LIKE many inventors before and after him, Fitch found that his idea brought him nothing but frustration, grief and misery.
Congress greeted his request for support with hardly-disguised amusement, and he traipsed around the legislatures of all the middle states, receiving plenty of encouragement but no financial help.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: Made a derisory gesture
"I esteem it one of the most imprudent acts of my life, that I had not treated the insult with the indignity which he merited, and stamped the poltry ore under my feet," the irate Fitch wrote of this derisory gesture.
Fitch's big problem was that he was too gullible. After he told Franklin of his plans, the great man lectured the Philosophical Society on the subject as though the idea were his. When he asked another inventor, Arthur Donaldson, to join him as a partner, Donaldson announced his intention to patent the idea himself.
How it worked
THE ONLY detailed description of Fitch's first steamboat was given in the Colombian Magazine early in 1787. This is it:"IT is to be propelled through the water by the force of steam. The steam engine is to be similar to the late improved steam engines in Europe, those alterations excepted.
The cylinder is to be horizontal and the steam to work with equal force at each end thereof. The mode of forming a vacuum is believed to be entirely new; also of letting the water into it and of letting it off against the atmosphere without any friction.
The undertakers are also of opinion that their engine will work with an equal force to those late improved engines, it being a twelve inch cylinder. They expect it will move with a clear force, after deducting friction of between eleven and twelve hundred pounds weight; which force is to be applied to the turning of an axle tree on a wheel of 18 inches diameter.
The piston is to move about three feet and each vibration of the piston turns the axle tree about two thirds round. They propose to make the piston to strike thirty strokes in a minute; which will give the axle tree about forty revolutions. Each revolution of the axle tree moves twelve oars five and a half feet.
As six oars come out of the water six more enter the water; which makes a stroke of about eleven feet each revolution. The oars work perpendicularly and make a stroke similar to the paddle of a canoe.
The cranks of the axle tree act upon the oar about one third of their length from their lower end; on which part of the oar the whole force of the axle tree is applied. The engine is placed in about two thirds of the boat, and both the action and reaction of the piston operate to turn the axle tree the same way."
Assisted by a Dutch watchmaker called Henry Voight, he built his own steam engine and installed it in a model, which performed well at the end of July, 1786. A full-scale boat followed, and this was trialled successfully on August 22nd, 1787, despite the fact that the twelve-inch cylinder was nowhere near large enough to produce adequate power.
Another battle now surfaced, involving a rival inventor named James Rumsey of Virginia, who claimed the steamboat was his own invention. Fitch demonstrated to the satisfaction of most people that this was not the case, and meanwhile the company went on to the next stage.
This should have involved a new engine with a multi-tubed boiler and a new cylinder of 18-inch diameter. But the cylinder was defective, so they retained the old one and found a longer, narrower boat to put it in. At the same time, the twelve side paddles were exchanged for three larger ones operating over the stern.
It was tested on a 20-mile trip to Burlington at the end of July, 1788, cheered all the way by massive crowds, and several more successful voyages followed. On October 12th, the vessel carried 30 passengers from Philadelphia to Burlington, sailing against the tide, in three hours 10 minutes, but just as success seemed within Fitch's grasp, fresh problems arose.
Voight pulled out of the enterprise, along with many of the shareholders, and the inventor was forced to search again for help as he tried to develop his idea into a commercially-viable scheme.
He decided that he needed to increase the vessel's speed so that it could make the trip from Philadelphia to Trenton in five hours, but despite having an 18-inch cylinder made and installed, and other improvements, she refused to go any faster.
Fitch, meanwhile, was suffering personally. Chronically short of cash, hounded by debtors, his clothing in tatters, and having exhausted the generosity of his friends, he was becoming a sorry sight. And the problem refused to be solved.
Then, just as everything looked hopeless, Fitch persuaded his fellow directors to finance the making of a new-style steam condenser for the engine. It worked like a dream.
He wrote later: "On the 16th of April (1790), got our work completed, and tried our Boat again; and altho the wind blew very fresh at the north east, we reigned Lord High Admirals of the Delaware, and no boat in the River could hold its way with us, but all fell astern."