Submarine Fulton was not focused entirely on the steamboat. In , he tested the first successful submarine, which he had built for the British Navy. His invention would make him a celebrity upon his return to the United States two years later.
Fulton's partner, Robert Livingstone, who had negotiated the Louisiana Purchase from France, obtained an exclusive license for steamboat services on New York's Hudson River. It was time for Fulton to deliver. Steamboat Service To build an efficient, reliable steamboat, Fulton used a special English steam engine. The ship's bottom was flat and its stern was square. Clermont made its debut on August 17, , steaming upriver from New York to Albany, and it soon entered into commercial service.
Finally, Fulton could declare, "The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. The service ran without a hitch until mid-November when ice in the river became a problem. Fulton obtained a patent for his steamboat granted in just 42 days! More importantly, the state of New York granted him an exclusive right to steamboat transport on the Hudson River. Neither form of monopoly deterred Fulton's rivals from competing — which actually resulted in games of "chicken" and collisions in the river.
Years later, Fulton vindicated his dubious patents, but the U. Court of Errors found the Hudson monopoly unconstitutional Fulton's last major undertaking was the world's first steam-powered warship. The "Demologos" was feet long, feet wide, horsepower, and double-hulled, with paddles between the inner and outer hulls, 44 guns on deck, and slightly successful underwater cannons. Although Fulton earned his last patents for this ship in , the U.
Navy let the project lie fallow after the War of ended in In February of , Fulton died from complications of a winter chest cold. In response, both houses of the U. Congress wore mourning clothes, and businesses in New York City closed for a day. Not everyone admired Robert Fulton, however. Many considered him, at best, a consummate opportunist. Yet Fulton the engineer was responsible for many innovative improvements, and Fulton the entrepreneur first made steamboat transportation a reality.
England was already in the midst of its industrial revolution, and Fulton was fascinated by the new engineering enterprises—canals, mines, bridges, roads, and factories. His interest became professional, and after about he gave up painting as a vocation, pursuing it only for his own amusement. As early as Fulton considered using steam power to drive a boat. Seven years earlier John Fitch had successfully demonstrated his steamboat on the Delaware River at Philadelphia, but in the interim no one had been able to make both a mechanical and commercial success of the idea.
Though the British government had banned the export of steam engines, Fulton wrote to the firm of Boulton and Watt about the possibility of buying a ready-made engine to be applied to boat propulsion. Most of Fulton's energy during these years was devoted to more conventional problems of civil and mechanical engineering.
He patented in England a "double-incline plane" for hauling canal boats over difficult terrain and machines to saw marble, to spin flax, and to twist hemp for rope.
He built a mechanical dredge to speed the construction of canals and in published his illustrated pamphlet, A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation. For the next 10 years Fulton devoted himself to the development of underwater warfare through the invention and improvement of a submarine and explosive torpedoes.
It is thought that he believed that if warfare were made sufficiently destructive and horrible it would be abandoned—a fallacy often invoked by inventors of military devices. He tried to interest the French government in his experiments, and he obtained the promise of prizes for any British ships he might destroy with his devices. In he proceeded with his submarine, the Nautilus, against various ships but was unsuccessful. By his failure to win French money for destroying British ships led him to offer to destroy French ships for the British government.
Once again he failed in combat, although he was able to blow up one ship during an experiment.
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