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Instructions to Barlow regarding the “Drawings and Descriptions.” Fulton’s youth (1765–1782). Residence in England studying art (1786–1793). Change from art to engineering as a vocation (1793). Arrival in France (1798).

“... I am now busy winding up everything and will leave London about the 23rd inst. for Falmouth from whence I shall sail in the packet the first week in October and be with you, I hope, in November, perhaps about the 14th, my birthday, so you must have a roast goose ready. The packet, being well manned and provided will be more commodious and safe for an autumn passage, and I think there will be little or no risk; at least I prefer taking all the risk there is to idling here a winter. But although there is not much risk, yet accidents may happen, and that the produce of my studies and experience may not be lost to my country, I have made out a complete set of drawings and descriptions of my whole system of submarine attack.... These with my will, I shall put in a tin cylinder, sealed and leave them in the care of General Lyman, not to be opened unless I am lost. Should such an event happen, I have left you the means to publish these works, with engravings, in a handsome manner, and to which you will add your own ideas—showing how the liberty of the seas may be gained by such means.”

Thus Robert Fulton wrote to Joel Barlow who had been his close friend and faithful guide since his arrival in Paris in 1797. The letter of which the above is but an extract is dated London, September, 1806, and was written, as the context shows, on the eve of his final departure from England, after a residence abroad of nearly twenty years. General Lyman to whom he referred had been appointed American Consul in London in 1805, in which capacity he served until he died in 1811.

Joel Barlow was in his day a person of considerable importance. Born in 1754, in Connecticut, educated at Dartmouth and Yale, he first studied theology and then law. Though he practised these professions in turn for a short time, he retired from both to devote himself to literature. In 1788, he went to London and Paris to market some lands in Ohio, an unfortunate undertaking. While in Europe, he became interested in liberal politics, even to the extent of standing as a candidate for election to the French Convention of 1793. After having acquired a competence in commerce, and after a short but highly creditable service as American Consul at Algiers, he returned to Paris and resumed his literary life, his principal production being a poem entitled, “The Columbiad.” In 1805, he returned to America, remaining there until 1811, when he was appointed American Commissioner to Emperor Napoleon. He joined the latter at Vilna in 1812, during the Russian campaign and, as the result of exposure to inclement conditions on the disastrous retreat from Moscow in the same year, died in Poland on Christmas eve. Barlow was enough older than Fulton to be accepted not only as a friend, but as a counsellor, while his character, experience and views on world questions appealed to the enthusiastic younger American in whom there was curiously blended a high development of an artistic temperament and scientific genius, and who was in thorough sympathy with the extreme liberal movement of the period that Barlow to some extent approved.

When Fulton arrived in Paris in 1797, he at once called on Barlow. The two men were mutually attracted and there soon sprang up an intimacy that was to develop into the most affectionate friendship. This intimacy has been compared to that existing between father and son, or rather between parents and son because Mrs. Barlow joined with her husband in taking Fulton into their lives. This they did the more readily as they had no children of their own. As evidence of the relation, they gave Fulton the nickname of “Toot.”

Cadwallader D. Colden, in his biographical memoir of Fulton, finds no fitter words to describe this friendship than by quoting as he says, “the warm language of one who participated in the sentiments expressed.” From this description of the quotation by Colden, it is evident that the words were those of Mrs. Barlow herself, who was still alive when Colden was writing the memoir in 1817. The quotation that Colden gives is as follows:

Here commenced that strong affection, that devoted attachment, that real friendship which subsisted in a most extraordinary degree between Mr. Barlow and Mr. Fulton during their lives. Soon after Mr. Fulton’s arrival in Paris, Mr. Barlow removed to his own hotel and invited Mr. Fulton to reside with him. Mr. Fulton lived seven years in Mr. Barlow’s family, during which time he learnt the French and something of the Italian and German languages. He also studied the high mathematics, chymistry and perspective, and acquired that science which, when united with his uncommon natural genius, gave him so great a superiority over many of those who, with some talents but without any sort of science, have pretended to be his rivals.

