Although there is no record of Bramah having put his proposal into practice, the description lodged by him at the Patent Office is interesting, as showing clearly an indication of the now so well-known screw-propeller. Moreover, in this invention, he obviously intended that steam should be used so as to give circular motion to the propeller shaft. Previously, however, to the time when he patented his invention, the rotatory screw as a mode of propulsion had been proposed by Watt, who, in 1770, suggested the application of a screw-propeller to be turned by a steam-engine.[52] But more than half a century elapsed before the screw, now in almost general use, was practically applied; indeed, the first authentic record we possess of the marine engine itself having been successfully worked by paddle or any other means on board any vessel, dates no further back than 1787, although, between 1774 and 1790, Fitch and Rumsey were experimenting in America on boats (to which I shall hereafter refer) to _work against streams_. [Sidenote: Mr. Miller of Dalswinton.] In that year (1787) Mr. Patrick Miller, of Dalswinton in Scotland, a gentleman of position and fortune, published a pamphlet (given at length by Mr. Woodcroft[53] in his interesting and instructive work on steam navigation, with copies of Mr. Miller’s drawings illustrative of his scheme), on the subject of propelling boats by means of paddle-wheels _turned by men_, working on a capstan with five bars, each 5 feet long, which drove a water-wheel, having the same object in view as Messrs. Fitch and Rumsey, then engaged on similar works on the other side of the Atlantic. This wheel, of which the following is a sketch, drove the vessel in a calm from 3 to 4 miles an hour; and, as Mr. Miller judged the capstan the best mode of turning the wheel, he rejected for a time all other modes, believing manual labour so applied more to be depended on than any mechanical contrivances. For the purpose of his experiments he built, from first to last, eight boats of different kinds, expending no less than 30,000_l._ on them and their machinery. One was a treble vessel, or rather three boats fastened together, of which the following is a transverse representation of the fore part with the lower floats of the wheels at their full dip. [Illustration] [Illustration] According to a written statement laid before the Council of the Royal Society, London, December 20, 1787, Mr. Miller made various excursions in this vessel in the course of that year; being attended in most of these by a Mr. James Taylor, the tutor in his family, who, being a man of considerable genius, urged Mr. Miller to apply steam to drive the wheels of his boat. At last Mr. Miller was induced to employ a young hard-working operative engineer, named Symington, to carry out Mr. Taylor’s suggestion, and the combination of capital, energy, and genius with practical knowledge soon produced the desired results.