James Rumsey

James Rumsey (1743-1792) was an American mechanical engineer chiefly known for exhibiting a boat propelled by machinery in 1787 on the Potomac River at Shepherdstown, now West Virginia, before a crowd of local notables, including Horatio Gates. A pump driven by steam power ejected a stream of water from the stern of the boat and thereby propelled the boat forwards.

Little is known about Rumsey until he was living in Bath, Virginia, (now Berkeley Springs, West Virginia) in 1782. He likely had moved to the area with his family some years before the American Revolution, from Calvert County, Maryland, where he had helped to run the family water mill at Bohemia Manor [Ella Mae Turner, James Rumsey, Steamboat Pioneer, 1930] . In Bath, he built houses, became a partner in a mercantile business, and helped to run a boarding house and tavern called the "Sign of the Liberty Pole and Flag." In September 1784, when George Washington was staying at Rumsey's inn, he contracted with Rumsey to build a house and stable on property he owned at Bath.

During this visit, Rumsey showed Washington a working model of a mechanical boat which he had designed. It had a bow-mounted paddlewheel that worked poles to pull the boat upstream. Washington had been making plans for making the Potomac river navigable since before the Revolution, and a company was soon to be formed for the purpose. Rumsey's pole-boat, which promised to be able to ascend the river's chutes and swift currents, must have seemed a godsend to Washington, who wrote a certificate of commendation for Rumsey and likely let him know of the river project. Armed with the certificate, Rumsey obtained a patent from the Virginia legislature for "the use of mechanical boats of his design", and also gained an investor. In July 1785, he was recommended by Washington and appointed the superintendent of the newly formed Patowmack Company. Thus the work on the river would be overseen by the man designing the riverboat to run on it. For a year, Rumsey oversaw work on the Potomac River at present-day Great Falls, while his assistant and brother-in-law Joseph Barnes did much of the building of the boat around Shpeherdstown.

Rumsey had quickly concluded that the pole-boat design was too limited [Rumsey to George Washington, April, 1785] and decided to also incorporate steam propulsion into his design. While making his boat much more useful, it also made the building of it far more complex and expensive. Likewise, it soon was obvious that the Patowmack Company had a much greater task than any of its members had foreseen. It required great quantities of brute labor and difficult blasting, and Rumsey found himself directing a large and restive gang of about a hundred workmen, including leased slaves and bondsmen, encamped in a remote area, without adequate supplies. After a year Rumsey said he would resign if not given an increase in pay. Instead of an offer, his resignation was accepted, and his assistant, Richardson Stewart, was given his job. Other aspects of the matter are open to debate; Stewart may or may not have worked against Rumsey to gain his job; Rumsey thought he had, the Company ( and Washington) thought Rumsey's allegations unfounded. Still, according to Company minutes, Stewart was fired soon afterwards, for "sundry charges of a serious nature" [quoted in Andrea Sutcliffe, "Steam", Palgrave MacMillan, 2004]

Work on a hull had begun in 1785 in Bath by Joseph Barnes. The boat was brought that fall to Shepherdstown. Valve castings, cylinders, and other pieces which had been made in Baltimore and Frederick were installed that December, and the boat was taken downriver to Shenandoah Falls for a test. However, bad weather postponed testing until the following spring. When Rumsey finally tested the boat, it proved very unsatisfactory. The pole-boat mechanism caused the boat to yaw in the current, which disabled the paddlewheel and stopped the boat. In the steam pump, the engine consumed too much steam; the boiler was inadequate. It may be that, having left the Patowmack Company, Rumsey was loath to work on a propulsion system limited to be used on rivers. Or, lacking money from the Patowmack Company, he wished to concentrate his efforts on the more promising steam pump, but at some point in 1786, work on the pole-boat mechanism was abandoned. For a better boiler, he tried a coil of forged iron pipe, which proved to be not only much more efficient but much smaller and lighter. With a functioning steam engine, another problem revealed itself. The single cylinder pump would draw several gallons of water of water from beneath the boat, send it down a copper pipe to the stern. Because gallons of water were being drawn into the pump at the same time as water was still flowing from it to the stern, the pump was working against itself; several strong strokes and it bound up. This required replacing the copper pipe with a square wooden trunk, that had flapper valves in the bottom to allow water in from the river, to relieve the negative pressure at the pump. On December 3, 1787, the boat finally made a very successful public demonstration on the Potomac at Shepherdstown.

