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.
Steamboats of the Oregon Coast
Two steamboat captains from the Columbia River began steamboat operations on Coos Bay in 1873. Inland riverboats were used to navigate the bay and the several rivers flow that flow into it. A mule-hauled portage was built between a shallow southern arm of Coos Bay and the Beaver Slough, a shallow north-extending branch of the Coquille River, in 1869; it was replaced in 1874 with a steam portage railroad. This connection established a convenient link between the steamboat operations of Coos Bay and those on the Coquille.