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 in Canada
Samuel Cunard of Nova Scotia developed the successful Atlantic Steam Liner service in the 1830s with the SS Royal William. While shipbuilding and huge fleets of lakers on the Great Lakes proliferated in the nineteenth century. Their success led to penetration deep into the central continent, with the Anson Northrup in 1859 which became first steamer to cross the Canada–United States border on the Red River, via the US Mississippi River system. Steamboats would also be involved in major political events, as when Louis Riel seized the International at Fort Garry, or Gabriel Dumont was engaged by the vessel Northcote at Batoche.