“During this absence his (Fitch’s) drawings and papers were loaned by the Consul to Robert Fulton, then in Paris, in whose possession they were for several months.”[14] Until now, it must be remembered, Fulton had scarcely been heard of in connection with steamboats. [14] Appleton’s “Cyclopædia.” Meantime the ill-starred Fitch, unable to gain a hearing in England either, worked his passage back to America as a common sailor. In 1796, still determined to convince the public of the need for steamboats, he obtained a ship’s yawl, and fitted her with an engine and screw-propeller. With these he experimented in New York and, as usual, no one took any interest in the boat except the proprietor. In 1798 he made and tried upon a small stream near Bardstown a steamboat model measuring three feet in length, but a few weeks later he committed suicide by taking poison. His “Journal” contains the following passage: “The day will come when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from _my_ invention, but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention.” About twenty years later Fitch’s merits as an inventor were recognised by a Committee of the New York Legislature, which reported that “the steamboats built by Livingston and Fulton were in substance the invention patented to John Fitch in 1791, and Fitch during the term of his patent had the exclusive right to use the same in the United States.” Other inventors were at work. Fulton was in France thinking over the Fitch drawings which had been left there in 1793, trying a submarine boat on the Seine, and in 1801 making a variety of experiments under the auspices of the French Government. In America, one Samuel Morey, in 1790, built a strange boat with a paddle-wheel in the prow, constructed a steam-engine for her, and presently was voyaging on the Connecticut River at the break-neck speed of four miles an hour. A few years later he had another boat ready which could do five miles an hour, this boat having a wheel at the stern, and by request he took Chancellor R. Livingston and others for a trip in New York waters. The Chancellor, who had made a trip in Morey’s first boat at Orford, perceived two things, first, that the speed ought to be increased, and, second, that there was money in steamboats. He promised Morey 100,000 dollars, it is believed, if he could run a boat at eight miles an hour, and offered him 7000 dollars for a patent for the North River as far as Amboy for what had already been accomplished. The latter offer was not accepted. Morey in 1795 took out a patent for a steam-engine, in which the power was to be applied by crank motion, to propel boats of any size. Two years later he built a steamer which he placed on the Delaware, and propelled it by means of two paddle-wheels, one on either side. These wheels gave better results than any method which had yet been tried.