pelled by wheels in paddles, were afterwards attempted.
The Harleian MS. contains an Italian book of sketches, attributed to
the 15th century, in which there appears a drawing of a paddle-boat,
evidently intended to be worked by men. Paddle-boats, worked by
horse-power, were also tried. Blasco Garay made a supreme effort at
Barcelona in 1543. His vessel was propelled by a paddle-wheel on each
side, worked by forty men. But nothing came of the experiment.

Many other efforts of a similar kind were made,--by Savery among
others,[4]--until we come down to Patrick Miller, of Dalswinton, who,
in 1787, invented a double-hulled boat, which he caused to be propelled
on the Firth of Forth by men working a capstan which drove the paddles
on each side. The men soon became exhausted, and on Miller mentioning
the subject to William Symington, who was then exhibiting his road
locomotive in Edinburgh, Symington at once said, "Why don't you employ
steam-power?"

There were many speculations in early times as to the application of
steam-power for propelling vessels through the water. David Ramsay in
1618, Dr. Grant in 1632, the Marquis of Worcester in 1661, were among
the first in England to publish their views upon the subject. But it
is probable that Denis Papin, the banished Hugnenot physician, for some
time Curator of the Royal Society, was the first who made a model
steam-boat. Daring his residence in England, he was elected Professor
of Mathematics in the University of Marburg. It was while at that city
that he constructed, in 1707, a small steam-engine, which he fitted in
a boat--une petite machine d'un, vaisseau a roues--and despatched it to
England for the purpose of being tried upon the Thames. The little
vessel never reached England. At Munden, the boatmen on the River
Weser, thinking that, if successful, it would destroy their occupation,
seized the boat, with its machine, and barbarously destroyed it. Papin
did not repeat his experiment, and died a few years later.

The next inventor was Jonathan Hulls, of Campden, in Gloucestershire.
He patented a steamboat in 1736, and worked the paddle-wheel placed at
the stern of the vessel by means of a Newcomen engine. He tried his
boat on the River Avon, at Evesham, but it did not succeed, and the
engine was taken on shore again. A local poet commemorated his failure
in the following lines, which were remembered long after his steamboat
experiment had been forgotten:--