It is singular that the spirit of invention and enterprise, which New England has displayed in the advance of civilization, should have been apparently indifferent in the development of steam navigation. It is true that her activities have been fully exerted in other directions, and that, as necessity is the mother of invention, the requirements of her manufacturing industries have demanded to the fullest extent the display of her genius. The Hudson River and New York bay seem to have been the theatre in which those early experiments were made, which laid the foundation in this country of successful navigation by steam. In these experiments, as early as 1803, Robert Fulton, assisted by Chancellor R. Livingston, seems to have led the way. In 1804 Col. John Stevens made a trial of a propelling power, consisting of a small engine and a screw. He later attached two screws to the engine, and the identical machine which he used is now owned by the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was placed on a new hull in 1844, and made on the Hudson eight miles an hour. In 1806 Robert Fulton built a sidewheel boat one hundred and thirty feet long, propelled by steam, with paddles 15 feet in diameter, and floats with two feet dip, and went to Albany at the rate of five miles an hour. This boat was called the Clermont, the name of the seat on the Hudson of Chancellor Livingston, and in 1808 made regular trips from New York to Albany. While these operations were going on, causing a complete revolution in the commercial life of the country, New England never saw the smoke of a steamboat. The first boat to enter Massachusetts Bay was the Massachusetts, built in Philadelphia, and designed by its owners, Joseph and John H. Andrews, Wm. Fettyplace, Stephen White, Andrew Watkins and Andrew Bell, to run between Boston and Salem. After a few unsuccessful trips she was sent to Charleston, S. C., and was lost on the passage.