One inventor after another experimented with the steamboat and failed. Three years later, another American by the name of James Rumsey, built a steamboat but, like Fitch’s boat, but it never became practicable. For more than three months, it plied up and down the river, but it moved so slowly that few passengers cared to ride in it.įitch grew ragged and poor and at last, gave up the trips. His boat was moved using a row of engine-worked paddles arranged along its sides. In 1786 John Fitch, an American, built a steamboat and launched it on the Delaware River. ![]() John Allen, tried to run a boat by taking in water through an opening in the bow of his boat and then driving it out at the stern with so much force as to push the boat forward. One ingenious Englishman tried to run a boat by making the engine push through the water a device shaped somewhat like a duck’s foot. Why could not some sort of machinery be devised for applying the power of the steam engine to the movement of boats? Naturally, the thoughts of many inventors turned toward it. James Watt, a Scotchman, had so improved the steam engine that people began to hope that steam might be utilized to work for man. Small wonder, then, that one of the problems of the day was to invent a boat that could move along with swiftness and ease and which should not be dependent on the ever-varying wind for its speed. Where the current was too strong for this, the boatmen went ashore and hauled the craft along by ropes. It plied up and down the rivers more or less regularly, being pushed upstream with long poles. The favorite passenger craft was the keelboat. Hundreds of these boats went down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers every year. ![]() As it was used chiefly to carry produce, it was usually torn to pieces at the end of the journey after its cargo of flour, pork, lumber, molasses, etc., had been sold. It was merely a box, some 50 or more feet in length and about 16 feet wide, and was propelled by long poles. On the western rivers, the flatboat was the most familiar form of craft.
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