The house in which the Barlows lived in Paris and where Fulton lived with them for much of the time, was No. 59, Rue Vaugirard. The above quotation gives a suggestion of what the Barlows must have been to Fulton during his struggles in a foreign land, with visions of success almost attained alternating with bitter disappointments. It was but natural that the affection of Joel Barlow should be reciprocated and, consequently, when facing in 1806 the then not inconsiderable danger of a transatlantic voyage, it was to Barlow that he entrusted the task of publishing the results of the discoveries and of his labors, should he be lost at sea.

Fulton, as we know, reached America safely and, therefore, Barlow was not called on to publish the “drawings and descriptions” that Fulton had left behind in England. Due to the fact that Fulton lived for some years and became very prominent in the successful development of steam navigation, the drawings and accompanying manuscripts of a device that had not attained practical recognition seemed to have for the moment comparatively small value or importance and were put aside, perhaps after the death of Consul Lyman. They made no appearance until 1870, when they were sold at auction by a Mr. Andrews of Swarland Hall, Felton, Northumberland, and apparently without attracting any comment. Then for a period of 50 years, they rested quietly and unknown to the general public in the family of the purchaser. In 1920, they once more changed owners and passed into the possession of the writer. Now after a lapse of 116 years, the request of Fulton to his dearest friend, Barlow, a request that he realized when he made it might be his last, will be complied with, and the interesting story of his work through several years be made of record.

Could Fulton have foreseen the development that his conception of submarine navigation would attain, it is well within the limit of probability that he would have preferred that publication of his plans be withheld until the basic principle had reached its present status of complete application. Though he lived more than eight years after writing his letter to Barlow, he made no effort to publish his plans, nor did he in any of his subsequent writings refer to his submarine idea nor what he had done in England. Apparently his sole thought of publishing was in the event of his being lost at sea on his return. If he could not carry his conception of submarine attack into actual execution, he apparently preferred that his plans be allowed to rest quietly in some English private library until the idea that he had espoused had taken actual practical form, and the principles that he advocated had been proved true. Absorbed at first on his return to America in the construction of his steamboat, perhaps he realized in the interval between 1806 and his death in 1815, that the world was not yet ready to receive the innovation of sub-surface navigation, that the state of the art of engine construction had not yet been advanced sufficiently to render the theory feasible and, consequently, that publication might have detracted from his fame as an engineer by apparently showing that he was a dreamer. Sometimes it is a misfortune to be ahead of the times. Better to wait until proved facts entitle one to be accorded praise as a man of vision, rather than through premature publication to be classed as a visionary man.

Robert Fulton was born on the 14th November, 1765, on his father’s farm on Conowingo Creek in Little Britain Township, Pennsylvania. His father, Robert Fulton, Sr., was of Scottish descent. To his mother, Mary Smith, a woman of force and intelligence, young Robert owed his early education, and from her he derived the personal qualities that were to make him distinguished. His father was not successful as a farmer, so that when he died in 1768 he left his widow and five children in very straightened circumstances. Of the five children, three were girls, and of the boys, Robert was the elder.

This story is not concerned with the history of the Fulton family which has been thoroughly set forth by others, except to recall those salient steps in Robert’s career that led to his investigation of the possibilities of submarine navigation, and the designing of a boat to accomplish the end so far as the then state of the art of boat and engine construction would permit.

At school he did not excel in his studies which he neglected for sketching and mechanical experiments. When he was seventeen years of age, he set out to make his own career. As the village of Lancaster, where he was living with his mother, offered narrowly limited opportunities, he went to Philadelphia, then in many respects the most important city in the colonies. Not much is known of his early struggles, though apparently he devoted part of his time to art, because the City Directory in 1786, puts him down as a miniature painter, and some of his miniatures are in existence. Under the patronage of Benjamin Franklin, he made progress and earned enough money to purchase a farm for his mother.

