The maiden voyage of the first commercially successful steam-powered riverboat launched a new era in transportation that would have a profound impact on the opening of the North American continent, whose extensive river systems offered a network of ready-made highways well suited for steamboat traffic.
During the mid-1790’s, Robert R. Livingston, a wealthy and famous Hudson Valley landowner, persuaded the New York State legislature to grant him exclusive rights to operate steam-powered boats on the Hudson River, which was then known as the North River, from 1798 to 1818. The terms of this agreement required Livingston to produce within one year a boat that would run at 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) an hour. His attempts to satisfy this requirement failed, and he went to France as the United States minister. There he met Robert Fulton, a U.S. citizen who was studying and working on inventions in the field of submarines and torpedoes.
Livingston
A steam engine that the two men ordered from the British firm of Boulton and Watt arrived in New York in November, 1806. The engine’s cylinder was 2 feet (0.6 meters) in diameter, and its piston stroke was 4 feet (1.2 meters). Fulton arrived from Europe during the following month but seemed to be in no hurry to get on with building a boat in which to put the engine. Meanwhile, the New York legislature granted Livingston
The hull of Fulton’s boat was built by Charles Brown at Corlears Hook on New York’s East River. Fulton then had the finished hull towed to Paulus Hook Ferry, where he set up his shop and began to install the machinery. There is some disagreement about the dimensions of the boat’s hull, which appears to have been about 130 feet (39.6 meters) long and 15 feet (4.57 meters) wide. The vessel’s keel reached three or four feet below the surface of the water. The hull was sharply pointed at both its bow and its stern. Its only deck was just a few feet above the waterline. The engine and boiler were installed on the deck, and the engine drove large paddle wheels on both sides of the vessel. The wheels were fifteen feet in diameter and four feet wide. As they rotated, their paddle blades dipped two feet into the water.
Fulton was one of the first steamboat designers to use scientific methods. He successfully calculated that the Boulton and Watt engine could move the vessel at a speed of about five miles (eight kilometers) per hour. Although modern theories would give a slightly different estimate, his calculations were nearly correct.
Although some work on the boat remained to be completed, Fulton decided to make a short test voyage on Sunday, August 9, 1807. He set out from Brown’s wharf and ran the boat about one mile up the East River to a point about even with what is now Houston Street in Manhattan. The boat achieved a speed of 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) per hour this run, even though its paddle wheels were not completed. A week later, with the paddle wheels fully equipped, Fulton moved the boat around the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan to a wharf on the North River. Passengers aboard the boat on this short trip included U.S. senator Samuel Latham Mitchill
At about one o’clock of the following afternoon, on August 17, the steamboat set out for Albany. The chief engineer was a Scot named George Jackson, and the captain was Davis Hunt. Food and drink had been brought on board, and an African American man named Richard Wilson
Fulton’s first steamboat.
On the morning of August 19, Fulton’s steamboat set out from Clermont to cover the remaining forty miles (sixty-four kilometers) to Albany, where it arrived shortly after 5:00
Regular steamboat service between New York City and Albany, which began in 1807, continued until 1948. On September 13 of that year, the steamboat Robert Fulton of the Hudson River Day Line made the last steamboat trip over this route.
It is no exaggeration to say that Fulton’s voyage opened a new era in transportation. Steamboat transportation was especially important in the United States, whose immense river systems provided major transportation routes throughout the country. Especially important was the Mississippi-Missouri river
In June, 1816, Henry Shreve
In 1824, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state-sponsored monopolies such as Livingston’s
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Baxter, Maurice G. The Steamboat Monopoly: “Gibbons v. Ogden,” 1824. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970. A narrative and assessment of the case in which the Supreme Court had its first opportunity to interpret the commerce clause of the Constitution. -
Buckman, D. L. Old Steamboat Days on the Hudson River. New York: Grafton Press, 1907. Appreciative history of early steamboas written just one hundred years after the Clermont’s first voyage, at a time when steamboats were still working the Hudson River. -
Donovan, Frank. River Boats of America. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966. Discusses the Clermont briefly, while providing broad coverage of steam-powered riverboats throughout the United States. -
Hutcheon, Wallace. Robert Fulton, Pioneer of Undersea Warfare. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1981. Puts Fulton’s steamboat in perspective with regard to his other inventions. -
Morgan, John S. Robert Fulton. New York: Mason/Charter, 1977. A biography covering all aspects of Fulton’s life. Index. -
Philip, Cynthia Owen. Robert Fulton. New York: Franklin Watts, 1985. Biography of Fulton that includes a full chapter about the Clermont. -
Ringwald, D. C. Hudson River Day Line. 2d ed. New York: Fordham University Press, 1990. A profusely illustrated, large-format book covering the Hudson River Day Line from the Clermont to the last Hudson River steamboat trip in 1948. -
Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream. New York: Free Press, 2001. Well-written and balanced biography that describes how Fulton’s steamboat transformed nineteenth century America. -
Shagena, Jack L. Who Really Invented the Steamboat? Fulton’s Clermont Coup: A History of the Steamboat Contributions of William Henry, James Rumsey, John Fitch, Oliver Evans, Nathan Read, Samuel Morey, Robert Fulton, John Stevens, and Others. Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2004. Shagena, a retired aerospace engineer, traces the technological contributions of the many inventors, including Fulton, who helped create the steamboat.
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Gibbons v. Ogden
Erie Canal Opens
Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad Opens
Brunel Launches the SS Great Eastern
Robert Fulton; Mark Twain.