Steam across the water

A look at the early history of boats powered by steam

During the 1600s, very early in the development of steam engines, inventive spirits like the Frenchman Denis Papin dreamed of - and experimented with - boats driven by steam, rather than by the wind or human effort, but many decades passed before those visions became reality.

Englishman Jonathan Hulls took out patents on a steamboat in 1736, but it was to be driven by a Newcomen engine, which was heavy and therefore inefficient, and would never be a success. In 1763, William Henry, an American, put a Watt steam engine in a boat, but It sank. Nearly 20 years later, in the 1780s, a steam-powered paddle-wheeler managed to last fifteen minutes against the current on the River Saone in France, but lacked the endurance for longer trips. Developments elsewhere included a boat driven by a steam-powered water-jet and able to do six kilometres per hour. However, all these steamboats were either too slow or too expensive to run. For example, American John Fitch successfully trialled his first steamboat in 1787, but although he tried a number of designs and solved many technical challenges - one of his boats could even travel at 13 km/h - he could never convince sceptics that steamboats would pay.

The 19th century came before real success could be claimed. In Scotland in 1802, Lord Dundas launched the steamboat Charlotte Dundas, which was driven by a paddle wheel and had an improved engine designed by William Symington. Barges, some weighing as much as 70 tonnes, were towed by this steamboat 30 kilometres along the Forth and Clyde Canal to Glasgow, Scotland's second city. Soon after, success came to American Robert Fulton, whose countrymen called him 'the father of the steamboat'. Inspired by news of the Charlotte Dundas, Fulton ran steamboat trials on the River Seine, in an attempt to attract French support for his submarine Nautilus. He later imported a Boulton-Watt steam engine and built a boat to use it in. In 1807, the Clermont began a scheduled passenger steamboat service between New York and Albany, 250 kilometres up the Hudson River, taking 30 hours for the trip. Within few years, steamers were running on the St Lawrence River in Canada and would soon appear on other rivers and lakes, including the Mississippi River, a most famous venue for the paddle-wheelers.

Back in Scotland, Fulton's ideas inspired Henry Bell, who launched his Comet in 1812 on the Clyde between Glasgow and Greenock. Inside a decade, dozens of steamboats were to be seen on the rivers, lochs and canals of Scotland, carrying cargo and occasionally passengers. The age of steamboats had come.

Once steamboats were carrying passengers and industrial goods along the inland waterways and sheltered coastlines of Europe, North America and elsewhere, the challenge became to send steamboats onto the open ocean, such as across the Atlantic Ocean, between Europe and the US. Travelling under steam power alone would require engines to use less coal so the ship could stay at sea for several weeks. In order to provide a reliable service, it was also necessary to replace paddle wheels as a source of power with something less affected by the rolling of the ship.

Without waiting for such breakthroughs, crossings under a combination of steam and sail got underway in 1819 with the American ship Savannah. A regular service took another two decades and introduced the famous name of Cunard. Securing the British government contract for the mail service across the Atlantic, Samuel Cunard established a shipping line in 1840, soon carrying passengers as well, and offering guaranteed sailing dates. Cunard's first ships used a sail-steam combination, but the era of the passenger liner, using steam alone, was getting close.

When it came to building the ships, the versatile British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunei set the pace. Brunei, brilliant and daring, had already built the Great Western Railway. He created ever bigger ships - faster, more luxurious and comfortable for passengers. The Great Western, launched in 1838, was 70 metres long and crossed from Bristol to New York in just fifteen days. The largest paddle steamer ever built was Brunei's Great Eastern. Ultimately too expensive to run as a passenger ship, it was leased to lay the first submarine telegraph cable from Europe to America. His 1853 Great Britain, nearly 100 metres long and luxuriously appointed, was the first oceangoing steamship made of iron, and the first to use the underwater screw propeller for powering movement in place of paddle wheels. The idea of the screw had been around since the experiments of the American John Stevens in 1803, but only in 1838 did a large steamer use one, the riverboat Archimedes built by Francis Pettit Smith. Later ships had twin screws for reliability.

In many modem ships, steam turbines have replaced engines with pistons, with fuel oil instead of coal to fire the boilers. Diesel engines keep others moving. The largest ships afloat now would dwarf Brunei's Great Eastern (launched in 1860); the Atlantic can be crossed in only four days. But in whatever form, the ever-evolving descendants of the original visions of Denis Papin and Robert Fulton continue to travel the seas in vast numbers.