His great rival was John Fitch, who, in 1785, conceived the idea of using steam-power for land carriages and afterwards for vessels. His first model of a steamer carried large wheels at the sides, but these were found to labour too much in the water, and in his experiments in July 1786 upon a skiff with a steam-engine having a three-inch cylinder, the wheels were replaced by paddles or oars supported by a framework above the vessel. Convinced of the success which must ultimately attend the use of steam-power, he petitioned Congress and the State Legislature for a grant of money, but without avail. As a result of his efforts to interest “the leading scientific and public men of that day, everywhere and at all times,” and his bold advocacy of the adoption of steam for purposes of navigation, he was generally considered insane. But in 1786 he succeeded in persuading the State of New Jersey to grant him for fourteen years the sole and exclusive right to navigate its waters by steam, and this example was followed in 1787 by the States of New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. He had earned some money by map-making, and now formed a company and built a boat of 60 tons. She was 45 feet long with a beam of 12 feet, had six oars or paddles on each side, and carried an engine with a 12-inch cylinder. She made a successful trial trip at Philadelphia in 1787. A still larger boat followed in 1788, and another in 1790. The latter demonstrated “with their increased speed and facility the value of Fitch’s invention,” and the last was run during the summer as a passenger boat between Philadelphia and Burlington at a speed of about eight miles an hour. She appears, from an illustration in Appleton’s “Cyclopædia of American Biography,” to have had three large paddles at the stern held in place by a projecting frame, a cross-beam at the extreme end of the frame supporting the rudder, which was placed a little distance behind the paddles. Consequent upon the Virginia patent which gave him the exclusive right of navigating “the Ohio River and its tributaries” he now designed a boat called the _Perseverance_, for freight and passengers on the Mississippi. But as, owing to a storm, she could not be got ready in time, the default clause in the patent became operative. Fitch’s associates now left him and his own resources were at an end, and after one or two other misfortunes he went to France in 1793. Needless to say, that country was in no mood then to entertain the idea of building steamboats. Finding no one ready to listen to his schemes, Fitch departed for London, having deposited his plans and specifications with the American Consul at Lorient. [Illustration: JOHN FITCH’S OARED PADDLE BOAT, 1786.] A rather curious thing then happened.