The Birth of the Paddle Steamer

The dream of propelling a boat through some mechanical device was many years in the making. Various designs, especially for weapons of war, were concieved in the 15th Century including that shown in the attached image allegedly by Matteo di Pasti (1420-1467), an engraver who worked for Piero di Cosimo  de’Medici in Florence during the Renaissance.

A vessel propelled by a rotary paddle was seen by Jesuits in China in 1782.  In 1629 a jet of steam blowing on vanes on a wheel was used on Hero’s ‘Aeolipile’. Frenchman, Dennis Papin described a cylinder fitted with a piston in 1690.  In 1705 Newcomen’s “atmospheric engine” harnessed steam to drive machinery. In 1729 water was forced through the stern of a vessel using steam from Newcomen engines. In 1699 Jonathan Hulls, a clock repairer, claimed to be the inventor of the steam-powered vessel. The early ideas failed through malice and neglect. In 1744 Comte d’Auxiron tested a vessel fitted with an atmospheric engine. It sank. So J. C. Perier, on the River Seine, was the first to construct a vessel with steam power in 1775. The Marquis Claude de Jouffroy d’Abbans was the first to use steam to power boats – a wooden paddle boat, the Pyroscaphe.

John Fitch, an America, built boats operated by steam driven oars on the Delaware River at Philadelphia culminating in the Experiment, a passenger carrying steamboat in 1790.  Across the Atlantic, Patrick Miller, a Scottish banker, collaborated with William Symington (1734-1861) to build a steam driven paddle steamer at Dalswinton in Scotland. In 1788 it steamed across Dalswinton Loch with Robert Burns on board.

Symington built the engine for the first practical steamboat  to tow barges on the Forth and Clyde Canal, of which Dundas was a director. The result was the Charlotte Dundas which in 1802 towed two 70-ton canal boats on the canal for 20 miles.The American, Robert Fulton experimented with paddle wheels. In 1794 he approached Boulton, Watt and Co., in England about a steam engine to power a boat. He took a trip on the Charlotte Dundas  he went to Paris, where he constructed his first steamboat. It was moored in the Seine when a storm sank her. Fulton rescued the machinery and built another and in 1803 achieved success. For 90 minutes the vessel towed two other boats at 3 mph, against the current.Although Charlotte Dundas was the first steamboat capable of useful service and did what was expected of her, the canal owners objected to the wash that faster-than-horse towage developed which eroded the banks so the boat was eventually broken up.

The first successful steamboat was the P.S. Clermont in 1807 built from the collaboration of Robert Fulton and Boulton, Watt. Built by Charles Browne, of Corlears Hook, New York. At 133 ft. in length, a beam of 13 ft. a draught of 2 ft. her displacement was 100 tons. The engine, of 20 nominal hp with one cylinder of 2 ft. diameter and 4 ft. stroke,  was built by Boulton, Watt and Co., and was the third of their engines to be exported from England. The two 15 ft. diameter side-mounted  paddle wheels, fitted with eight radial floats, were driven by a combination of bell-cranks, flywheel, and spur gearing designed by Fulton.  Steam was provided by an externally fired copper boiler, mounted on a brick support, built by Messrs Cave and Son. Clermont made her first successful trip on 17th August 1807, on the River Hudson between New York and Albany and, with modification, continued to run on the Hudson for seven years. The P.S. Phoenix of 1808 built by Colonel John Stevens and his son, at Hoboken, New York was another early example. With Captain Moses Rogers (later to command the Savannah) she steamed from the Hudson in June 1808 to Philadelphia and became the first steamer ever to venture into the open sea. She was wrecked at Trenton in 1814. The era of steam was still new. In 1819 the paddle steamer, SS Savannah, was the first powered vessel to cross the Atlantic – although mostly under sail (see left). The Aaron Manby became the first iron vessel to go to sea sailing from London to Paris in 1821. I.K. Brunel’s SS Great Western (see left)), became the first transatlantic liner with a scheduled run in 1837. James Watt is credited with applying an early steam engine to a screw propeller beginning the use of a hydrodynamic screw for propulsion. By 1845, Brunel had used this as the propulsion system, via a chain-link, for the SS Great Britain.