Fulton's Steamboat Wood Print

Boat Art

Historical Art

History Art

American History Art

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It was the English who invented the first steam engine and the first steam railroad but it was an American, Robert Fulton, who, in 1807, formally launched the steamboat era. Fulton was not the inventor, however, of the steamboat: that distinction belongs to poor John Fitch, a Connecticut Yankee and a veteran of the Continental Army who, as early as 1787, built and launched a forty-five-foot steamboat. But, alas, nothing came of that brave experiment. Fitch could get no financing for his invention and in the end gave up in despair and fled to the wilds of Kentucky where he died. Ten years later, the New York lawyer and diplomat, Robert Livingston, anticipating the role that steamboats might play in a vast nation whose only effective transportation was by water, persuaded his young friend Robert Fulton, with whose artistic and inventive talents he was familiar, to try his hand at building a steamboat. Fulton boasted a natural talent for engineering. He eagerly embraced Livingston's propo...