ABSTRACT
A few years afterwards Fulton established steam navigation in American waters, where a number of steamboats plied regularly for some years before the invention had received a corresponding development in England, for it was not until 1814 that a steam-packet ran for hire in the Thames. A great impulse was given to steam navigation, by the substitution of iron for wood in the construction of ships. The river steam-boat was, as the people have seen, nearly coeval with the nineteenth century, and although its practicability was first demonstrated in British waters, regular steam navigation was not established until a few years afterwards, when, in 1807, Robert Fulton placed on the River Hudson its first steam-boat. It was on the River Hudson that steam navigation was inaugurated by Fulton with a vessel which was 133 feet long, 18 feet broad, and 7 feet deep, and was named the Clermont.
