and patriotic motives, Fitch was
also foremost in appreciating the importance of the steamboat in
the expansion of American trade. This significance was also clearly
perceived by his brilliant successor, Robert Fulton. That the West and
its commerce were always predominant in Fulton's great schemes is proved
by words which he addressed in 1803 to James Monroe, American Ambassador
to Great Britain: "You have perhaps heard of the success of my
experiments for navigating boats by steam engines and you will feel
the importance of establishing such boats on the Mississippi and other
rivers of the United States as soon as possible." Robert Fulton had been
interested in steamboats for a period not definitely known, possibly
since his sojourn in Philadelphia in the days of Fitch's early efforts.
That he profited by the other inventor's efforts at the time, however,
is not suggested by any of his biographers. He subsequently went to
London and gave himself up to the study and practice of engineering.
There he later met James Rumsey, who came to England in 1788, and by him
no doubt was informed, if he was not already aware, of the experiments
and models of Rumsey and Fitch. He obtained the loan of Fitch's plans
and drawings and made his own trial of various existing devices, such
as oars, paddles, duck's feet, and Fitch's endless chain with
"resisting-boards" attached. Meanwhile Fulton was also devoting his
attention to problems of canal construction and to the development
of submarine boats and submarine explosives. He was engaged in these
researches in France in 1801 when the new American minister, Robert R.
Livingston, arrived, and the two men soon formed a friendship destined
to have a vital and enduring influence upon the development of steam
navigation on the inland waterways of America.

Livingston already had no little experience in the same field of
invention as Fulton. In 1798 he had obtained, for a period of twenty
years, the right to operate steamboats on all the waters of the State of
New York, a monopoly which had just lapsed owing to the death of Fitch.
In the same year Livingston had built a steamboat which had made three
miles an hour on the Hudson. He had experimented with most of the models
then in existence--upright paddles at the side, endless-chain paddles,
and stern paddle wheels. Fulton was soon inspired to resume his efforts
by Livingston's account of his own experiments and of recent advances in
England