The demonstration occurred 20 years before Robert Fulton constructed and demonstrated the "Clermont". The idea of jet propulsion was not Rumsey's alone. Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) originated the idea of propelling watercraft in that way. In the summer of 1785, while Rumsey and his assistant Joseph Barnes were in the process of assembling his boat, Benjamin Franklin, onboard a ship from France, also wrote of propelling a boat by water jet [Maritime Observations, 1785] . This coincidence has sometimes led people to believe Rumsey got the idea from Franklin, and indeed if Franklin had wanted to make such a claim it likely would have been accepted, but he did not, and would become one of Rumsey's supporters [Franklin would be one his inve4stors "Proposals for forming a Company" Philadelphia,1788, Rumseian Society papers, American Philosophical Society archive ] .

John Fitch had demonstrated his steamboat in Philadelphia the previous August. Although there was yet no overall patent system in the confederated States, he had patents from some states that gave him exclusive rights to his and any other steamboat. Rumsey was more protective of his designs than his children, and though he was even more plagued by money problems, he sent the boat machinery to Philadelphia in march of 1788, and quickly followed, armed with affidavits from those who'd seen his steamboat or been involved with its creation. There was a pamphlet war with John Fitch. Some Philadelphia businessmen attempted to make a joint effort between them; but after years of his own travails and poverty, Fitch was not in a mood to compromise. When he even said he would apply for a patent in England for Rumsey's water-tube boiler, Rumsey and others formed the Rumseian Society [Proposals for forming a Company, op. cit.] They decided he should go to England to secure patents for his inventions and seek further financial backing.

After moving to England in 1788, Rumsey was able to take out four patents before his death there in 1792. While some of these relate to steamboats (like his water-tube boiler design, which made the steam engine much smaller and more efficient) most are concerned with hydrostatics and water power. His 1791 Patent has all the pumps, motors and hydraulic cylinders of fluid power engineering. By September of 1792 he had arrived at a true water turbine, almost 40 years before it would be next invented in France.He spent four years there, and on December 20, 1792, on the eve of the demonstration of his new steamboat, the Columbia Maid, he had just finished delivering a lecture to the Society of Mechanic Arts. Suddenly he was stricken with a severe pain in his head and died the next morning. At the time, his death was attributed to overstraining his brain. He was buried there in London at Saint Margaret's Church.

In 1906 a second Rumseyan Society was formed in Shepherdstown and though its efforts, a monument to Rumsey was constructed in a park overlooking the Potomac. Another Rumseian Society was formed in Shepherdstown in the 1980's in order to construct a replica of the successful Rumsey steamboat and celebrate the boat's bicentennial in 1787. Construction of the boat took place in the machine and blacksmith shop in the back of O'Hurley's Store. The replica is currently housed in a small building behind the Entler Hotel. For a time, there was an annual regatta Shepherdstown in early October in honor of Rumsey. In addition, the bridge across the Potomac to Maryland is name in honor of Rumsey, as is the James Rumsey Technical Institute in Hedgesville, WV.

References

Source for date of Rumsey successful trial: "A Plan Wherein the Power of Steam is Fully Shewn"by James Rumsey, Jan 2, 1788, Rare Book Room, Library of Congress.

Source for name of group formed by Franklin to support Rumsey: letter from James Rumsey to his brother-in-law Charles Morrow on May 14, 1788, as he was preparing to leave for England sent by the Society.

Source for Franklin's ideas on jet propulsion can be found in his Maritime Observations, 1785.

Source for Rumsey's English inventions; British Patent Numbers (dates): #1673 (1788); #1738 (1790); #1825 (1791); #1903 (1792), The British Library.

For his turbine: Joseph Barnes to John Vaughn, Sept. 21, 1792; Joseph Barnes: Essay on Watermills, 1793 Rumseian Society papers, American Philosophical Society archives, Philadelphia, PA.

External links

* [http://www.lib.shepherdstown.wv.us/sin/rumsey.html James Rumsey 1743-1792]