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.
Seine River Steamers
The Seine River was the scene of many early experiments with
steam navigation. The steamship has a long ancestry, dating back at least to 1783 when the Marquis de Jouffray d'Abbans steamed his little boat, the Pyroscaphe, across the Seine. Robert Fulton even exhibited one to
Napoleon's regime. With the success of the steam engine by the
1820s, the Second Republic embarked on a series of navigation
improvements to raise weirs and locks with which to deepen the navigation channel. By the 1860s improvements had changed the riverbed from low-lying sand banks and trickle to a series of cascading
ponds with a depth of 6 and a half feet.