that war would automatically
be abolished. The world, however, was not ready for diving boats and
torpedoes, nor yet for the end of war, and his efforts had no tangible
results.*

* The submarine was the invention of David Bushnell, a
Connecticut Yankee, whose "American Turtle" blew up at least
one British vessel in the War of Independence and created
much consternation among the King's ships in American
waters.

During all the years after 1793, at least, and perhaps earlier, the idea
of the steamboat had seldom been out of his mind, but lack of funds and
the greater urgency, as he thought, of the submarine prevented him from
working seriously upon it. In 1801, however, Robert R. Livingston
came to France as American Minister. Livingston had already made some
unsuccessful experiments with the steamboat in the United States, and,
in 1798, had received the monopoly of steam navigation on the waters
of New York for twenty years, provided that he produced a vessel within
twelve months able to steam four miles an hour. This grant had, of
course, been forfeited, but might be renewed, Livingston thought.

Fulton and Livingston met, probably at Barlow's house, and, in 1802,
drew up an agreement to construct a steamboat to ply between New York
and Albany. Livingston agreed to advance five hundred dollars for
experimentation in Europe. In this same year Fulton built a model and
tested different means of propulsion, giving "the preference to a wheel
on each side of the model."* The boat was built on the Seine, but proved
too frail for the borrowed engine. A second boat was tried in August,
1803, and moved, though at a disappointingly slow rate of speed.

* Fulton to Barlow, quoted in Sutcliffe, "Robert Fulton and
the Clermont", p. 124.

Just at this time Fulton wrote ordering an engine from Boulton and Watt
to be transported to America. The order was at first refused, as it was
then the shortsighted policy of the British Government to maintain a
monopoly of mechanical contrivances. Permission to export was given the
next year, however, and the engine was shipped in 1805. It lay for some
time in the New York Customs House. Meanwhile Fulton had studied the
Watt engine on Symington's steamboat, the Charlotte Dundas, on the
Forth and Clyde Canal, and Livingston had been granted a renewal of his
monopoly of the waters of New York.

Fulton arrived at New York in 1806 and began the construction