第27章 The Birth Of The Steamboat (3)

It is fortunate that, in one particular, Livingston's influence did not prevail with Fulton, for the American Minister was distinctly prejudiced against paddle wheels.Although Livingston had previously ridden as a passenger on Morey's sternwheeler at the rate of five miles an hour, yet he had turned a deaf ear when his partner in experimentation, Nicholas J.Roosevelt, had insisted strongly on "throwing wheels over the sides." At the beginning, Fulton himself was inclined to agree with Livingston in this respect; but, probably late in 1803, he began to investigate more carefully the possibilities of the paddle wheel as used twice in America by Morey and by four or five experimenters in Europe.In 1804 an eight-mile trip which Fulton made on the Charlotte Dundas in an hour and twenty minutes established his faith in the undeniable superiority of two fundamental factors of early navigation--paddle wheels and British engines.Fulton's splendid fame rests, and rightly so, on his perception of the fact that no mere ingenuity of design could counterbalance weakness, uncertainty, and inefficiency in the mechanism which was intended to make a steamboat run and keep running.As early as November, 1803, Fulton had written to Boulton and Watt of Birmingham that he had "not confidence in any other engines" than theirs and that he was seeking a means of getting one of those engines to America."I cannot establish the boat without the engine," he now emphatically wrote to James Monroe, then Ambassador to the Court of St.James."The question then is shall we or shall we not have such boats."But there were difficulties in the way.Though England forbade the exportation of engines, Fulton knew that, in numerous instances, this rule had not been enforced, and he had hopes of success."The British Government," Fulton wrote Monroe, "must have little friendship or even civility toward America, if they refuse such a request." Before the steamboat which Fulton and Livingston proposed to build in America could be operated there was another obstacle to be surmounted.The rights of steam navigation of New York waters which Livingston had obtained on the death of Fitch in 1798 had lapsed because of his failure to run a steamboat at the rate of four miles an hour, which was one provision of the grant.In April, 1803, the grant was renewed to Livingston, Roosevelt, and Fulton jointly for another period of twenty years, and the date when the boat was to make the required four miles an hour was extended finally to 1807.