Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1897-03-13
BEFORE FULTON.
Story of Early transportation From Car
1yle's "reminiscences.

IyIe's "reminiscences.
Robej. Fulton is famed in history
as the inventor of steamboats,. But
did the idea of applying steam tt
water transportation originate with
him! Apropos of this question III
interesting little story is recorded
in Carlyle's "reminiscences" II
1917 or thcrcabout Carlyle was d
teacher of mathematics in an acad
envy conducted by his famous friend,
Edward Irving, at Kirkcaldy. Dur.
ing vacation he made a walking
tour with Irving, lone Piers and
James Brown to the Trosachs, and
home by Loeb Lomond, Greenuck,
Glasgow, etc.
"At Greenock," he says, II saw
steamers Oh the water, queer little
dumpy things with Il red sail to
each, and legible names, Defiance
and such like, hobbling about here
and there and making continual
passages to Glasgow as their bust.
ness. Not till about two years later
Oslo, il l mistake not) did Forth
see steamer. Forth S first was far
bigger than the Greenock ones and
called itself the Tug, being intend
ed for towing ships in those narrow
waters, as l have often seen it do.
ing. 1t had no rival OF congo
ner till Gn 1920 Leith, spulred on
by one Balm, Il kind of scientific half
pay master, r. N, got up large,
finely appointed steamer, or pair of
steamers, for London, which, so
successful were they, all ports then
set to initiating.
London alone still held back for
a good few years. London was not
ably shy of the steamship, great
as are its doings now in that line.
An old friend of mine, tho late Mr.
Strachey, has told me that in his
schooldays he at one time-early in
the nineties, l should guess; say
1793-used to see in crossing West
minister bridge Il little model steam
ship padding to and fro between
him and Blackfria1s bridge, with
steam funnel, paddle wheels and
the other outfit, exhibiting and rec
ommending itself to London and
whatever scientific OF other spirit
OF marine adventure London might
have. London was entirely dead to
the phenomenon, WHICH had tV duck
under and dive across the Atlantic
before London saw it again, when
a new generation had risen.
"Tho real inventor of steamships
i have learned credibly elsewhere
the maker and proprietor of that
fruitless model on the Thames-wasI
Mr.. Miller, laird of Dalwinston in
Dumfriesshire poet Burns land
lord), who spent his life and his e's-
tate in that adventure and IS not
now to be head of in those parts,
having had to sell Dalwinston and
die quasi bankrupt-and, | should
think, broken hearted 49, and after
that completing his painful inven~
ton and finding London and man
kind dead to it.
"Miller's assistant and work hand
for many years was John Bell, a
joiner in the neighboring village of
Thornhill. Miller being ruined, Bell
was out of work and connection,
emigrated to New York, and there,
speaking much of his old master
and glorious, UNDECIDED invention
we'll known to Bell in all it's out
lines or details-at length found one
Fulton to listen to him, and by Full
ton and Bell (about 1909 an actual
packet steamer was got launched,
and, lucratively plying on the Hud-
son river, became the miracle of
Yankeeland and gradually of all
lands.
"These, l believe, are essentially
the facts. Old Robert Mcqueen of
Strachey of the India
House and many other bits of good
testimony and lndication, once far
apart, coalescing ard corresponding
for me. And as, POSSIBLY enough,
the story is not now known in
whole to anybody but myself it
may go in here as IL depression apro-
pos of those brisk little Greenock
steamers which l first saw-and
still so wildly remember, little De.
tiance, saucily bounding about
with their red sails in the sun on
this, my tour with Irving"