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GEOEGIA AND GEORGIANS 369
was probably engaged in experimenting with his steamboat on the Sa
vannah River, for some time before receiving his patent from the state,
in 1788; and he continued for years thereafter to improve his invention,
in the hope of making it commercially successful. There were still
others who, at this early date, were active in this same line of endeavor.
But, while they demonstrated the feasibility of steam navigation, they
came short of the coveted goal. Dame Fortune eluded them at every,
turn; and it was reserved finally for Robert Fulton, a New Yorker, with
his little boat, the Clermont, on the waters of the Hudson River, in 1807,
to overtake the fleet wings of the fickle goddess.
Says a well-known historian, in speaking of the first crude experi
ments of the Georgia inventor:* "Longstreet's boat, like other great
inventions, was made sport of; indeed, it must have been a queer-looking
craft. His idea was to have the boat propelled by a series of poles, so
arranged on a shaft that as the shaft turned on its axis the poles would
strike the bottom of the river and push the boat along. This was cer
tainly very clumsy; but a boat of this kind was made and put on the
Savannah River in 1806, and moved by steam power. Robert Fulton's
boat, the Clermont, made its trial trip on the Hudson River in August,
1807. He made use of paddle-wheels to strike the water instead of poles
to strike the river bottom. Paddle-wheels were a great improvement,
and Robert Fulton is called the inventor of the steam-boat. To him
belongs the idea of paddle-wheels, while to "William Longstreet belongs
the honor of having first made a boat run by steam power.''
But let us go back. It is by no means uncertain that William Long-
street failed to inherit the money-making instincts of his Dutch ances
tors, but devotion to his ideal kept him poor. To obviate unnecessary
expense he constructed his boilers of heavy oak timbers girt about by
strong iron bands, and managed to do most of the work himself. He
was not successful at first, but year after year he toiled away at his task
with an undiminished enthusiasm.
The world eventually pays its debts, but ofttimes the first installment
is paid in ridicule. Ever since the time of Noah the man who has built
in advance of his generation has been obliged to encounter the sharp
note of derision. Longstreet's repeated failures with the steamboat
made him a target for the shallow wits of the neighborhood. The idea
of making iron swim on the water in an age not given to miracles, at least
of the Biblical sort, was treated as the vagary of an escaped lunatic; and
his neighbors stood by and harassed him pretty much as the amused
antediluvians did the old patriarch when he was building the ark. But
nevertheless in both cases the craft floated. He was told that it contra
dicted every law of reason to suppose that iron could be made to move
about at will upon the water without oar or sail. In the local prints
appeared frequent squibs dedicated to the persistent inventor; and one
of them, which has floated down to the present time, showing how the
near-sighted skeptics ridiculed the experiment, is cast in doggerel verse
with frequent variations of the question:
'' Can you row the boat ashore,
Billy boy, Billy boy?"
* '' History of Georgia,'' Lawton B. Evans, p. 167.
Vol. 1—24