Star.
London, England, 1827-09-07 00:00:00

MEMOIR

REGARDING SYMINOTON AND BELL'S PRETENSIONS TO

MIRED THE ORIGINAL INVENTORS
OW STEAM NAVIGATION;

Being an Appendix to a Niirrative on the Introduction and Prac-
tice of &eam Narigatiqp, ate. published in the Philosophical
Journal for July 111113. By P. Miner, Esq.

fall= 21011111ITROM YEW PHILOSOPHSCAL JOURNAL, ma ACICA. num
Having, in justice to the memory of my father, the
late Mr. Miller of Dalswinton, given a short account of
his claim to the adaptation of steam to navigation,
which appeared in the Edinburgh Philosophical Jour-
nal in July 1825, I now find myself, in consequence of
the continued and unwarrantable pretensions of others,
reluctantly compelled to obtrude again on the public
attention, in order to set these pretensions at rest. In
my former statement I have proved, that, on the re-
commendation cf Mr. Taylor, the tutor in my father's
family, from whose advice alone my father at any time
received the smallest assistance on this important sub-
Wt, he sent for William Symington, then employed at
Wanlockhead mines, in spring 1788, to superintend the
construction of a small steam-engine to be used in the
experiments he was then carrying on at Dalswinton,
for propelling vessels with wheels. In October follow-
ing, the engine and machinery were completed, and put
on board a pleasure-boat on the lake at Dalswinton,
and completely answered the expectations of my father,
and many other persons who had opportunities of see-
ing the experiments. So much was this the case, that,
in 1789, my father resolved to extend the experiments;
and, in June that year, sent Symington to Carron, with
a letter to the Manager of the Canon Company, in or-
der to get a steam-engine constructed for a double ves-
sel, which had been built for him •at Leith some years
before, for the purpose of ascertaining the power of
wheels in propelling ships against wind and tide. This
engine having been accordingly placed .on board the
vessel at Carron, in December of that year, an ex-
periment of its effect was made on the Forth
and Clyde Canal. Like that at Dalswinton, it com-
pletely satisfied my father of the practicability of his
scheme, but the vessel having been too slight for the
weight of the engine to attempt a voyage at sea, the ap-
paratus was unshipped and laid up in the storehouse of
the Carrots Company. Here, as noticed in my former
statement, my father's experiments stopt. Symington;
who had been employed under him, being thereafter en-
gaged for a considerable period in the construction of
Wanlockhead minei, was again, trier the lapse of
twelve years, employed by the late Lord Dundas, the
chairman of the Forth and Clyde Canal Company, to
superintend a series of experiments his Lordship was
then setting on foot, for dragging vessels along the ca•
nal, on my father's plan, by steam boats is place of
horses. In 1803, he seems to have completed a steam
boat or tug called the "Charlotte Dundas," which took
in tow two vessels of seventy tons burden each, and
dragged them along the summit reach of the canal far
nineteen and a half miles in six hours against a strong
wind a-head. In 1801, Symington, whom my father
always considered in the same light as he did every
other labourer or tradesmen he employed about his
different vessels, took out letters patent for the in-
vention—a proceeding of which my lather was not
aware till a considerable time afterwards, and
which excited his warmest indignation. Such being
Symington's pretensions, he comes forward in the
year 1824, long after steam-vessels had been erected by
others, and successfully u.rd upon the river Clyde, and
claims from the Glasgow steamboat owners a remu-
neration for the invasion of his patent right. " Being
unable," as he says in his memorial, " to extort any
thing from them by the effects of law," he resolved to
put his great confidence for relief in the munificence of