Our Incrredible Valley Page 3 - Columbia County Historical Society

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A Bee In Bob’s Bonnet
By Travis M. Bowman
Mr. Bowman is Curator of
Collections at Clermont, home of
Chancellor Livingston, and Adjunct
Professor of History at Columbia
Greene Community College. He
earned his BA at Tulane University
and his Masters in Public History at
the University of Albany. He is a resident
of East Greenbush, New York.
Robert R Livingston of Clermont
once wrote: “physics
and mechanics never formed
a more nobler union than in the
invention of the steam engine,
which at once subjects the most
powerful agents to man; he reposes
at ease while fire, air and water
perform his laborious tasks.” When
Livingston’s enlightened colleague
and friend Thomas Jefferson needed
to upgrade the water system at
Monticello, the sage of Clermont
sent him plans for a steam engine to
do the job. Livingston’s true passion
for steam-power, however, was
in its application as a nautical
propulsion system. Prompted by
the geographical proximity of his
estate to the Hudson River and his
close family ties to the shipping
industry, Livingston spent many
Portrait of Robert Fulton
years trying to build a working steamboat. In the 1790s he constructed
a steamboat at nearby Tivoli but it proved insufficiently
powered to be practical. A second boat fared no better. It practically
shook itself apart from the heavy engine’s vibrations.
Livingston remained convinced he could produce a working boat.
His privileged position in New York State government allowed him
to have legal success where the technical had escaped him. He persuaded
the New York State Legislature to grant an exclusive monopoly
for the propulsion of vessels by fire or steam on all waters of the
state for a period of twenty years. Critics ridiculed Livingston’s efforts
but the so-called “hot water bill” granted Livingston his monopoly,
if he could build a boat that averaged four miles an hour from New
York City to Albany.
The election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and Livingston’s subsequent
appointment as Minister Plenipotentiary to France put the
experiments on hold. To date, Livingston and his partners had been
unsuccessful in fulfilling the requirements for the New York monopoly
but Livingston’s luck was about to change. On November 12,
1802 he wrote to his brother-in-law about a chance meeting with a
part-time portrait painter, part-time engineer: “You know my pas-
Robert R. Livingston
and the
“Steam-boat”
24
sion for steam boats & the money I
have expended on that object.…I
am not yet discouraged & tho [sic]
my old partners have given up the
pursuit I have found a new one in
Robert Fulton, a most ingenious
young man.” Robert Fulton’s meeting
with Livingston set in motion
events that led to the first practical
working steamboat in the world.
Using Livingston’s technical
knowledge gained from his earlier
experiments and Fulton’s genius for
mechanical proportions and scientific
method, the two partners produced
a working model on the
Seine River in 1803. Diplomatic
duties pulled Livingston away from
the project but the partners were
back working in America by 1806.
Despite a three-year hiatus, Fulton
built a boat in New York City within
a year.
The steam-boat, as it was called,
made its maiden voyage to Albany
on August 17, 1807. Years of meticulous
calculations and successive
experimentation insured the run
went smoothly. By the time the
boat anchored at Clermont on
August 18th, it appeared to Robert
Livingston that he had finally
achieved the fame and immortality
he strove for all his life. From the deck of the boat, Livingston began
making fantastic predictions about the usefulness of steamboats. His
conviction about steamboats one day crossing the Atlantic was met
with considerable skepticism. A Livingston cousin was even overheard
to sarcastically remark: “Bob has had many a bee in his bonnet
before now, but this steam folly will prove the worst yet!” Fulton and
Livingston recognized their steam-boat’s potential, despite the
doubts of others. Shortly after the first run, Fulton wrote:
The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved.
The morning I left New York there were not perhaps thirty
persons in the city who believed the boat would ever move one
mile an hour, or be of the least utility and while we were putting
off from the wharf I heard a number of sarcastic remarks.
This is the way in which ignorant men compliment what they
call philosophers and projectors.
The steam-boat was a new invention, the very cutting-edge of
technology and arguably the pinnacle of reason and science for its
era. It represented something altogether different to most of