man of respectable character and of veracity. That the said William Symington afterwards constructed a larger boat, and the deponent had access to see both the boats, and to know that they were propelled by steam.” “Sworn at Carron, in the County of Stirling, upon the thirtieth day of November, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-four, before me, one of His Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the County of Stirling. “(Signed) JOHN CALLANDER, J.P. “(Signed) J. STAINTON.”[26] [26] “A Century and a Half of Commercial Enterprise,” by the Carron Company. Scotland owes her pre-eminence in shipbuilding and marine engineering to Patrick Miller, an Edinburgh banker who, having retired with a large fortune to Dalswinton, among other things set himself to ascertain whether some better means of propelling vessels than sails or oars could not be obtained. He had exhibited at Leith a triple vessel “having rotatory paddles in the two interspaces driven by a crank,” which was turned by four men. This he matched against a fast-sailing Customs wherry between Incholm and Leith Harbour over a distance of six or seven miles, and was very well satisfied with the victory he secured. But his sons’ tutor, James Taylor of Cumnock, having taken his turn at the crank, was so convinced by the violence of the exertion that some more reliable power was needed, that he urged on Mr. Miller the propriety of employing a steam-engine. Mr. Miller had placed a new double boat on his lake at Dalswinton, and Taylor, with his permission, arranged with his friend William Symington to fit it with a steam-engine. Symington, who was then engaged as a mining engineer, at Wanlockhead, had constructed a model of a steam carriage in which he had converted the reciprocating motion of the pistons into a rotatory motion. Miller and Taylor were shown this model in December 1787. The engine had only four-inch brass cylinders, made, curiously enough, by George Watt of Edinburgh. The trial trip of Miller’s boat took place on October 14, 1788, in the presence of several hundreds of people, and was so successful that Miller resolved to repeat the experiment on a larger scale. In the next year a twin vessel, 60 feet long and fitted with an engine with 18-inch cylinders, attained a speed of seven miles an hour on the Forth and Clyde Canal. For some reason Miller became dissatisfied with Symington, and abandoned his project of making a sea trip with a third vessel from Leith to London. The cost of fitting up a second vessel, for one thing, was greater than he had anticipated, and he was further discouraged by a miscalculation through which the machinery was made too heavy for the hull. Symington’s original engine of 1788 is now at South Kensington, and a photograph of it is here reproduced. [Illustration: MODEL OF MILLER’S DOUBLE BOAT.]