During Newcomen’s lifetime the proposal was revived of applying the steam-engine to the propelling of ships. Since Papin’s time nothing had been accomplished in this direction. Now that the steam-engine was actively employed in pumping mines, it was natural enough that the idea should be revived of applying it to navigation. The most enthusiastic advocate of the new power was Jonathan Hulls, a native of Campden, in Gloucestershire, where he was born in 1699. He married a wife in 1719, before he was out of his teens; an act of indiscretion in which, however, he had the example of one no less distinguished than Shakspeare. Living as he did in an inland country place, it seems remarkable that he should have directed his attention to the subject of steam-navigation. We find him making experiments with models of boats on the river Avon, at Evesham, and in course of time he duly matured his ideas and embodied them in his patent of 1736.[47] He proposed to place a Newcomen engine on board a tow-boat, and by its means to work a paddle-wheel placed at the stern. His method of converting the rectilinear motion of his piston into a rotary one was ingenious, but, like Savery, he missed the crank on the paddle-shaft, and many years passed before this simple expedient was adopted.[48] “The work to be done by this machine,” said he, “will be upon particular occasions, when all other means yet found out are wholly insufficient. How often does a merchant wish that his ship were on the ocean, when, if she were there, the wind would serve tolerably well to carry him on his intended voyage, but does not serve at the same time to carry him out of the river he happens to be in, which a few hours’ work of the machine would do. Besides, I know engines that are driven by the same power as this is, where materials for the purpose are dearer than in any navigable river in England; therefore experience demonstrates that the expense will be but a trifle to the value of the work performed by those sort of machines, which any person that knows the nature of those things may easily calculate.” His treatise was illustrated by a drawing, of which the following is a copy on a reduced scale. [47] In 1737 he published a Treatise on the subject entitled, ‘A description and Draught of a new-invented Machine for carrying Vessels or Ships out of or into any Harbour, Port, or River, against Wind or Tide, and in a Calm,’ by Jonathan Hulls. [Illustration: JONATHAN HULLS’S STEAM-BOAT.]