Concerning this voyage Fulton wrote to a friend in Paris: "My steamboat voyage to Albany and back has turned out rather more favorably than I had calculated. The voyage was performed wholly by power of the steam engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward, and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. The morning I left New York there were not thirty persons in the city who believed that the boat would ever move a mile an hour, or be of the least utility. While we were putting off from the wharf, I heard a number of sarcastic remarks. This is the way in which ignorant men compliment what they call philosophers and projectors. I feel infinite pleasure in reflecting on the immense advantages my country will derive from the invention." The _Clermont_ was soon running as a regular packet between New York and Albany. The owners of sailing craft on the river hated her and tried to sink her. The New York legislature passed a bill declaring that any attempt to destroy or injure the _Clermont_ should be a public offense punishable by fine and imprisonment. Then the enemies of the boat applied to the courts for an injunction restraining Fulton from navigating the Hudson with his steamboat. Daniel Webster appeared as Fulton's attorney. He won the case and secured for the _Clermont_ the full rights of the river. Fulton afterward built other steamboats, including a system of steam ferries for New York City. In 1814 he constructed the first United States war steamer. Before constructing the _Clermont_, Fulton was interested in canals and in the invention of machinery for spinning flax and twisting rope. He also made experiments with sub-marine explosives in England, France, and the United States; but these were considered failures. He died February 24, 1815. [Illustration: THE CLERMONT ON THE HUDSON] The first steamboat in the West was built at Pittsburg in 1811, and within a few years after the first trip of the _Clermont_, steamboats were being used on all the leading rivers of the country. From the earliest times men had sailed the seas, but their ships were small and slow and subject to wind, tide, and current. The success of the river steamboat led to the use of steam in ocean navigation. The first steamship to cross the Atlantic was the _Savannah_, in 1818. The vessel relied almost as much upon wind as upon steam for motive power, but during the voyage of twenty-five days steam was used on eighteen days. The wood required for fuel left little room in the vessel for freight. With the advent of coal for fuel, and better machinery, steamships grew in importance, and in 1837 two ships, the _Sirius_ and the _Great Western_, crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York with the use of steam alone. By 1850 the average time for a trans-Atlantic voyage had been reduced to eleven or twelve days. [Illustration: THE LUSITANIA OF THE CUNARD LINE]