Chapter III
Robert Fulton's Early Life
ROBERT FULTON, artist, engineer, mechanic, inventor, prophet, and statesman,
was a genius of the first magnitude. His later fame is, as in so many such
cases, based rather upon what became most familiar in his career than upon
the real capacity and talent of the man. His achievements in the introduction
of steam-navigation were by no means the best or highest measures of his
genius. He was an inventor, and a great one; but he did not invent the steamboat,
or, so far as is known, any part of it. He was a talented artist, but his
renown does not in the least rest on his fame on that score; he was a civil
engineer, and accomplished in that branch of the constructive profession,
but the fact is to-day almost unknown even to members of his craft; he was
an eminent mechanic, but the "Clermont"- his first steamboat in
America - did not illustrate his genius in that direction.
The grand achievement of Fulton was the direction of an enterprise which
resulted in the production by Watt and his partners in Great Britain, and
by Brown in New York, of a steamboat that could give commercial returns
in its actual daily operation, and the institution of a "line"
of boats between New York and Albany, the success of which insured the introduction
and continued operation of steam-vessels, with all the marvelous consequences
of that great event. He was a prophet, inasmuch as he foresaw the outcome
of this grand revolution, in which he was so active a participant and agent;
and he was a statesman, in that he weighed justly and fully the enormous
consequences of the introduction of steam-navigation as an element of national
greatness; but he has been recognized neither as prophet nor as statesman,
both of which he was, but as the inventor of the steamboat, - which he was
not.
Fulton was born at Little Britain, Lancaster County, Penn., in 1765. He
was of Irish descent, his father having come from Kilkenny when quite a
young man The Fultons had, although living in the then wilderness, distinguished
families for their neighbours. The fainily of Benjamin West lived in the
adjacent county; and the home of William Henry, close by, was a rendezvous
for many interesting and stimulating acquaintances and a most enjoyable
society. The Fulton farm was sold to Mr. Swift in 1766, and the family removed
to the city of Lancaster, in which place the father died in 1768, leaving
his widow with five children to be cared for, and very little property with
which to provide for them. Robert was sent to school in 1773, and acquired
the rudiments of a good English education, having, however, learned to read,
to write, and to "cipher" already at home. He was not a brilliant
scholar, but made fair progress, though he was vastly more interested, as
are all bright boys of that age, in what was going on in the workshops of
the mechanics with whom he was acquainted. On one occasion, his mother having
suggested to his teacher that the boy was not giving as close attention
to his books as was desirable, the honest pedagogue replied that he had
done his best, but that Robert had asserted that "his head was so full
of original ideas that there was no room for the storage of the contents
of dusty books." The boy was then ten years old.
Even at this early age he exhibited clearly the bent of his genius by the
manufacture of his own lead-pencils, - hammering out the lead from bits
of sheet metal that came in his way, and made pencils which were considered
hardly inferior to any graphite pencils of that time. This was two hundred
years after their invention; but the Fabers had been making graphite pencils
a dozen years, and the Conte process, now standard, was only invented twenty
years later. It may be very possible that Fulton made a good pencil for
his time. In 1778, the citizens having been forbidden by the town council
to illuminate in honour of Independence Day because of the scarcity of candles,
Robert invented a sky-rocket, and, as he said, proposed to illuminate the
heavens instead of the streets. When it was suggested to him by a friend
that this was impossible, he replied, "No, sir; there is nothing impossible."
Fulton while still a child became an expert gun-smith, and supplied to the
makers in his town drawings for the whole, - stock, locks, barrels, and
all, and made computations of proportions and pefformance that were verified
on the shooting-range. He was successful, both as designer of the main features
of the gun and in his decorative work, and the makers were always glad to
secure his sketches, and to profit by his computations. He designed an air-
gun in 1779, at the age of fourteen, but with what success is not known.
It was at about this time that his first thought of new methods of boat-propulsion
seem to have come to him. Finding the labour of "poling" a flat-bottomed
boat, on the Occasion of making a fishing excursion, somewhat arduous, he
made a model of a boat to be impelled by paddle-wheels. In 1779, he tried
his scheme on the same old fishing-boat which had so severely taxed his
powers, and found it so satisfactory that he and his comrade used it a long
time on their fishing excursions on the Conestoga, about Rockford, the residence
of his comrade.
The boy's childhood and youth included the preliminaries to the War of the
Revolution and its final successful accomplishment, and the young engineer
and artist was one of the most earnest of rebels, and an honest foe of the
Tories, many of whom were settled in his neighbourhood, where were quartered,
for a long time, a body of the Hessian troops sent over by the British government.
