Robert Fulton
The first successful trial run of a steamboat had been made several years earlier in the United States by inventor John Fitch, on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787. Attendees included delegates from the Constitutional Convention, who were observing while taking a break from their summer-long sessions at Independence Hall. The steamboat was propelled by a bank of oars on either side of the boat. The following year Fitch launched a boat powered by a steam engine driving several stern-mounted oars. These oars paddled in a manner similar to the motion of a swimming duck's feet. With this boat he carried up to thirty passengers for hire on numerous round-trip voyages on the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey.
Carrie Ladd
"Carrie Ladd" was one of the first steamboats of the Columbia River type. Unlike most other early steamboats "Carrie Ladd" was built from scratch, rather from discarded hulls, works, or machinery of previous vessels. The vessel was not particularly large, but had powerful engines, and was probably the best of the steamboats built in Oregon in the 1850s. John T. Thomas built "Carrie Ladd" for Jacob Kamm, Capt. John C. Ainsworth and other co-owners. The vessel was named the Carrie Ladd in honor of the daughter of an early Portland banker who helped arrange the financing for the Oregon Steam Navigation Company which later held a monopoly on steam navigation on the Columbia River.