Fitch had the vision to see the oceanic future ofsteam navigation and to foresee the epochal changes this would bring in people's ways oflife and commerce, not just on the rivers, but also on the open ocean, throughout the whole world. astounded to be told that tall ceramic vases and delicate teak screens in a house I was visitin g had come imo the house directly by sea from Canton. The C hinese wares had been unladed from a small ship in the river cove behind the house. This kind of thing just didn't happen as bigger ships took over the ocean trades after about 1800, and it didn't happen any more in the little tobacco ports in the C hesapeake Bay, where winding rivers led up to mansions built of English brick brought as ballast in the little ships that carried the tobacco leaf away to Bristol and London. And it didn 't happen anymore in the town of Salem, just north of Boston in M assachusettS Bay, which had taken the lead in the China and Indies trades in the early years of the American Republic. New York provided financing, ready markets, and ships ready for quick dispatches to practically any quaner of the world. By 1800, 17 yea rs after the British left, the city had far surpassed both Philadelphia and Boston in tonnage of ships and goods handled. The English traveler John Lambert, arriving in New York in 1807 aboard Captain Dean 's second (and larger) sloop Experiment, described the New York waterfront scene vividly: Bales ofcotton, wood, and merchandise; barrels ofpotash, rice, flour and saltprovisions; hogsheads ofsugar, chests oftea, puncheons ofrum, and pipes of wine; boxes, cases, packs and packages of all siz es and denominations, were strewn upon the wharfs and landing-places, or upon the decks ofthe shipping. All was noise and bustle. He continues with the activities that generated all this movement of goods: The merchants and their clerks were busily engaged in their countinghouses, or upon the piers. The Tontine coffeehouse was filled with underwriters, brokers, merchants, traders and politicians; selling, purchasing, trafficking or insuring; some reading, others eagerly inquiring the news . ... The coffeehouse slip, and the corners of Wall and Pearl Streets, were jammed up with carts, drays and wheelbarrows; horses and men were jammed promiscuously together, leaving little or no room fo r passengers to pass. . .. And he notices the New Yorker's typical racing eagerness to get ahead and th e worldwide reach of what was happenin g on their streets: The people were scampering in all directions to trade with each other, and to ship offtheir purchases for the European, Asian, Aftican and West I ndian markets. Every thought, word, look, and action of the multitude seemed to be absorbed by commerce; the welkin rang with its busy hum, and all were eager in pursuit ofits riches. In the same year (1807) that Lambert recorded this productive and cheerful scene, a remarkable American, Robert Fulton, steamed his North River Steamboat (popularl y known as the Clermont) from New York to Albany. This began the first continuous commercially successful traffic under steam. There had already been the short-lived experimental boats of] ohn Fitch and Rumsey in Philadelphia in the 1790s. Fitch's boat was probably viable as a co mmercial proposition but he lacked capital for successful promotion and sustained operation in the face of early losses. Fitch had the vision, however, to see the oceanic future ofsteam navigation and to foresee the epochal changes this wo uld bring in people's ways oflife and commerce, not just on the rivers, but also on the open ocean, throughout the whole world-predictions we might take a closer look at later in this narrative. For the immediate future, steam navigation was to effect
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marginal improvements in the Hudson River passenger and fast freighter traffics, spreading out across Long Island Sound and down the Jersey coast in the next two decades. And in 1818, the steamship Savannah, built in New York, voyaged from Savannah, Geo rgia, to England and to St. Petersburg in Russia at the eastern branch of the Baltic Sea. Her primitive engine pushed her along successfully in fair weather, but excessive fuel consumption limited its employment. After her return from this promotional voyage-s urely an important voyage for what it was- she reverted to a plain sailing rig. Until the late 1830s, fully a generation after the voyage of Fulton's North River Steamboat, the main contribution of steam power to ocean navigation was harbor tugboats rowing the increasingly large sailing ships to sea. Steam power at sea had a long gestation. French experiments with steamboats had been made since the 1600s, and the English tug Charlotte Dundas operated successfully on the Caledonian Canal in 1803 until irate canalers had her shut down, allegedly because the wash from her flailing paddlewheels crumbled in the canal banks. It took the vision, multidisciplinary talents and form idable drive of a Robert Fulton to assemble the capital, management and Boulton-Watt engine imported from England and fitted into a light, stream lined hull to get steam navigation going in its natal river-and all of this would sti ll not have worked without this extrao rdin ary man's positive genius for promotion. Fulton, it should also be noted, operated a submarine that succeeded in sinking a warship in a staged experiment in France. No one rook him up on this project, the British in particular quite rightly wishing Fulton and his infernal machine would simply go away. But the deadly potential of Fulton's machine, further developed in advanced metallurgy and propulsion in the 1900s, nearly brought British sea power to its knees in the world wars of this century. Fulton also built the first steam warship , a catamaran sheathed in thick oak armor which may have played a deterrent role in discouraging a British attack on New York on the lines of their attack on Washington DC in the War of 1812, in which they burnt the Capitol. Christened Demo logos, or "Voice of the People," she would have spoken with a loud voice indeed, smash in g even the more powerful conventional warship with her heavy guns, while practically immun e to counter-fire. In a stroke of genius, her vulnerable paddlewheels were completely sheltered between her two hulls . T he US Navy never quite knew what to do with the monster, which was ultimately blown up by careless handling of gunpowder in 1830 while serving as a guardship. Officers of the sailing navy who knew of her existence presumably breathed a sigh of reli ef. Fulton also provided a reliable steam ferry to operate across New York's East River just south of where the Brooklyn Bridge was erected 70 years later. The Manhattan and Brooklyn streets feeding into this strategic ferry crossing were renamed Fulton Street for the inventor. The National Maritime Historical Society had the honor of restoring this name to the Brooklyn side ofFulron Street in the late 1970s when we maintained a pier on the old ferry site. This historic street had been renamed to placate a bumptious developer
SEA HISTORY 87, WINTER 1998-99