Be that as it may, it is certain that the speediest sailing ships, granted favorable conditions of wind and wave, more than surpassed the best efforts of the steamship until about the closing decades of the nineteenth century. But of course long before this the steamship had proved its supremacy under all ordinary conditions. Even though sailing ships continued to be constructed in large numbers, their picturesque rigging became less and less a feature in all navigable waters, and the belching funnel of the steamship had become a characteristic substitute as typifying the sea-going vessel. The story of the development of this new queen of the waters must now demand our attention. It begins with the futile efforts of several more or less visionary enthusiasts who were contemporaries of James Watt, and who thought they saw great possibilities in the steam engine as a motive power to take the place of oars and sails for the propulsion of ships. EARLY ATTEMPTS TO INVENT A STEAMBOAT Among the first of these was an American named John Fitch. Judged by the practical results of his efforts, he was not a highly successful inventor; as a prophet, however, and as an experimenter whose efforts fell just short of attainment, he deserves a conspicuous place in the history of an epoch-making discovery. Yet his prophecy was based on his failures. From 1780, for twenty years he strove to perfect a steamboat. His efforts did not carry him far beyond the experimental stage. But his courage and enthusiasm never waned. "Whether I bring the steamboat to perfection or not," he declared, "it will some time in the future be the mode of crossing the Atlantic for packets and armed vessels." At that very time Benjamin Franklin said this would never be. But twenty years later Fulton's _Clermont_ paddled up the Hudson River from New York to Albany and opened the era that saw Fitch's prophecy fulfilled. This was in 1807--a year that must stand as the most momentous in maritime history. In that year the little _Clermont_ steamed slowly from New York to Albany, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles in thirty-two hours, unaided by sails or oars, and propelled entirely by steam-power. A sail-boat could cover the distance in the same number of hours; a modern torpedo boat in one-sixth the time. Yet no performance of any boat, before or since, had such far-reaching effects upon the progress of the world. When Fulton turned his attention from his favorite theme--the invention of a submarine boat--and took up the question of perfecting a boat propelled by steam, he did not find himself the first or the only inventor in the field. For a hundred years, in round numbers, men had been wrestling with the question of applying steam pressure to boat propulsion. All manner of more or less ingenious devices had been conceived, most of them having a germ of success in the principles involved, but all of them being failures in actual practice.