Some British authorities claim that the first practical steamboat in the world was the tug "_Charlotte Dundas_," built by William Symmington, and tried in 1802 on the Clyde and Forth Canal in Scotland. The trial was successful, but steam towing was abandoned for fear of injuring the banks of the canal. Symmington had built a small steamboat that traveled five miles an hour in 1788. [Illustration: ROBERT FULTON] To Robert Fulton, an American, belongs the credit for placing the steamboat on a successful commercial basis. Fulton was born at Little Britain, Pennsylvania, in 1765. At the age of seventeen he adopted the profession of portrait and landscape painter. At twenty-two he went to England to study art. There he met James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, and soon he began to give attention to mechanics. In 1793 he started to work on the idea of propelling boats by steam. He made an unsuccessful experiment with a steamboat on the Seine River in France. The vessel sank because its construction was faulty. Fulton returned to America and in New York harbor began to build another boat which he named the _Katherine of Clermont_, shortened to the _Clermont_. Her engine was procured from Boulton and Watt in England. The boat was one hundred feet long and twenty feet wide, weighed one hundred sixty tons, and was equipped with side paddle wheels and a sheet-iron boiler. As the inventor worked patiently at his task, the newspapers gave him but little notice and the public ridiculed him. The New York legislature had passed a bill granting to Fulton and to Chancellor Livingston the exclusive right to navigate with steam boats the waters of New York State. This bill was a standing subject of ridicule among the legislators at Albany. In August, 1807, the _Clermont_ was ready for her trial trip. A large crowd of spectators lined the banks of the Hudson as the boat slowly steamed out into the river. The crowd jeered and hooted and shouted at the vessel their nick-name of "Fulton's Folly." As the _Clermont_ moved up the river, making slow headway against the current, the crowd changed their jeers to expressions of wonder and finally to cheers. The dry pine wood used for fuel sent out a cloud of thick, black smoke, flames, and sparks, which spread terror among the watermen of the harbor. The _Clermont_ made the voyage from New York up the Hudson to Chancellor Livingston's country estate near Albany, a distance of a hundred ten miles, in twenty-four hours. The trip was without mishap and it thoroughly established the practicability of steam for purposes of navigation.