These are the plans I created for my 3D digital model of Fulton’s steamboat. They were derived from a number of historical documents and photographs taken of the 1909 replica of the vessel. The rigging, boiler arrangement, and cabin locations were based on historical documents and Fulton’s original drawings. The ship’s boat suspended from davits at the stern is speculative but a common feature of river craft at that time.
1909 replica, Clermont
library of congress
owned and administered by NYS Parks and Recreation. His knowledge provided me with detailed information that significantly affected my work. In all the years that I have known of Fulton’s steamboat, I never had a clear idea of its size and mechanical attributes. When I was growing up along the banks of the Hudson River, this vessel was always referred to as the “Clermont.” In subsequent years, historians corrected this misconception and informed us that in its day it was called “The North River Steamboat” and that Fulton himself called it “The Steamboat.” The original steamboat design was quite simple. The hull incorporated a lot of straight lines, lacking the distinctive curves of a sailing ship. It was long and narrow, 150 in length with an eighteen-foot beam and a draft of only twentyeight inches. The deck was flat with little camber; the sides were straight with no tumblehome (bowing out from the top of the deck and curving back in to the waterline). The engine was a simple network of gears and counterweights, driven by a single piston. Steam was generated by burning wood in a furnace attached to a large boiler. These early steam engines were dangerous, and many of these first steam-powered boats suffered the consequences of horrendous boiler explosions. As with most technologies, designs improved over time and led to greater public confidence, and ultimately to the Golden Age of Steamboating. As I always do at the beginning of a project of this nature, I start by constructing reference models of my subjects. Before computers and graphic design software, this was done in the traditional manner: drawing plans and building scale models from various materials. Over the last fifteen years, however, I have mastered the technique (and associated software) for creating digital models with a computer. This was a long and grueling process with an almost impossible learning curve, but in the end the technique has evolved into an unbelievably versatile tool. I use it all the time for everything from buildings and ships to people, even to create their clothing and hairstyles. I’ve built whole cities from the seventeenth century in which I can visually experience the physical space and determine points of view to come up with great settings for paintings. Using a variety of historical records, I was able to build a computer model of Fulton’s vessel with credible details in an accurate scale. This process provided insights into the design nuances and mechanical features of the vessel I never understood before. Although much of what I learned cannot be expressed in a single painting, the knowledge
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