All About Engines

274 All About Engines ships were at the mercy of wind and tide, and until the giant steam could be harnessed in the mariner s service speed and regularity were alike unattainable. From the time that the latent power of steam first attracted attention men sought to apply it to the propulsion of ships. Neither the early in- ventors of the steam carriage nor the pioneers of steam navigation waited for the steam engine to be perfected as an engine before they attempted to apply it to their cherished purposes, and the early history of the factory steam engine, the locomotive, and the marine engine belongs to the same period as the early history of the steam engine itself. But there was no satisfactory solution until James Watt had discovered the conditions under which power could be economically obtained. Watt patented his rotary engine in 1782, and five years later Fitch constructed a steamboat with paddles at the sides which drove the vessel along very much in the way that an Indian propels a canoe. Again, in 1801, Lord Dundas and an engineer named Symmington launched the Charlotte Dundas, which showed by its performance that the idea was not impracticable. The first passenger vessel built in Europe was the Comet, constructed by Henry Bell in 1812. She was 40 feet long, 10J feet beam, and had two paddles on each side, driven by a 3 horse-power engine. For a number of years she made three return jour- neys per week between Greenock and Glasgow, a distance of twenty-four miles.