Already excursions were very popular. The _Chancellor Livingston_ took excursionists once a week during July and August as far as Sandy Hook. The same year, 1821, the steamer _Franklin_ took passengers to the fishing banks twice weekly, and the _Olive Branch_ of the Philadelphia Line gave its patrons what its owners called “a sail around Staten Island and turtle feast,” and it was added that “a fine green turtle will be cooked, and a band of music provided,” all for one dollar seventy-five cents. Captain Bunker, who had the _Enterprise_ built in 1818 at Hartford, Connecticut, brought her into the New York service in 1821, for an excursion starting at half-past four in the morning from the East River for Sands Point. This is one of the earliest records of a steamer built elsewhere coming to New York waters to enter upon the local trade. Henry Eckford also planned the steamer _Robert Fulton_, which in 1822 made the first successful steam voyage from New York to New Orleans, and thence to Havana, in which trade she was afterwards engaged regularly. The _Robert Fulton_ then passed into the possession of the Brazilian naval authorities, who turned her into a sailing ship and she became the fastest warsloop in the Brazilian navy. The _Firefly_ was the first steamer to get round Point Judith, on the Rhode Island shore, and reach Newport from New York. This was May 26, 1817, and the voyage lasted twenty-eight hours. The sailing packets on the route, as usual, resented her incursion, and when the wind was favourable they usually outsailed her. The competition grew so great between the steamer and the sailers that the latter made the typical American sporting proposal not to charge passengers for the voyage between New York and Newport if they did not reach port before the steamer. Although the size of the American river steamers had been steadily increasing, there had not been a great acceleration in the matter of speed. Even at the time of Fulton’s death few, if any, American river steamers exceeded an average of seven miles an hour for the trip. Robert Livingston Stevens, son of John Stevens, built about that time (1813) the _Philadelphia_, which attained an average speed of eight miles. Speed was a question to which he devoted considerable attention, for he realised its importance, and nearly every vessel he turned out was an improvement upon its predecessor. The inventions and improvements which he introduced inaugurated a new era of steamboat construction. Of the fate which overtook some of these early vessels, it may be noted that the _Clermont_ died of premature old age, the _Car of Neptune_ was broken up, the _Paragon_ went to the bottom, and the _Hope_, the _Perseverance_, the _Firefly_, and the _Richmond_ were broken up. [Illustration: THE “PHILADELPHIA.” BUILT 1826.]