Fitch was granted his patent after a battle with James Rumsey over claims to the invention. In a 1787 letter to Thomas Johnson, George Washington discussed Fitch's and Rumsey's claims from his own perspective.
Mr. Rumsey . . . at that time applying to the Assembly for an exclusive Act . . . spoke of the effect of Steam and . . . its application for the purpose of inland Navigation; but I did not conceive . . . that it was suggested as part of his original plan . . . It is proper however for me to add, that some timeafter this Mr. Fitch called upon me on his way to Richmond and explaining his scheme, wanted a letter from me, introductory of it to the Assembly of this State the giving of which I declined; and went so [far] as to inform him that tho' I was bound not to disclose the principles of Mr. Rumsey's discovery I would venture to assure him, that the thought of applying steam for the purpose he mentioned was not original but had been mentioned to me by Mr. Rumsey . . .
George Washington, November 22, 1787.
George Washington Papers, 1741-1799In 1814, Robert Fulton and Edward Livingston, the brother of Robert Livingston, brought commercial success to steamboating when they began to offer regular steamboat service between New Orleans, Louisiana and Natchez, Mississippi. The boats traveled at the rates of eight miles per hour downstream and three miles per hour upstream. In 1816, Henry Miller Shreve launched his steamboat Washington, which completed the voyage from New Orleans to Louisville, Kentucky in twenty-five days. Steamboat design continued to improve, so that by 1853, the trip to Louisville took only four and one-half days.
Between 1814 and 1834, New Orleans steamboat arrivals increased from 20 to 1200 a year. The boats transported cargoes of cotton, sugar, and passengers. Throughout the East, steamboats contributed greatly to the economy by transporting agricultural and industrial supplies. In a 1938 interview, Iowan Joe Giesler, who was a steamboatman for fifty-four years, tells a story of a calamity that occurred while transporting a load of hogs upriver:
. . . we put [the hogs] on the boat and had them all penned up; as the boat was going up the river someone pulled the whistle; this scared the hogs and they broke through their pen and jumped over the side of the boat; and swam to shore. It took us two or three days to round them all up."Joe Giesler,"
Sioux City, Iowa,
Edna B. Pearson, interviewer,
November 15, 1938.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940Steam propulsion and railroads developed separately, but it was not until railroads adopted the technology of steam that they began to flourish. By the 1870s, railroads had begun to supplant steamboats as the major transporter of both goods and passengers.
