She
was started at the buoy with a small oar when the propeller was used.
The boiler was a ten or twelve gallon iron pot. This boat with a
portion of the machinery was abandoned by Fitch, and left to decay on
the muddy shore. Shortly after this he died in Kentucky in 1798. Had
he lived, or, had the fortune like Fulton, to find such a patron as
Livingston, his success might have been assured. His visit to Europe
may have inspired Symington's experiment on Dalswinton Loch in 1788,
which made five miles an hour, and another steamboat on the Forth
of Clyde which made seven miles an hour in 1789, and the "Charlotte
Dundas" in 1802, which drew a load of seventy tons over three miles
against a strong gale. Something, however, was wanting and the idea
of successful navigation was abandoned in Britain till after the
invention of Robert Fulton which made steam navigation an assured
fact.
"How necessary it is to succeed," said Kosciusko, at the grave of
Washington, and this is also as true in the story of invention as in
the struggle for freedom: "That they never fail who die in a great
cause though years elapse, and others share as dark a doom.
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