Indeed Fitch’s fortune was hard.  His invention was a work of the purest originality.  He was unread, uneducated, and had never so much as heard of a steam-engine when the idea of propelling boats by steam came to him.  After repeated rebuffs—­the lot of every inventor—­he at length secured from the State of New Jersey the right to navigate its waters for a term of years.  With this a stock company was formed and the first boat built and rebuilt.  At first it was propelled by a single paddle at the stem; then by a series of paddles attached to an endless chain on each side of the boat; afterwards by paddle-wheels, and finally by upright oars at the side.  The first test made on the Delaware River in August, 1787—­twenty years before Fulton—­in the presence of many distinguished citizens, some of them members of the Federal Convention, which had adjourned for the purpose, was completely successful.  The boiler burst before the afternoon was over, but not before the inventor had demonstrated the complete practicability of his invention.

For ten years, struggling the while against cruel poverty, John Fitch labored to perfect his steamboat, and to force it upon the public favor, but in vain.  Never in the history of invention did a new device more fully meet the traditional “long-felt want.”  Here was a growing nation made up of a fringe of colonies strung along an extended coast.  No roads were built.  Dense forests blocked the way inland but were pierced by navigable streams, deep bays, and placid sounds.  The steamboat was the one thing necessary to cement American unity and speed American progress; but a full quarter of a century passed after Fitch had steamed up and down the Delaware before the new system of propulsion became commercially useful.  The inventor did not live to see that day, and was at least spared the pain of seeing a later pioneer get credit for a discovery he thought his own.  In 1798 he died—­of an overdose of morphine—­leaving behind the bitter writing:  “The day will come when some powerful man will get fame and riches from my invention; but nobody will ever believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention.”

In trying to make amends for the long injustice done to poor Fitch, modern history has come near to going beyond justice.  It is undoubted that Fitch applied steam to the propulsion of a boat, long before Fulton, but that Fitch himself was the first inventor is not so certain.  Blasco de Garay built a rude steamboat in Barcelona in 1543; in Germany one Papin built one a few years later, which bargemen destroyed lest their business be injured by it.  Jonathan Hulls, of Liverpool, in 1737 built a stern-wheeler, rude engravings of which are still in existence, and Symington in 1801 built a thoroughly practical steamboat at Dundee.  ’Tis a vexed question, and perhaps it is well enough to say that Fitch first scented the commercial possibilities of steam navigation, while Fulton actually developed them—­the one “raised” the fox, while the other was in at the death.