Steamboat--Fitch,+John

John Fitch’s Invention of the Steamboat and How it Revolutionized River Travel and Molded the United States into an Industrial Powerhouse =**I. Introduction**= My study will explore John Fitch’s steamboat contributions to an evolving industrialized America, what his contributions meant to other aspects of America such as the introduction of railroads and economic growth, why Robert Fulton received the fame for this invention instead of Fitch, and the reactions of the individuals Fitch encountered along this incredible journey. I hypothesize that Fitch’s invention of the first fully functional and operational steamboat was underplayed because he did not have the financial resources, political friends, notoriety, or advantages that other individuals of the time had possessed. During this time period in American history, these were what were considered to be the factors of a successful inventor and entrepreneur. This was the main contributing factor why Robert Fulton is widely recognized as the inventor of the steamboat and Fitch plays the role of the unsung hero. The main reason that others mocked and criticized Fitch for his outlandish idea was that they were too afraid to take the risk in the spotlight of the entire nation when it came time to industrialize the United States following the American Revolution at the turn of the 18th century. =II. Overview of the Steamship and its Technological Impact= Steam is credited with being America’s first significant venture into the realm of technology in what would be later called the American Industrial Revolution. America’s first commercial steamboat, invented and fully operated by John Fitch in August 1787, paved the way for steamboat transportation in the United States. It would become a precursor to railroads, commercial cargo ships, automobiles, and airplanes. He used and built upon the scientific and engineering principles previously discovered by Denis Papin, Thomas Savery, Thomas Newcomen, and James Watt to successfully develop a quick and efficient means of transportation, especially in an infant nation. The benefits to the U.S.’s growth and economy were huge. Fitch’s invention not only revolutionized river travel, but it also allowed for higher productivity in factories and mills and lower costs of goods. Even though he never did receive his fully deserved credit for his contributions, he constantly tried feverishly to obtain support and backing from the local communities, state governments, members of Continental Congress, and even members of the French and Spanish governments for his steamboat ideas. He was frequently laughed at, mocked, and overlooked because of his unconventional idea. He was an intelligent man who fully understood his own importance in history and what the steamboat would do for America. Fitch demonstrates this when he says, “…The Steam Boat has been a matter of great speculation and discourse, and I think my duty to inform the public that I am forced to quit it purely for the want of resources, after it is demonstrated as clear as one of Euclid’s Problems, that it may answer a valuable purpose” (Fitch 177). But he eventually died lonely, disappointed, and destitute with the public never fully comprehending and supporting his significant role in the history of his country.

Steam-powered river vessels were a technological strategy whose historical timing could not have been more perfect. America had just won its independence from the British and was ready to start developing its own infrastructure. Steamships were one of the answers to the main question facing America at this critical juncture in history: How to expand westward and establish its own industries and economy. Steamships first started to appear in rivers in the United States in the late 18th century. After the American Revolution (1775-1783), President George Washington was concerned with the notion of how to unify the two halves of the United States separated by the Appalachian Mountains, which run parallel to the Atlantic Ocean from present-day northern Alabama to the Canadian province of Québec. He was almost positive that the way to unite the two halves was trade. The question was how to execute this idea and finding a method of transportation which would make the seemingly impossible task of linking East and West possible. The roads of the time were very crude trail ways where the transportation of goods was difficult, slow, dangerous, and costly. A boat that could travel both up and down a river seemed like the optimal solution. Later on, these steamboats would link together cities such as Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Louisville, and St. Louis.

Designing and implementing these steamboats would secure economic independence for the United States. It would also allow for relatively quick, safe, efficient, and inexpensive means of navigation and passenger and freight services. The steamships not only expedited commerce, but it also expanded areas of trade of towns located on the riverfronts. These towns became centers of distribution for the local inland towns and cities. From the early part of the 19th century up until the 1870s, these steamboats were the primary mode of the transportation of people and goods before railroads began to gradually faze them out with the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. The peak of the steamboat era would occur between 1850 and 1875. It would turn out that these steamboats would become a vital component of future United States travel and commerce on the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers and their main tributaries. The rivers and other waterways of the time were equivalent to today’s interstate highways. The invention of the steamboat caused prices of goods to fall and productivity in mills and factories to increase because the steamboats lessened the cost of labor and shortened the time for goods to get from one location to another. The invention of the steamboat is also credited for the allowance of westward expansion and exploration.

