tise steam navigation on a great scale as a commercially profitable act."

The earliest effort in steam navigation of which we have any proper record, belongs to the year 1788. The craft with which the experiment was made was a small double boat, with a paddle wheel in the centre, driven by a single-crank engine. The trial took place on the Dalswinton Loch, Dumfriesshire, and the tiny steam-ship attained a speed of five miles per hour. The suggestion from which this boat was constructed, and the steam engine and paddle wheel so applied, was that of a Mr. James Taylor, then residing as tutor in the family of Mr. Patrick Millar, banker, Edinburgh; and the mechanic to whom the fitting up of the vessel was entrusted, was Mr. Wm. Symington, a mining engineer; while Mr. Millar defrayed the expense of the experiment. The successful working of this toy-steamer (for such it really was) encouraged Mr. Millar to prosecute further experiments on a larger scale. He procured one of the boats then in use on the Forth and Clyde Canal, and had it fitted up with paddles, and with an engine constructed under the superintendence of Symington at the celebrated Carron Iron Works. This boat was tested as to its towing capabilities, and is alleged to have towed a heavy load on the canal at the rate of seven miles per hour. But although the canal boat thus converted into a steam vessel may be said to have proved navigation by steam to be practicable as an experiment, it did not prove it to be practicable for commercial purposes. The engine, although constructed after a new design by Symington, and with special reference to such an application of its power, was still, as in the first effort, a single and not a double-crank engine; and this proved a practical defect of considerable moment. The boat also-a canal boat, built for another object than that of being converted into a steam tug-was not the best adapted for the purpose, and added to the practical difficulties which seem to have deterred Mr. Millar from further experiments. Twelve years elapsed before the efforts thus abandoned were resumed, and before the theory of steam navigation became a practical reality, and was proved capable of a pecuniarily profitable development.

The efforts of Lord Dundas are the next which demand notice. His lordship had a considerable interest in the canal on which the experiments under Mr. Millar's patronage had

been conducted; and, encouraged by the comparative success of these experiments, he took Wm. Symington into his employment in 1801, and entrusted him with the construction of a steam vessel for service on the canal as a towing boat. Warned and instructed by the experience of former failures, or rather by the experience he had acquired of the practical defects which neutralised the success of former experiments, Symington was content on this occasion with no makeshifts. He had a boat and engine specially constructed for the purpose, the engine being "a doubleacting horizontal cranked engine;" and the result was what has been termed "the first practical steam-boat." A contemporary account of the trial of this vessel, which was named the "Charlotte Dundas," reads as follows:

"In the spring of the year 1802, a small party of gentlemen, among whom was Lord Dundas, the Hon. George Dundas, R.N., and Archibald Spiers, Esq., of Elderslie, met together at lock No. 20 on the Forth and Clyde Canal, to witness some experiments to be made by a small vessel which was to be propelled by means of a steam engine. This vessel had been constructed at the cost of Lord Dundas, of Kerse, and had been fitted with a steam engine designed and constructed by a young mechanician named Wm. Symington. The day was rough and boisterous, a violent March wind blew in direct opposition to the vessel's course, and many and grave were the doubts expressed as to the possibility of Mr. Symington's little vessel making head against the gale, when all other vessels quietly laid by windbound; but such was the confidence Mr. Symington had in his machinery, that not only could he make a passage to Glasgow in his own vessel, but, to the surprise of the onlookers, he attached two vessels of 70 tons burden to the stern of his own, and, all being ready, started his machinery. Away dashed the little steamer, tugging after her the two heavy barges, and in spite of a gale of wind dead ahead, and all sorts of unfavourable prognostications, she reached Port Dundas, Glasgow, in six hours from the time of starting, the distance being 19 miles." The speed thus attained by the "Charlotte Dundas" when she "dashed" away, with 70 tons in tow, was only a little more than three miles an hour; but when not towing, she attained a speed of six miles an hour. From the same contemporary record to which we are indebted for this account of the trial trip, I

may add "In the Charlotte Dundas" there was an engine with the steam acting on both sides of the piston (Watt's patented invention), working a connecting rod and crank (Pickard's invention), and the union of the crank to the axis (Millar's improved paddle-wheel)."

