According to records in the State Library, the steam was sufficiently high to propel the boat once, twice, or thrice around the pond.  “When more water being introduced into the boiler or pot and steam was generated, she was again ready to start on another expedition.”  The boat was a yawl about eighteen feet in length and six feet beam.  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.  They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts which overpower all others and conduct the world at last to fortune.”

It was the writer’s privilege in 1891, to deliver the unveiling address of a monument to Symington at his birthplace, Lead Hills, Scotland.  In the tribute then paid to the genius of the great Scotchman who had done so much for invention in many directions, he said the difference between Symington and Fulton was this:  “Each worked diligently at the same idea, but it was the good fortune of Fulton, so far as the steamboat was considered, to make his ‘invention’ ‘go.’”

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I see the traditions of my fathers are true; I see far, far away the big bird again floating upon the waters, so far my warriors that you cannot see it, but ere two autumns have scattered the leaves upon my grave, the pale face will claim our hunting grounds.

    Aepgin, King of the Mahicans.

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To quote from a British writer, the “Comet” of Henry Bell on the Clyde in 1812, was the first example of a steamboat brought into serviceable use within European waters, and the writer incidentally added that steam navigation in Britain took practical form almost on the spot where James Watt, the illustrious improver of the steam engine was born.  The word “improver” is well put.  It has much to do with the story of many inventions.  The labor of Fitch was far-reaching in many directions, and it detracts nothing from Fulton’s fame that the experiments of Fitch and Symington preceded his final triumph.