North River Steamboat

The 1907 replica of the North River Steamboat at anchor
Career (USA)
Name:	North River Steamboat
Owner:	Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton
Builder:	Charles Browne
In service:	August 17, 1807
Nickname:	Fulton's Folly
General characteristics
Length:	130 ft (40 m)
Beam:	16 ft (4.9 m)
Draught:	7 ft (2.1 m)
Installed power:	Steam and Wind
Propulsion:	Paddle wheel and Sail
Speed:	5 mph

The North River Steam Boat or Clermont was the first commercially successful steamship of the paddle steamer design. It operated on the Hudson River (at that time often known as the North River) between New York and Albany. She was neither the first steamboat built nor even the first to be operated in scheduled service, but was the start of the first long-lasting and financially successful steamboat business. The ship was constructed by the wealthy investor and politician Robert Livingston and inventor and entrepreneur Robert Fulton (1765–1815).

Background

Livingston had obtained from the New York legislature an exclusive right to steam navigation on the Hudson River. In 1803 while he was Minister to France, he and Fulton built a steamboat and operated it on the Seine. With this success he contracted with Fulton to take advantage of the Hudson River monopoly.

The ship was built at Charlie Browne's shipyard in New York and fitted with steam engines from Boulton and Watt, Birmingham, England. Her original dimensions were 130 feet (40 m) long x 16 feet (4.9 m) wide x 7 feet (2.1 m) deep. The ship had a paddle wheel on each side, but also masts and sails. Skeptics called her "Fulton's Folly".

First voyage

The inaugural run, helmed by Captain Andrew Brink,^[1] from New York to Albany, with invited guests, left on August 17, 1807 and arrived two days later, after 32 hours of travel time and a 20-hour stop at Livingston's estate Clermont Manor. The return was done in 30 hours with a one-hour stop at Clermont, an average speed of 5 miles per hour.^[2]

Fulton wrote to a friend, Joel Barlow:^[1]

I had a light breeze against me the whole way, both going and coming, and the voyage has been performed wholly by the power of the steam engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners, beating to the windward, and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. The morning I left New York, there were not perhaps thirty persons in the city who believed that the boat would ever move one mile an hour, or be of the least utility, and while we were putting off from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic remarks. This is the way in which ignorant men compliment what they call philosophers and projectors. Having employed much time, money and zeal in accomplishing this work, it gives me, as it will you, great pleasure to see it fully answer my expectations.

The 1870 book Great Fortunes quotes a former resident of Poughkeepsie who described the scene:^[3]

It was in the early autumn of the year 1807 that a knot of villagers was gathered on a high bluff just opposite Poughkeepsie, on the west bank of the Hudson, attracted by the appearance of a strange, dark-looking craft, which was slowly making its way up the river. Some imagined it to be a sea-monster, while others did not hesitate to express their belief that it was a sign of the approaching judgment. What seemed strange in the vessel was the substitution of lofty and straight black smoke-pipes, rising from the deck, instead of the gracefully tapered masts that commonly stood on the vessels navigating the stream, and, in place of the spars and rigging, the curious play of the working-beam and pistons, and the slow turning and splashing of the huge and naked paddle-wheels, met the astonished gaze. The dense clouds of smoke, as they rose wave upon wave, added still more to the wonderment of the rustics.

Scheduled service began on September 4. The Steamboat left New York on Saturdays at 6:00 in the afternoon and left Albany on Wednesdays at 8:00 in the morning, taking about 36 hours for the journey. Stops were made at West Point, Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Esopus, and Hudson. In publicity the ship is called North River Steamboat or just Steamboat (there being no other in operation).^[4]

The ship's original enrollment of 1807 is lost, but because of rebuilding over the winter of 1807-1808, she had to be enrolled again with the federal government, and that paper gives the owners as Livingston and Fulton and the name as North River Steamboat of Clermont.^[5] The rebuilding was substantial: the ship was made longer and wider, and the paddlewheels were enclosed to prevent damage and splashing. Later the name was shortened to North River.^[6]

Subsequent events

In its first year, the new navigation service differentiated itself from all of its predecessors by turning a tidy profit.^[7] The quick commercial success of North River Steamboat led Livingston and Fulton to commission a second very similar boat in 1809, Car of Neptune, followed in 1811 by Paragon. An advertisement for the company in 1812 lists the three boats' schedules, using the name North River for the original vessel.^[8] When Fulton died in 1815, he had built a total of seventeen steamboats, and a half-dozen more were constructed by other builders using his plans.^[7]

Livingston died in 1813 and passed his shares of the steamboat company on to his sons-in-law. With Fulton’s death in 1815, the original power behind the partnership dissolved; this left the company with its monopoly in New York waters prey to other hungry American businessmen.^[7] Livingston's heirs later granted an exclusive license to Aaron Ogden to run a ferry between New York and New Jersey, while Thomas Gibbons and Cornelius Vanderbilt established a competing service. The Livingston Fulton monopoly was dissolved in 1824 following the landmark Gibbons v. Ogden Supreme Court case, which opened New York waters to competitive steamboat companies. In 1819 there were only nine steamboats in operation on the Hudson River.  By 1840, customers could choose from over 100. The Steamboat Era had arrived.^[7]

Clermont

The misnomer Clermont first appeared in Cadwallader D. Colden's biography of Fulton, published in 1817, two years after Fulton died.^[9] Since Colden was a friend of both Fulton and Livingston, his book was considered an authoritative source, and his errors were perpetuated in later accounts up to the present day. The vessel is by now nearly always called Clermont, but no contemporary account called her by that name.^{[citation needed]}

In 1907, a full-size working replica of Clermont was built in New York to honor the centenary of Fulton's achievement.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Robert Fulton and The Clermont" by Alice Crary Sutcliffe, The Century Co., New York, 1909
2. ^ Arthur G. Adams, The Hudson through the Years. Westwood NJ : Lind Publications, 1983. The one-hour stop is mentioned by Fulton in a letter to the American Citizen on August 20.
3. ^ "Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made" by James Dabney McCabe - Project Gutenberg:
4. ^ Arthur G. Adams, The Hudson through the Years. Westwood NJ : Lind Publications, 1983. Other stops were sometimes made, such as Red Hook and Catskill.
5. ^ The Fourth Annual Report of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission to the Legislature of the State of New York, May 20, 1910, HRMM
6. ^ Arthur G. Adams, The Hudson through the Years. Westwood NJ : Lind Publications, 1983.
7. ^ ^{a b c d} Livingston-Fulton Steamboat Partnership, 1807 - 2007, Friends of Clermont. Retrieved August 5, 2011.
8. ^ H. W. Dickinson, Robert Fulton / Engineer and Artist. London: 1913. http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/dickinson/
9. ^ Cadwallader D. Colden (1817). The Life of Robert Fulton. New York: Kirk & Mercein. pp. 170, 171, 174, 274. OCLC 123163823. http://books.google.ca/books?id=AtsRAAAAIAAJ. 

External links

• THE BUILDING OF THE CLERMONT REPLICA,Hudson River Maritime Museum. Retrieved August 26, 2009
• Steamboat Days at Clermont,Friends of Clermont. Retrieved August 26, 2009.