Not merely, then, in North America, but in Northern Europe the steamship had become a practical and interesting success. On the Clyde the impetus given by the _Comet_ had caused the development of the steamboat to be more rapid. Vessels larger than Bell’s boat were being built and put into actual service, and in 1815 one of them was sent round to the Mersey and thus began the important river steamboat service which is now so significant a feature of the port of Liverpool. The River Thames, in like manner, was to yield to the coming of the steamboat. Although the London newspapers of 1801 refer to the fact that on July 1 of that year an experiment took place on the Thames for the purpose of working a barge or any other heavy craft against the tide “by means of a steam-engine of a very simple construction,” and go on to state that “the moment the engine was set to work, the barge was brought about, answering her helm quickly,” and that she made way against a strong current, at the rate of two miles and a half an hour, yet this was one more of those isolated incidents which came and went without leaving in their wake any practical result. At a later date a steamer which had been running between Bath and Bristol was brought to the London river by means of canal, and history repeated itself once more. Just as Papin and Fulton had suffered by the unwelcome attentions of the local watermen, so it was in this case. The men who earned their living on the waters of the Thames showed so strenuous an opposition that the boat had to be taken away. However, in 1815, a steamboat called the _Marjory_, one of the products of the Clyde, came round to the Thames and commenced running daily between Wapping Stairs, near the present Tower Bridge, and Gravesend; and another boat, the _Argyle_, came from the Clyde also. Both vessels were, of course, of wood, and both were propelled by paddle-wheels. The latter was afterwards re-named the _Thames_, and was the inaugurator of those voyages now so dear to the Cockney between London and Margate. After an exciting voyage from the Clyde, she steamed up the Thames from Margate to Limehouse, a distance of seventy miles, at an average of ten miles an hour. Both of these vessels were of about seventy tons burthen.