Date: 1855
Having served in the royal navy, and being in London in 1815, an application was made to him to navigate a steamer from the Clyde to the Thames — an enterprise in steaming far beyond anything that had been up to that time attempted.  There had been launched at Glasgow, two years before, a small steamer of seventy tons burthen, called the ' Argyle,' with seventy-nine feet keel, sixteen feet beam, engines of fourteen horse-power, paddle-wheels of nine feet diameter, two cabins, a funnel that served also as a mast, and a projecting gallery upon which the cabin-windows looked out — altogether a vessel of very superior build for those days.  After running for more than a year on the Clyde, the 'Argyle' was purchased by a London com pany to ply on the Margate route ; and it was to bring this steamer from Glasgow to London that Dodd's services were required.