As soon as he reached America in December, 1806, Fulton started work on his boat. He engaged Charles Brownne, a ship-builder on the East River, to lay down the hull. He decided to name the vessel the _Clermont_, the name of Chancellor Livingston’s country-place on the Hudson, where Fulton had been a guest. The engine duly arrived from Birmingham and was carried to the shipyard. As a number of loafers and hangers-on about the docks threatened injury to “Fulton’s Folly,” as the building boat was called, he had to engage watchmen to guard his property. By August the boat was finished, and was moved by her own engine from the yards to the Jersey shore. She was one hundred and fifty feet long, thirteen feet wide, and drew two feet of water. Before she had gone a quarter of a mile both passengers and observers on the shore were satisfied that the steamboat was a thoroughly practicable vessel. On Sunday, August 9, 1807, Fulton made a short trial trip of the _Clermont_, and wrote an account of it to Livingston. “Yesterday about 12 o’clock I put the steamboat in motion first with a paddle 8 inches broad, 3 feet long, with which I ran about one mile up the East River against a tide of about one mile an hour, it being nearly high water. I then anchored and put on another paddle 8 inches wide, 3 feet long, started again and then, according to my best observations, I went 3 miles an hour, that is two against a tide of one: another board of 8 inches was wanting, which had not been prepared, I therefore turned the boat and ran down with the tide--and turned her round neatly into the berth from which I parted. She answers the helm equal to anything that ever was built, and I turned her twice in three times her own length. Much has been proved by this experiment. First that she will, when in complete order, run up to my full calculations. Second, that my axles, I believe, will be sufficiently strong to run the engine to her full power. Third, that she steers well, and can be turned with ease.” [Illustration: “THE CLERMONT,” THE FIRST STEAM PACKET] It was on August 17, 1807, that the _Clermont_ made her first historic trip up the Hudson. At one o’clock she cast off from her dock near the State’s Prison, in what was called Greenwich Village, on the North River. The inventor described the voyage characteristically to a friend. He wrote, “The moment arrived in which the word was to be given for the boat to move. My friends were in groups on the deck. There was anxiety mixed with fear among them. They were silent, sad and weary. I read in their looks nothing but disaster, and almost repented of my efforts. The signal was given and the boat moved on a short distance and then stopped and became immovable. To the silence of the preceding moment, now succeeded murmurs of discontent, and agitations, and whispers and shrugs. I could hear distinctly repeated--‘I told you it was so; it is a foolish scheme: I wish we were well out of it.’