The First Practical Steam-boat
Mr. Macquorn Rankine, in supporting the opinion of Mr. Benet Woodcroft, that the title of the “first practical steamboat” is due to that vessel in which the double-acting cranked steam-engine—in short, Watt’s rotative engine—was first applied to drive the propeller,—proceeds on the principle, that to constitute a “practical” machine, that machine must be capable, not merely of working well during a series of experiments, but of continuing to work well for years, with ordinary care in its management and repairs. Such certainly never was, and never could have been the case, with any steam-boat in which the wheels were made to turn by means of chains and rachet-work—a sort of mechanism which may answer its purpose during an experiment, but which must rapidly wear itself out by shocks and rattling. Such an engine is not a “practical steam-engine;” and a vessel driven by it is not a “practical steam-boat.” Hence the importance which Mr. Rankine is disposed to ascribe to the first actual use of a permanently efficient rotative steam-engine to drive a vessel.
It may be true that as an original inventor, Symington ought to be ranked below his predecessors; because his steam-boat of 1801 was only a new combination of parts which had previously been invented separately by others—the paddle-wheel, by some unknown mechanic of remote antiquity; the application of steam to drive vessels, by a series of inventors, comprising Papin, Hulls, D. Bernouilli, Jouffroy, Miller, and Taylor; and the rotative steam-engine by Watt: still, the merit of having first used a “practical steam-engine” to drive a vessel is due to Symington.—Communicated to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, 1863.