In Bourne’s _Inventions and Devices_, published in 1578, is the first mention of paddlewheels (so far as we know) in any English book. By the placing of certain wheels on the outside of the boat, he says, and “so turning the wheels by some provision,” the boat may be made to go. And then he proceeds to mention the inversion of the paddlewheel, or the paddlewheel which is driven, as distinguished from the paddlewheel which drives. “They make a watermill in a boat, for when that it rideth at an anker, the tide or stream will turn the wheels with great force, and these mills are used in France,” etc. It is possible, indeed, that this was the prior form, and that the earliest paddlewheel was a mill and not primarily a means of propelling the vessel. Early in the seventeenth century the mechanical sciences began to develop rapidly and as the century advanced the flood of patents for the propulsion of ships increased. “To make boats, ships, and barges to go against the wind and tide”; “the drawing and working of barges and other vessels without the use of horses”; “for making vessels to navigate in a straight line with all winds though contrary”; these are some of the patents granted, the details of which are not known. At last the ingenious Marquis of Worcester, who in 1663 was granted a patent for his steam engine, also obtained a patent for an invention for propelling a vessel against wind and stream. It has sometimes been inferred that this invention was connected in some way with the steam engine, and the claim has been made that the Marquis was one of the first authors of steam propulsion. This is not so. Contained in the description of the ship-propelling invention are two statements which dispose completely of the theory that steam was the motive force; first, that the “force of the wind or stream causeth its (the engine’s) motion”; secondly, that “the more rapid the stream, the faster it (the vessel) advances against it.” From this it appears that the Marquis intended to utilize the watermill as described by Bourne. From a study of the description of the apparatus it has been concluded that “a rope fastened at one end up the stream, and at the other to the axis of waterwheels lying across the boat, and dipping into the water so as to be turned by the wheels, would fulfil the conditions proposed of advancing the boat faster, the more rapid the stream; and when at anchor such wheels might have been applied to other purposes.”[133] If this reconstruction is correct, the scope of the propelling device was very limited.