=III. John Fitch: The True Pioneer of the Steamboat= John Fitch invented the first workable and fully functional steamboat in the United States. He demonstrated it on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787 before members to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. This occurred two decades prior to Robert Fulton and his partner, Robert Livingston’s, successful run of their steamboat the //Clermont// on the Hudson River. John Fitch’s overall goal with strategy of the steamboat was to create a faster and more efficient means of transportation which the United States desperately needed to expand westward. The journey of getting to this point was a long and tedious one for Fitch, full of hardships, setbacks, and disappointments. One of the many reasons why this important stepping stone in American history was overlooked was because Fitch did not possess the technical skill, shrewdness, money, notoriety, political connections, and government support that happened to fall into the hands of Fulton and Livingston, who are historically credited with the invention. Some may argue that Fitch’s timing was off historically, but the simple fact is that he created the first steamboat in the United States, financially successful or not, which led to the development of other technologies and industries in America. Even though history cannot be rewritten, it is possible that Fitch would have been fully credited with the invention if he had the money, political influence, and shrewdness of Robert Fulton. =IV. John Fitch’s Life and Hardships= Even from childhood, Fitch’s life contained many hardships and misfortunes. This is not to say that he did not have his fair share of good things happen, but the number of setbacks far outweighed his successes in life. Born into poverty in rural East Windsor, Connecticut in 1743, he was pulled out of school by his father at age 10 to work on his family’s farm where he proved unfit for farm work. This led to his father and older brother holding an antagonistic attitude towards Fitch for most of his early life. In his teen years, he bounced from job to job including working on a coastwise sailing ship. He would later have two unsuccessful apprenticeships at clockmaker shops, where he was not allowed to study and handle time pieces or tools of the trade. At age twenty one, he established a brass shop in East Windsor. He was finally able to pay off the debt of setting up this business in a short two years. As he started to accumulate profit from brass founding and clock maintenance, he would lose all of his money in an investment of potash manufacturing. In a frantic effort to regain his money, he designed and built a brass plant. The problem was that he built it too large for what was needed. In early 1769, Fitch would leave his home, family (including his wife Lucy Roberts), and business because of his embarrassment with the brass shop and his unhappy home life. Fitch recounts this when he mentions, “On the 18th of January 1769 I left my native country with a determination never to see it again and haveing no fixed place in mind where to wander. I sat out bare of money not haveing more than seven or eight dollars with me and not an extravigant supply of cloaths but a sufficiency only for a short time” (Fitch 46). He then set up a brass and silver shop in Trenton, New Jersey which had moderate success. Over the next seven years, he would run this profitable business only to have it wiped out during the American Revolution along with the majority of his personal effects. He then gave up this business in order to fight in the U.S. War of Independence. After he left the Continental Army shortly after enlisting, he was put in charge of a gun factory where he worked as a gunsmith and a sutler, providing beer and tobacco to the Continental Army. After the war was over, he surveyed and invested money in the Northwest Territory from 1783-1785. This effort was in vain due to Congress passing the Land Ordinance of 1785, which divided the land in the Northwest Territory into parcels and sold them off to the general public. This land was originally supposed to given as payment to surveyors and explorers for their efforts. Fitch was also captured by the Indians in 1782 and imprisoned in Canada for close to one year’s time.

=V. John Fitch and the Steamboat= After his surveying expeditions in the Norwest Territory were over in 1785, he settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. From 1785 up until his death thirteen years later in 1798, Fitch would focus on his invention of the steamboat. He originally wanted to apply steam power to a wagon, but he eventually turned to the idea of propelling a boat through the water using steam power. Fitch states that, “To my children and future generations, I was so unfortunate in the month of Aprile 1785, as to have an Idea that a Carriage might be carried by the force of Steam along the Roads, I persued that Idea about one week, and gave it over as impracticable, or in other words turned my thoughts to Vessels, which appeared to me that it might be applied to advantage on the Water, from that time have persued the Idea to this day, with unremitted assiduity, yet do frankly confess that it has been the most imprudent scheme that I ever engaged in” (Fitch 143). In late 1785, he vainly tried to obtain approval and subsidies from Continental Congress and other scientific societies for operating steamboats on the Mississippi River. In 1786, he was finally granted the exclusive rights to use these steamboats of the coast of New Jersey. In 1787, other state legislatures followed suit including Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and Virginia in allowing Fitch to operate steamboats in their respective waters. These would become 14-year steamboat monopolies.

Fitch would end up building a total of four steamboats. Fitch launched his original steamboat on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787 in front of members of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Oddly enough, Fitch obtained the money to launch the 45-foot vessel from Philadelphia financiers and from the sale of a map he drew during his Northwest Territory explorations. Fitch’s main assistant on the project was Henry Voight, a clockmaker and master mechanic from Philadelphia. At the time, Fitch did not have neither the money to purchase an engine from England nor the technical skill to build one himself. Also the British government banned the export of steam engines to America. Voight was essential for Fitch’s dream to become a reality because without Voight, there would be no steam engine and no steamboat. Fitch expresses this when he says, “He is a man the most ready of inventive improvements of any on Earth I mean in the mechanical line and I am persuaded I never could have compleated the Steam Boat without him” (Fitch 116). One downfall of this design of steamboat was that it used steam-powered oars on each side of the boat instead of paddle wheels, which would be used in his next three steamboats. This limited the power and efficiency of the steamboat to just four miles per hour. In July of 1788, Fitch would launch his second steamboat. This was a 60-foot long vessel propelled by a steam-driven paddle wheel meant to carry both passengers and freight. This steamboat made regularly scheduled runs between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey. It could make the journey twenty miles upstream in a little over three hours and carry up to 30 passengers.

