Fulton and Livingston’s enterprise was a financial success almost from the first, and naturally others thought to share in it; as they could not join the pioneers they determined to rival them. One of the chief of these was a Captain Elihu S. Bunker, who maintained a line of sailing sloops between Hudson City and New York. The steamers were taking the wind out of his sails in more senses than one, and not liking the prospect of being becalmed, financially, he determined to go in for steam. A syndicate of capitalists of Albany backed him. The fact that Livingston and Fulton had been already granted an absolute monopoly for navigating the waters of the State of New York by steam deterred them not a whit. They ordered two boats, to be about the size of the _Clermont_, and called them the _Hope_ and _Perseverance_. They were each 149 feet in length, 25 feet beam inside the paddles, and had a depth of 7 feet 7 inches. [Illustration: ROBERT FULTON’S “CLERMONT,” 1807.] Legal proceedings quickly followed, Livingston and Fulton having their work cut out to defend their monopoly. How like these boats were to the Fulton boats is evident from the affidavit of Charles Brownne, the builder of the _Clermont_. He says that he has “examined the steamboats _Hope_ and _Perseverance_ and they are not built like any vessels which navigate by wind or oars on any of our waters, or any foreign waters that he knows of. That said steamboats being more than Six the length of their breadth[20] of beam and flat at bottom are not calculated to navigate with sails only. And that the first boats of such make of the said steamboats which he ever saw or heard of was built by him from drawings and directions given to him by Robert Fulton and constructed to be navigated by steam and wind, and which boats are now known by the name of _North River_ and _Car of Neptune_ Steamboats: This deponent also saith that the water wheels; the guards round the water wheels, the covering to the water wheels; the steps from the wheel guards to enter the row-boats, space on the guards for wood for the engine, bins or lockers in the wheel guards and necessaries on the fore part of the wheel guards, are exact copies from the Boats built by him for Livingston and Fulton, and such water wheels, wheel guards and conveniences he has never known or heard of to any other kind of boat or vessel. This deponent further saith that in the said Steamboat _Hope_ the manner of arranging the rudder with a perpendicular iron bar on its after part, and leading from its wheel ropes, along the sides of the boat to a steering wheel before the Chimney of the Boiler and to a Station above the place of the engineer and fireman, is an exact copy from the boats of Livingston and Fulton. This deponent objected to this mode of steering at the time the said Fulton proposed it, believing it to be impracticable, and he does not know of a like mode of steering to any other kind of vessel. This deponent also says