The steamboat is so pretty, why don’t you run it? And while you’re at it , take me for a ride?
Most people who went for a ride with us spent a lot of time waiting for us to go…
Bill Hunley gave us a great design for the hull, and it really does look like it should be on the water, chugging around. But even launching the boat is a major undertaking, and the engine is too unreliable, too under-powered, and too exhausting to run for fun. Since we couldn’t change it into something else, after 20 years we had to stop. We were tired!
We are trying to come up with a Rumsey steamboat that’s more fun, using his rotary engine design. He never built it, so we have more flexibility with the details of this project.
Why do we hear about Robert Fulton, but not James Rumsey?
Fulton was successful with his steamboat, Rumsey was not. It wasn’t just because Fulton’s boat was better; with a bit of development Rumsey’s would have worked well enough, and his was not the only one. There were at least eight steamboats proposed before Fulton’s 1807 debut. Some were built, a couple worked quite well , and none were a financial success. Fulton could indeed import a state-of-the-art Boulton & Watt engine from England for his boat, which saved him much time and trouble. But his most significant advantages over the previous inventors were not technological; he was well-connected politically and socially, had a good amount of his own money and had the strong financial backing of the richest man in New York, Robert Livingston. He also chose to set up operations on the Hudson, a very good river on which to run a passenger boat, where sheer banks and hilly terrain hindered competition from coaches.
Think of Fulton as being a little like Henry Ford; Ford really brought the automobile into the world as a standard form of transportation, Fulton did the same for the steamboat.
Did Fulton ever meet Rumsey?
They were both in England around the same time, and shared some acquaintances, so Fulton could have heard news about Rumsey’s steamboat. Of course, when Fulton came back to the US, he was able to look at all previous steamboat patents, and Fulton was never very hesitant to take other people’s ideas when needed. But Fulton’s steamboat showed little if any influence from Rumsey’s, and there’s likely no connection.
Was Rumsey’s the first steamboat?
There are so many words that have been wasted over this seemingly simple sentence! Steamboat history has been quite partisan in the past. Rumsey had a rival, John Fitch. Fitch has had fans who hailed him as a downtrodden hero and jeered Rumsey as a villain, and Rumsey fans ( especially , it must be admitted , the Rumseian Society) have often returned the favor. The affair is complex, but it does not really fit the popular plot of hero vs. villain. Telling it could fill a book: we’ll limit it to two careful paragraphs, here.
Fitch demonstrated his steamboat in Philadelphia, in August of 1787. Rumsey’s first public demonstration was the following December 3rd, in Shepherdstown. Rumsey advocates have often claimed he had a working steamboat earlier than this , by interpreting his 1786 river trials in a very hopeful way. Rumsey also cast those trials in a somewhat hopeful light, but he himself never claimed his steamboat actually worked before Dec.3rd ( his pamphlet detailing those claims even included affadavits from witnesses who said the steamboat machinery was “incomplete” on Dec. 3rd). So, if you wish to think of it as a race and want to know who crossed the finish line first, Rumsey himself would have said, John Fitch.
Rumsey would have said, however, that it wasn’t all about a race. Fitch had obtained broad monopoly patents from several states that gave him rights to any other steamboat, once he had a working steamboat of his own . A monopoly offered investors a safer bet, and it was not unheard of for a government to grant one to boost a project: but usually it was for starting something new. Rumsey’s claim was that since he’d started building before Fitch, and because his design was completely his own and unlike Fitch’s , giving Fitch the rights to it, just because Fitch had built his own boat, was unfair. But though George Washington had told Fitch of Rumsey quite early on, in the fall of 1785 ( and had told Rumsey of Fitch, as well), Fitch claimed Rumsey was a spoiler, who labored in secret and emerged late to upset Fitch’s project just when he was about to reap the monopoly he deserved- and to which some states had already agreed. Because Rumsey valued his designs more than his own children, and Fitch saw no need to concede much, arbitration efforts by Philadelphia businessmen to create a joint venture failed. A few years later a patent system was created for the entire ( and recently formed) United States . New and inexperienced, the patent commission awarded both inventors ill-defined design patents that clarified little about their rights , and both inventors felt they had been left with no patent protection. Rumsey had gone overseas to England early in the dispute; the patent decision contributed to his decision to stay there, where he died four years later. After being denied both his monopoly and a real patent, Fitch abandoned his work in Philadelphia, and eventually died , destitute, in Kentucky about five years after Rumsey. Historian Brooke Hindle has said the botched patent ruling was instrumental in halting steamboat development in the US for the next twenty years.
What ever happened to Rumsey’s steamboat, after 1787?
After two demonstrations in public in December, Rumsey pulled the machinery off the boat and in March of 1788 sent it to Philadelphia, to begin his dispute with Fitch. Fitch visited Shepherdstown in May of 1789, and found the hull of the boat upside down in a pond, abandoned. The boat engine almost certainly stayed with the Rumseian Society in Philadelphia, but very likely sometime after Rumsey’s death in December of 1792, it was disposed of, likely sold for scrap…though some smaller pieces might have been kept as souvenirs. Of these, the sole possible survivor is a length of machine chain, quite well made, now at the Smithsonian. It’s provenance is unknown; it simply has a tag reading “chain from Rumsey’s steamboat”. It has roman numerals on it, to keep track of how much it has been shortened or lengthened. Our best guess is that it was chain from the working beam, either from the steam cylinder or to the air pump. There was also a large piece of an iron pot, supposedly from the pot that Rumsey used for his first boiler in 1785. This was in Shepherdstown for a number of years in the 19th century. It finally went to the Franklin Institute, where it has since disappeared without a trace.
Did Rumsey build another steamboat?
Yes, in England. It was called The Columbian Maid, another jet boat. We don’t know too much about it, but if it had the engine pump shown in Rumsey’s 1790 patent, it would have been complicated and difficult to make, and Rumsey died in December of 1792, before it could be finished. The Gentleman’s Magazine reported that it ran on the Thames the following February, and made four knots. But nothing more is known of it.
Possibly the engine for the Columbian Maid. Rather than having a working beam operating all the pumps of a steam engine, Rumsey made them nest within each other, as hollow pistons. Very compact and light, but difficult to build and still not thermally efficient