Fitch’s third steamboat would improve upon his previous two. Built in 1790, it made regularly scheduled passenger runs across the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Trenton, New Jersey at roughly eight miles per hour. After a long dispute with James Rumsey of Virginia over patent rights, Fitch was granted a U.S. patent for the steamboat on August 26, 1791 and a French patent in the same year. With these patents in hand, Fitch started to work on his fourth and final steamboat, justly named //Perseverance//. This boat was, ironically, lost in a violent storm in Philadelphia before its completion and this discouraged many of Fitch’s financiers to advance him any more money for future projects. In 1793, Fitch went to France in a futile attempt to obtain financial backing from the French government to no avail. Fitch had to work his way back to America as a sailor. He returned to Boston destitute and in poor health. He would return to his birthplace of East Windsor and remain there for another two years making no attempt to visit his wife and children that he left in 1769. In 1796, on his way to Kentucky where he claimed 1,600 acres on his surveying expedition in 1780, he stopped in New York to try one last time to arouse interest in his invention. This was another disappointment in Fitch’s life as his idea was once again rejected. Failing to make his inventions pay off coupled with his poor health and grim outlook on life Fitch returned to claim his 1,600 acres in Bardstown, Kentucky and took his life on July 2, 1798 at age 55.

=VI. Possible Reasons for Failure and Conclusion= The main contributor behind his failures was lack of financial support from the public and the government. They did not want to take a chance on something as pioneering as the steamboat especially immediately after winning independence from England when there were a lot of uncertainties in the future direction of America. This caused there to be little public support and interest in steamboat travel technology. With respect to Fitch’s third steamboat, since passenger and freight business demand at the time was insufficient, it was not commercially successful. Even though Fitch created these four steamboats, he gave very little attention to building and operating costs. He also failed to realize the need to demonstrate the economic aspects and value of steamboat propulsion. This is what led to the ultimate cause of his failure: the lack of funding, whether it was private or government. This is why the history books and so many individuals immediately think of Robert Fulton as soon as you mention steam technology. It is also worthy to note that even though at least a dozen others tried to pioneer the steamboat between 1798 and 1807, steam power was sparingly used after Fitch’s death. It would not be until 1807 with Robert Fulton and his partner Robert Livingston that steamboat technology would take-off and would be a financially successful venture. Fitch’s idea of the steamboat was rejected as being ridiculous by people such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and David Rittenhouse. He was also turned away by Continental Congress, the Pennsylvania Assembly, and the foreign governments of France and Spain. During the creation of his first steamboat, Fitch even noted that, “The day will come when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from my invention.” The most probable reason why Fitch failed to gain financial backing was his lack of education which caused him to overlook construction and operating costs of these steamboats. This, in turn, caused him to fail in demonstrating economic value to the public, which is why his invention did not become popular and publically supported for another 20 years. It was Robert Fulton who possessed the engineering, financial, and entrepreneurial ability to make the steamboat a commercial success. The story of John Fitch’s life can be summarized in a declaration he once made. He stated, “I know of nothing so perplexing and Vexatious to a man of feelings, as a turbulant Wife and Steam Boat building. I experienced the former and quit in season, and I had been in my right sences I should undoubtedly [have] treated the latter in this same manner, but for one man to be teised with Both, he must be looked upon as the most unfortunate man in this World.” =**__ Bibliography __**=

Primary: Fitch, John. __The Autobiography of John Fitch__. Ed. Frank D. Prager. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: American Philosophical Society, 1976.

Fitch, John. Petition to Continental Congress. 30 August 1785. Journals of the Continental Congress. Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

Washington, George. The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799. 39 vols. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931-44. Online at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/gwhome.html.

Secondary: Deluca, Richard. __Against the Tide: The Unfortunate Life of Steamboat Inventor John Fitch__. New Haven, Connecticut: Association for the Study of Connecticut History, 2005. Mitman, Carl W. “John Fitch.” Dictionary of American Biography Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale. [|http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/HistRC/] Philip, Cynthia O. __Robert Fulton: A Biography__. New York, New York: Franklin Watts, 1985.

Pursell, Carroll. “John Fitch.” Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale. [|http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/HistRC/] Sutcliffe, Andrea J. __Steam: The Untold Story of America’s First Great Invention__. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Westcott, Thompson. __The Life of John Fitch: The Inventor of the Steamboat__. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2007.

Reference: Braynard, Frank O. “Fuel-Powered Vessels: Development of Power-Driven Ships.” __Encyclopedia Americana__. 2005.

Derry, Thomas K. “Fitch, John.” __Encyclopedia Americana__. 2005.

Hartman, J. P. “Fitch, John.” __World Book 2007__.

Heckert, Paul A. “Steam Engine.” __Gale Encyclopedia of Science__. 2004.

Safra, Jacob E. “Steamboat.” __Encyclopedia Britannica__. 2005.