These events naturally turned the thoughts of the young inventor to warlike
devices and military and naval inventions; and his whole later career was,
not improbably, influenced greatly, if not absolutely controlled, by the
bent thus given his fertile brain and active mind.
Meantime the genius of painting grew strong within him; and the development
of that natural talent had become so unusual and so promising that, at the
age of seventeen, Fulton thought it wise to seek a wider field for the employment
and application of his time and labour. He went to Philadelphia in 1782,
and there remained four years, returning to Lancaster on his twenty-first
birthday. He supported himself in the interval with his pencil, and proved
himself capable of doing good work in making drawings of machinery, as well
as in painting landscapes. He was not only able to care for himself, but
was so successful that he brought back to his mother the means of purchase
of a small farm in Washington County, Penn., where he settled his mother
and her family, giving her a deed of the property. Meantime, also, he had
made the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin, - then about to be sent to the
Court of France, - and of other distinguished citizens of that metropolis,
and had thus, by a succession of happy accidents, laid the foundation of
his later fortunes.
But close confinement and intense application had enfeebled his strength,
and his health began to fail, his lungs showing symptoms of such weakness
that it was considered unsafe to neglect them, and his friends insisted
upon his going abroad for travel, and in search of diversion, recreation,
and health. His old friend, Benjamin West, had already settled in London,
and had there become famous; and it was thought that he and other acquaintances
of the promising young artist would be able to serve him in many ways, and
help him secure advantageous positions and employment. He first went for
a time to the Warm Springs, Virginia, and passing safely through an illness
involving the lungs in a state of serious inflammation, and a period in
which incipient hemorrhages were among the more unpromising symptoms, he
finally became well enough to undertake the voyage, and sailed for England
some time in 1786.
We have few authentic accounts of Fulton's life in the mother country. He
spent some time in London with his friends, including Benjamin West, who
received him most kindly, and continued an earnest and helpliil friend during
the remainder of his life. He was employed mainly in painting, but did not
lose his interest in mechanics and scientific pursuits. He became acquainted
with the Duke of Bridgewater, and with Lord Stanhope, and this friendship
led to many schemes for the promotion of the useful arts through the application
of Fulton's and other's inventions. Fulton's own success was great; but
this did not prevent his admiring, as an artist only could, the work of
his master, West. He endeavoured to secure the whole series of West's paintings
for the city of Philadelphia, and entered into correspondence with his friends
at home, with this object in view, and with the consent of the great painter,
who was ready to dispose of the collection at what was regarded as a very
moderate price, - much less than he received for his larger and most esteemed
single paintings a little later. But Fulton was unable to raise the funds
at home, and the opportunity was lost.
Fulton went across the Channel and took up his residence in Paris in the
year 1797, probably led to do so in the expectation that he might there
find an opportunity to bring out some of the numerous inventions which were
teeming in his uneasy brain. He was most hospitably received by the American
minister, Mr. Barlow, and his wife; and immediately upon the opening of
their house and their establishment there, they invited Fulton to join them,
greatly to his satisfaction. He accepted the kind proposal, and lived in
their family seven years, practising his profession, as artist, learning
the European languages, and studying the natural sciences, while at times
endeavourmg to find ways of putting into practical operation his schemes
for improvement of various kinds of machinery.
During the few years of his residence in England, Fulton's mind had been
as active in the devising of new schemes and inventions as during his boyhood
and youth at home. As early as 1793, according to Colden, his biographer,
he had conceived the idea of applying the engine of Watt to the propulsion
of steam-vessels, and his manuscripts of that time contain confident assertions
of its practicability. He patented, in 1794, a cdntrivance which he calls
a "double inclined plane" for use in transportation; and while
living in Birmingham, at that time or a little later, contrived various
new machines and apparatus of engineering. The manuscripts containing accounts
of these plans was lost, some years later, in 1804, when shipped from Paris
to the United States; the vessel in which they were sent was wrecked, and
the papers were ruined by submersion before they could be rescued. In the
year 1794, also, which seems to have been a period of very great activity
with him, he patented a marble-sawing machine, for which he afterward received
the medal of the Society for the Promotion of the Arts, and the thanks of
the society as well. His next invention seems to have been a machine for
spinning flax; another was a rope-making machine; and still another a mechanical
dredger or power-shovel,- the latter coming into use, and remaining for
a long time a common machine in England.
Fulton had by this time given up his portrait painting, and thenceforward
it was only the amusement of his hours of leisure or of relaxation from
his labours as a civil engineer; the formal announcement of which fact was
made about 1795, at which date he published a Treatise on Canal Navigation.