Obstacles of another kind now interposed to prevent the results thus achieved bringing their legitimate reward to the ingenious and enterprising pioneers in steam navigation. The directors of the canal became apprehensive that the wave occasioned by the action of the paddles would injure the banks, and they not only compelled Lord Dundas to give up his project of working the traffic on the canal by steam, but to abandon all further steam-boat experiments on the canal. The idea that steam navigation was practicable in the open sea, or the estuary of rivers, seems not yet to have been entertained; although we have the authority of Mr. David Napier, now of Worcester, late of London, and originally of Glasgow-who was on board the "Charlotte Dundas," which he calls an experimental steamer, in 1803-for saying that from this vessel, constructed by Wm. Symington, Henry Bell, of Glasgow, and Robert Fulton, of America, acquired their first ideas of steamers. But the scheme abandoned by Lord Dundas, in consequence of the opposition of the directors of the Forth and Clyde Canal, was taken up by the Duke of Bridgewater, "the father of inland navigation," and but for his untimely death in 1803, would no doubt have been prosecuted with the enterprise for which he was so celebrated, and on a scale which would have conclusively demonstrated either its success or its impracticability. He was not deterred by the apprehensions which influenced the "canny Scots" from ordering of Wm. Symington eight steamers similar to the "Charlotte Dundas," to be used on the Bridgewater canals. His death, and the different views of those by whom he was succeeded, prevented the execution of the order, and the name of Wm. Symington appears no more in the annals of steam navigation. But to this humble and worthy man, and clever mechanician, belongs the honour of having converted the steam-boat "from an awkward piece of experimental apparatus into a practically useful machine."

The river Seine, at Paris, was the theatre of the next experiments in steam navigation. Robert Fulton, the American engineer, had been for some time resident with

Mr. Livingstone, the American minister at Paris, and under his auspices experimented on the Seine with a steamboat constructed after Symington's design. The success of these experiments does not seem to have been very decided; but they were so far satisfactory that in 1805 Mr. Fulton and his patron procured in America a patent for steam navigation; and in the following year Fulton returned to his native country, and commenced building a steam-boat for use upon the river Hudson. This vessel was 133 feet long, 18 feet wide, and 7 deep, and was of 160 tons burden. It was launched in the spring of 1807, and was fitted up with paddles do feet in diameter, with floats 4 feet long, dipping 2 feet into the water. The vessel proved very successful, and soon began to ply regularly between New York and Albany. It was the first vessel that established the practicability of river steam navigation; and it was soon followed by others on the Hudson and Delaware, which were improved in construction by successive inventors, until in a few years a speed was attained of 13 miles an hour.

The Clyde, in Scotland, in proximity to which Symington's first successful experiments were made, became, in a few years after the launch of Fulton's steam-boat on the Hudson, the scene of Henry Bell's successful venture, the "Comet," which was the first introduction of commercial steam navigation into Europe. The "Comet" was launched in 1812. It was a much smaller vessel than the Hudson," being only 40 feet keel, 10 feet beam, and 25 tons burden; and it was fitted up with paddles propelled by an engine of only 3 horse power. The paddles of the "Comet" were very unlike the paddle wheels of the modern steam-ship. They were really "paddles"-the floats being scoops formed somewhat after the model of malt shovels and four were fitted on to each end of the shaft, to which the engine imparted a rotary motion. The first trial of the "Comet" realised a speed of 5 miles an hour, and Henry Bell placed his steam-boat on the Clyde as a regular trader between Glasgow and Helensburgh, then, as now, a thriving watering place at the mouth of the Gareloch, opposite Roseneath. An advertisement under date 5th August 1812, headed "The 'Comet' steam-boat for passengers only," and signed "Henry Bell," thus appeals to the patronage of the public in support of the new and expeditious mode of conveyance between Glasgow and Helensburgh :

"The subscriber having, at much expense, fitted up a handsome vessel to ply upon the river Clyde, between Glasgow, Greenock, and Helensburgh, to sail by the power of wind, air, and steam, he intends that the vessel shall leave the Broomielaw on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, about midday, or at such hour thereafter as may answer from the state of the tide. The elegance, comfort, safety, and speed of this vessel, require only to be proved to meet the approbation of the public; and the proprietor is determined to do everything in his power to merit public encouragement. The terms are for first cabin 4s., second 3s.; but beyond these rates nothing is to be allowed for servants or any other person employed about the vessel."

The "Comet" steamer, as thus fitted up with its revolving scoops, continued to trade with "passengers only" during the summer and autumn of 1812; but before the opening of the following season, the scoop paddles had given place to paddle wheels, similar to those which have ever since been used as propellers in paddle steam-ships.

Great was the change which the establishment of steamboats effected in the means of communication on the Clyde. The intelligent editor of "The Chronicles of St. Mungo" says:-"Prior to the year 1812, the vehicles of communication to the port of Greenock-which can now (1843) be reached per mare in the space of an hour and a-half-were a species of wherry-built nutshells, designated Fly-boats,' the justice of which appellation will be sufficiently apparent when it is considered that they generally completed the voyage in the short space of ten hours! The conveyances for goods and passengers to places more remote, were a more ambitious sort of machine, generally known by the_name of 'Packet,' which, with a fair wind, could reach the Isle of Bute in three days; but when adverse, thought it not wonderful' to plough the billowy main for as many weeks!"

The favourite watering-place of Rothesay, in the Isle of Bute, which even with a fair wind could only be reached by the "Packet" in three days from Glasgow, is now reachable by the "crack" steamers of the Clyde in three hours. But much inferior to the days of the "Packet" must have been the means of communication in 1691, when an act passed in the Convention of Royal Burghs at Edinburgh, for a commission to visit the burghs as to their trade, exempted Rothesay "on account of the difficulty of

access."