FROM TIME to time, history throws up a character whose story seems so much larger than life that it is difficult to believe.
English engineer Richard Trevithick was one. America's John Fitch was certainly another, and their biographies are not dissimilar - two talented inventors, both keen to develop new uses for steam power, battling opponents, succeeding in the workshop but ultimately failing in business.
Fitch was a true, all-American hero whose adventures were the stuff that Hollywood screenplays are made of.
His family originated in Braintree, in the English county of Essex, but he was born on a Connecticut farm in 1743, lost his mother at the age of four and was brought up by his disciplinarian father. At ten, he was taken out of school to work on the family farm. As a consequence, he developed a lifelong aversion to farming, an insatiable desire for learning - and bouts of manic depression that were to colour his entire life.
Fitch taught himself brass-founding and set up his own business making buttons from discarded brass kettles. But he made what was to prove an unfortunate marriage in 1766, and despairing of his wife's temper tantrums, left home to lead an itinerant lifestyle.
He made and lost a couple of modest fortunes before setting off for Kentucky armed with land warrants and a commission as a deputy surveyor. But on his second trip, in the spring of 1782, with the country embroiled in the War of Independence with Britain, he ran into big trouble.
The idea was to sail down the Ohio River to his destination, but four days out from Wheeling Island, he and his partners were captured by Delaware Indians.
Two of their number were killed and scalped, and the group, forced to trek North, faced death several times before being handed over to British custody at Detroit.
Months in a British internment camp followed but at Christmas, 1782, he was repatriated in a prisoner exchange.
Undeterred, he returned to the Ohio valley to survey more land, then applied for a post as an official surveyor. But someone else got the job - and Fitch was left with a dream that was to make him famous.
FITCH'S original steam canoe ... the engine drove two banks of six canoe-style paddles.
When a neighbour and his wife passed them at a brisk pace in a smart, horse-drawn carriage, Fitch mused on what an attractive proposition such a carriage would be - if only the horse could be dispensed with.
How to do it? The idea of using steam occured to him immediately, even though, he later claimed, he had no idea that a steam engine had ever been built.
He mulled over the idea, little knowing that he was at the beginning of an obsession that would dominate his life.
He explained: "I was so unfortunate in the month of April, 1785, as to have an idea that a carriage might be carried by the force of steam along the roads.
"I pursued that idea about one week, and gave it over as impracticable, or, in other words, turned my thoughts to vessels, which appeared to me that it might be applied to advantage on the water.