He described a number of very ingenious devices in improvement of the then
common methods and apparatus of locks and other accessories of the canal;
In making the illustrations, he illustrated as well his own skill in drawing,
and his own power of designing details of his machinery. Copies of his work
were sent to the governor of the State of Pennsylvania and to General Washington,
whose reply expressed much interest in the subject, and confidence in the
final adoption of some such system of general inter-communication in the
United States. His letter to the governor of his native State, published
in his book, exhibits a thoroughly statesmanlike quality of mind, and broad
as well as liberal views.
Fulton's visit to France was made largely with the hope of securing his
patents on these canal improvements, and of introducing his inventions in
that country. He wrote one of his political essays in the form of a letter
to Lord Stanhope, in 1798, in which he endeavoured to show the importance
of public improvements, of domestic manufactures and trade, and of simple
and light taxation. His idea was, as he said at the time, to secure the
publication of these views, not only for the advantage of the people of
Great Britain, but with the hope that they might precede him on his return
to his own country, and enable him to effectively urge similar views upon
the public men and legislators in America, and to develop a public sentiment
in favour of what he considered essential and correct views of general economics.
Fulton was unquestionably not only thinking much on the economical problems
of his time, and of general statecraft, but he was as undeniably exhibiting
the grasp of the statesman upon all such great questions. He wrote a letter
"to the Friends of Mankind," especially addressed to the French
legislature, in which he treated such topics with ingenuity, intelligence,
and force. It was at a time when the whole world was agitated by the events
which preceded the French Revolution, and when the French themselves were
seeking, however blindly and mistakenly, with all earnestness and good intent,
the way to better methods of government and of national life. They had already
inaugurated that grand system of public education, of technical and trade-education,
which in their hands, and, especially in later years, in those of the Germans,
has grown so marvellously, and with such splendid results, during the intervening
century, now just ending. Fulton reinforces the lesson already learned,
and insists upon the essential necessity of such general and practical education,
of promoting interior improvements, and all those vital works upon which
the prosperity of a country depends so directly. He says, "The whole
interior arrangements of governments should be to promote and diffuse knowledge
and industry; their whole exterior negotiations to establish a social intercourse
with each other, and to give free circulation to the whole produce of virtuous
industry."' He was a pronounced and ardent free-trader; and his most
warlike acts, his greatest inventions in the military and the naval arts,
were intended to promote the cause of free-trade by driving from the ocean
the fleets of all nations seeking to control the high seas for their own
exclusive purposes, in order that he might thus aid in securing that safety
against aggression which is the essential prerequisite of universal freedom
of exchanges. "He considers what he calls the war system of the old
world as the cause of the misery of the greatest portion of its inhabitants,
and this leads him to a curious investigation of its effects." His
"Thoughts on Free Trade" follow the same line of study. In this
little tract, still unpublished, he developed his ideas at some length,
seeking to show that foreign possessions and taxes on imports are necessarily
injurious to nations. It is dated 1797; but there is no evidence that it
was ever published, or ever presented to the French government in any form.
He was at this time endeavouring to impress his views upon Carnot, - the
greatest statesman of his time, then the representa. tive, in a family of
men of genius, of the better ideas of the revolutionary period, - and to
obtain through him some recognition of what he thought right principles
of administration, and which were, in his view, essential to the promotion
of the best interests of the people. When Carnot was compelled to leave
Paris, at the inauguration of the new government, Fulton laid his plans
before the Directory; but they do not appear to have influenced that body,
and seem to have remained unnoticed.
Fulton's conclusion was - "After this I was convinced that society
must pass through ages of progressive improvement before the freedom of
the seas could be established by an agreement of nations that it was for
the true interest of the whole. I saw that the growing wealth and commerce
of the United States, and their increasing population, would compel them
to look for a protection by sea, and perhaps drive them to the necessity
of resorting to European measures by establishing a navy. Seeing this, I
turned my whole attention to finding out means of destroying such engines
of oppression by some method which would put it out of the power of any
nation to maintain such a system, and would compel every government to adopt
the simple principles of education, industry, and a free circulation of
its produce." Thus it was the statesman in the portrait-painter that
led him to apply his great genius as an inventor and as a mechanic to the
production of new means of protecting the people, their industries, their
lives, their liberties, through the novel applications of the useful arts,
and guiding their genius in invention and construction, first to defence,
then to better methods of production and more efficient-industry. Fulton
was statesman, as - well as artist, mechanic, engineer, economist, inventor.