power to the
propulsion of a boat were contemporaries of Benjamin Franklin. Those who
worked without Watt's engine could hardly succeed. One of the earliest
of these was William Henry of Pennsylvania. Henry, in 1763, had the idea
of applying power to paddle wheels, and constructed a boat, but his
boat sank, and no result followed, unless it may be that John Fitch and
Robert Fulton, both of whom were visitors at Henry's house, received
some suggestions from him. James Rumsey of Maryland began experiments
as early as 1774 and by 1786 had a boat that made four miles an hour
against the current of the Potomac.

The most interesting of these early and unsuccessful inventors is John
Fitch, who, was a Connecticut clockmaker living in Philadelphia. He was
eccentric and irregular in his habits and quite ignorant of the steam
engine. But he conceived the idea of a steamboat and set to work to make
one. The record of Fitch's life is something of a tragedy. At the best
he was an unhappy man and was always close to poverty. As a young man he
had left his family because of unhappy domestic relations with his wife.
One may find in the record of his undertakings which he left in the
Philadelphia Library, to be opened thirty years after its receipt,
these words: "I know of nothing so perplexing and vexatious to a man of
feelings as a turbulent Wife and Steamboat building." But in spite of
all his difficulties Fitch produced a steamboat, which plied regularly
on the Delaware for several years and carried passengers. "We reigned
Lord High Admirals of the Delaware; and no other boat in the River
could hold its way with us," he wrote. "Thus has been effected by
little Johnny Fitch and Harry Voight [one of his associates] one of the
greatest and most useful arts that has ever been introduced into the
world; and although the world and my country does not thank me for it,
yet it gives me heartfelt satisfaction." The "Lord High Admirals of the
Delaware," however, did not reign long. The steamboat needed improvement
to make it pay; its backers lost patience and faith, and the inventor
gave up the fight and retired into the fastnesses of the Kentucky
wilderness, where he died.

The next inventor to struggle with the problem of the steamboat, with
any approach to success, was John Stevens of Hoboken. His life was cast
in a vastly different environment from that of John Fitch. He was a rich
man, a man of family and of influence. His father's hous