamships first, and more slowly from the steamers engaged in lake and river navigation.

_F. E. Chadwick, The Development of the Steamship ("Ocean Steamships," chapter 1)._

ALSO IN: _A. J. Maginnis, The Atlantic Ferry, chapters 1-2._

_R. H. Thurston, History of the Growth of the Steam Engine, chapter 5._

_W. C. Church, Life of Ericsson, chapters 6-10 (volume 1)._

{3034}

STEDMAN, FORT, The capture of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (MARCH-APRIL: VIRGINIA).

STEEL BOYS.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1760-1798.

STEEL YARD, The Association of the.

See HANSA TOWNS.

STEENWYK: Siege and relief (1581).

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1577-1581.

STEIN, Prussian reform measures of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (JANUARY-AUGUST); 1807-1808; and 1808.

STEINKIRK, OR STEENKERKE, Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1692.

STELA, OR STELE.

"This is one of the words most frequently used in Egyptian archæology, because it designates a monument which is found in hundreds. The stela is a rectangular fiat stone generally rounded at the summit, and it was made use of by the Egyptians for all sorts of inscriptions. These stelæ were, generally speaking, used for epitaphs; they also served, however, to transcribe texts which were to be preserved or exhibited to the public, and in this latter case the stela became a sort of monumental placard."

_A. Mariette, Monuments of Upper Egypt, page 29, foot-note._

STENAY: A. D. 1654. Siege and capture by the French.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1653-1656.

STENAY: A. D. 1659. Ceded to France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1659-1661.