No apology is needed to the reader for having taken up so much of his attention in witnessing the growth of the steamship both on the Seine and the Hudson, for the importance of these rivers in the history of our subject is anything but insignificant. But let us turn now to see what was being done in Great Britain, where a kind of slump, or rather inertia, had been prevalent in regard to the steamship ever since the _Charlotte Dundas_ had been laid aside. We must cast our eyes in the direction of the Clyde, where Henry Bell had interested himself in the steamboat problem. Like others before him, he had begun his experiments at first with hand-driven paddle-wheels, but it was not long before the inevitable conclusion was thrust on him that the power ought to be derived not from human force, but from steam. It was he who had talked the matter over with Fulton, and had actually accompanied the latter when a visit was paid to Symington and the two men witnessed a trial trip of the _Charlotte Dundas_. Bell was a simple, uneducated man, the proprietor of an hotel at Helensburgh, on the Clyde, where he also conducted a bathing establishment, and at one time possessed an engine which was in use at his hotel for pumping up sea-water for the baths. His enterprising mind argued that it would be for the advantage of his hotel if he could inaugurate a steamboat service between Helensburgh and Glasgow, and so he had the _Comet_ built in 1811, by Messrs. John Wood and Co., of Glasgow. Some interesting details have been collected of this early British boat by Captain James Williamson in his book on “The Clyde Passenger Steamer: its Rise and Progress during the Nineteenth Century” (Glasgow, 1904), and in Mr. James Napier’s “Life of Robert Napier” (Edinburgh, 1904). The illustration opposite this page, which represents a model of the _Comet_ now in the South Kensington Museum, will afford a good idea as to her appearance. As will be seen, she was a paddle-boat, and originally had two wheels on either side, but one pair was removed later, as the arrangement was found to be of too complicated a nature to work satisfactorily. She was far less of a ship than the _Clermont_, and much more of a river boat. She did not carry even a single mast, but, as will be noticed in the model, she utilised her thin, lofty smoke stack for this purpose and set a yard across it, as the _Clermont_ had done on her fore-mast. On this yard she set the usual square-sail, while from the end of the stumpy bowsprit she also set a triangular jib. This model may be taken as authentic in its details, and it was to David Napier that Henry Bell entrusted the task of making the boiler and castings. The boat was of about twenty-five tons burthen, 42 feet long, 11 feet wide, and 5 feet 6 inches deep; was driven by a condensing steam engine developing four horse-power, and her greatest speed through the water was five miles an hour. Her cylinder was vertical, the piston-rod driving a pair