eam-boat," the
French might be able to destroy the naval supremacy of England.

Fulton's idea of a steamboat was not original. He had undoubtedly copied
it from John Fitch, a mechanical genius of Connecticut whose cleverly
constructed steamer had first navigated the Delaware river as early as
the year 1787. But Napoleon and his scientific advisers did not believe
in the practical possibility of a self-propelled boat, and although the
Scotch-built engine of the little craft puffed merrily on the Seine, the
great Emperor neglected to avail himself of this formidable weapon which
might have given him his revenge for Trafalgar.

As for Fulton, he returned to the United States and, being a practical
man of business, he organised a successful steamboat company together
with Robert R. Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence,
who was American Minister to France when Fulton was in Paris, trying
to sell his invention. The first steamer of this new company, the
"Clermont," which was given a monopoly of all the waters of New York
State, equipped with an engine built by Boulton and Watt of Birmingham
in England, began a regular service between New York and Albany in the
year 1807.

As for poor John Fitch, the man who long before any one else had used
the "steam-boat" for commercial purposes, he came to a sad death. Broken
in health and empty of purse, he had come to the end of his resources
when his fifth boat, which was propelled by means of a screw-propeller,
had been destroyed. His neighbours jeered at him as they were to laugh a
hundred years later when Professor Langley constructed his funny flying
machines. Fitch had hoped to give his country an easy access to the
broad rivers of the west and his countrymen preferred to travel in
flat-boats or go on foot. In the year 1798, in utter despair and misery,
Fitch killed himself by taking poison.

But twenty years later, the "Savannah," a steamer of 1850 tons and
making six knots an hour, (the Mauretania goes just four times as fast,)
crossed the ocean from Savannah to Liverpool in the record time of
twenty-five days. Then there was an end to the derision of the multitude
and in their enthusiasm the people gave the credit for the invention to
the wrong man.

Six years later, George Stephenson, a Scotchman, who had been building
locomotives for the purpose of hauling coal from the mine-pit to
smelting ovens and cotton factories, built his famous "travelling
engin