>From that day forward, scarcely a week passed without some new
development in the long and difficult struggle to improve the
means of navigation
>From that day forward, scarcely a week passed without some new
development in the long and difficult struggle to improve the
means of navigation. Among the scores of men who engaged in this
engrossing but discouraging work, there is one whom the world is
coming to honor more highly than in previous years–John Fitch,
of Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. As early as August,
1785, Fitch launched on a rivulet in Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
a boat propelled by an engine which moved an endless chain to
which little paddles were attached. The next year, Fitch”s second
boat, operated by twelve paddles, six on a side–an arrangement
suggesting the ’side-wheeler’ of the future–successfully plied
the Delaware off ‘Conjuror”s Point,’ as the scene of Fitch”s
labors was dubbed in whimsical amusement and derision. In 1787
Rumsey, encouraged by Franklin, fashioned a boat propelled by a
stream of water taken in at the prow and ejected at the stern. In
1788 Fitch”s third boat traversed the distance from Philadelphia
to Burlington on numerous occasions and ran as a regular packet
in 1790, covering over a thousand miles. In this model Fitch
shifted the paddles from the sides to the rear, thus anticipating
in principle the modern stern-wheeler.
