Genius is the exclusive possession of no particular nation, still less of any particular age: but it needs just that happy condition of opportunity which means so little or may mean so much. And the more we realise that this is so, and that it is even possible for two men, separated by thousands of miles, to be working at the same scientific problem and to arrive at similar solutions at about the same date (as happens more than once in the story of the steamship), so much more quickly shall we approach a fair and impartial verdict in assessing praise to whom praise is due. All the mutual recriminations and slanders, all the long years of law-suits, and the pain and grief to both parties in several instances regarding their rival claims for priority of invention of the essential characteristics of the steamboat, might have been thus avoided. Coincidence is a recognisable factor, and when men’s minds are at one particular time more keenly set on bringing about a craft capable of moving without sails or oars, and working with the same historical data before them, it is, in fact, more probable than improbable that the same conclusions will be arrived at by men who have never seen each other, nor availed themselves of each other’s secrets. There had always been a feeling that some means other than sails or oars could be found for ship-propulsion, but it was not until the possibilities of steam had begun to be appreciated that the idea of a mechanically-propelled ship took on any practical form. Thus we might divide our study into two separate sections. The first would consist of all those vessels propelled by some mechanism moved by man or beast: in other words, by physical strength employed to turn a paddle-wheel or other arrangement. The other section would include all those efforts to turn the machinery, not by physical, but by steam force. The first dates from a time almost as old as the ship herself; the second in actual success covers, as we have already said, a space of about a hundred years only, but the first efforts date from the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Papin performed his historic achievement.