speed of four miles
an hour. John Fitch had disappeared, and with him his idea of applying
steam to paddles. He had fitted a steam engine of his own invention
into a ferry-boat of his own construction, and for a whole summer this
creation of an uneducated genius had been seen by the people of
Philadelphia moving steadily against wind and tide; but money gave
out, the experiment was unsatisfactory, and Fitch wandered to the
banks of the Ohio, where opium helped him end his life in an obscure
Kentucky inn, while his steamboat rotted on the shores of the
Delaware. Then John Stevens of Hoboken began a series of experiments
in 1791, trying elliptical paddles, smoke-jack wheels, and other
ingenious contrivances, which soon found the oblivion of Fitch's
inventions. Subsequently Rumsey, another ingenious American, sought
with no better success to drive a boat by expelling water from the
stern. When it was announced that the great Chancellor also had a
scheme, it is not surprising, perhaps, that the wags of the Assembly
ridiculed the project as idle and whimsical. "Imagine a boat," said
one, "trying to propel itself by squirting water through its stern."
Another spoke of it as "an application of the skunk principle." Ezra
L'Hommedieu, then a state senator, declared that Livingston's
"steamboat bill" was a standing subject of ridicule throughout the
entire session.

But there were others than legislators who made sport of these
apparently visionary projects to settle the value of steam as a
locomotive power. Benjamin H. Latrobe, the most eminent engineer in
America, did not hesitate to overwhelm such inventions with objections
that, in his opinion, could never be overcome. "There are indeed
general objections to the use of the steam engine for impelling
boats," he wrote, in 1803, "from which no particular mode of
application can be free. These are, first, the weight of the engine
and of the fuel; second, the large space it occupies; third, the
tendency of its action to rack the vessel and render it leaky; fourth,
the expense of maintenance; fifth, the irregularity of its motion and
the motion of the water in the boiler and cistern, and of the
fuel-vessel in rough water; sixth, the difficulty arising from the
liability of the paddles or oars to break, if light, and from the
weight, if made strong. Perhaps some of the objections against it may
be obviated. That founded on the expense and weight of the fuel may
not for some years