But the spirit that was within him—the spirit that was to record his name indelibly in history—led him to think of the greater world that lay beyond the colonies, even though the colonies were at last successful in their struggle for independence and were then engaged in the equally difficult and more prolonged struggle to weld themselves into a nation. In 1786, he sailed for England provided only with a letter from his protector, Franklin, to Benjamin West. At that time West was approaching the height of his career as painter in London, being chosen president of the Royal Academy in 1792. Under the guidance of and probable instruction by West, Fulton made progress as an artist, the Royal Academy accepting some of his pictures.

The path of a young artist is rarely a smooth one. It is no smoother when the young artist is working in a foreign land without fame, friends or private means. What Fulton did and how he lived in London during the first four years of his stay in England, is best told by himself in his own words, in a letter to his mother under date of January 20, 1792, a letter given at full length by Dickenson.

... And I must now Give Some little history of my life since I Came to London. I Brought not more than 40 Guineas to England and was set down in a strange Country without a friend and only one letter of Introduction to Mr. West—here I had an art to learn by which I was to earn my bread but little to support whilst I was doing it And numbers of Eminent Men of the same profession which I must Excell before I Could hope to live—, Many Many a Silant solitary hour have I spent in the most unnerved Studdy Anxiously pondering how to make funds to support me till the fruits of my labours should sifficant to repay them. Thus I went on for near four years—happily beloved by all who knew me or I had long ear now been Crushed by Poverties Cold wind—and Freezing Rain—till last Summer I was Invited by Lord Courtney down to his Country seat to paint a picture of him which gave his Lordship so much pleasure that he has introduced me to all his Friends—And it is but just now that I am beginning to get a little money and pay some debtt which I was obliged to Contract so I hope in about 6 months to be clear with the world or in other words out of debt and then start fair to Make all I Can.

In 1793, when he was on the very threshold of a successful career as an artist, he suddenly, and without any explanation that is known, gave up the art of painting and turned to the science of engineering as his life’s vocation. It is an interesting fact that two great American engineers—Fulton who made steam navigation practical, and Morse who did the same for the electric telegraph—were both artists before they became engineers. The only hint as to the cause of his change of occupation is given by himself in the introduction to his first and greatest literary production, “A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation,” which appeared in 1796. In this introduction he said: “On perusing a paper descriptive of a canal projected by the Earl of Stanhope in 1793, where many difficulties seem to arise, my thoughts were first awakened to this subject.”

But Fulton in 1796 was something more than an author and investigator of canals. He was at that date actually in the field as a practicing engineer as is shown by a printed report, dated London, November 24th, 1796, addressed to “Sir Francis Buller, Bart. and the Gentlemen interested in the Helston Canal.” This report is of particular interest in that it is not recorded in any Fulton bibliography and no copy is to be found in the British Museum, or in the Congressional or other American public libraries. Perhaps the copy lying before the writer is the sole survivor. The edition was undoubtedly very small and the few copies, as soon as immediate interest was lost, were likely to be thrown aside as of no value. The title page is reproduced in facsimile on the opposite page.

Now as an addition to the Fulton bibliography, this, his second book and first published account of his own engineering work, is of importance and merits a brief description.

The pamphlet consists of fifteen pages, those of the copy referred to measuring 4⅞ by 7¾ inches, with an engraved map 10¾ by 7¾ inches, showing the route of the proposed canal from the headwaters of St. Ives Bay to the navigable waters of the Helford River in Cornwall.

The report possesses no scientific or constructive value. It presents neither plans nor details, except estimates of cost and earnings, obviously imperfect. Had Sir Francis and his friends followed the advice of their professional advisor, it is probable that they would have suffered financial disappointment. The report, however, is full of a young man’s optimistic hopes, a spirit of altruism and a plea for economy. These are sentiments that always actuated Fulton and frequently find expression in his other writings. It is not impossible, in fact it is quite probable, that a desire to be of tangible service to others was one of the compelling reasons that led him to devote himself to construction rather than to art. The underlying thought on which this report is based is shown by the following extracts in which Fulton after pointing out how in his professional opinion he believes that the operations of this enterprise will be lucrative, gives his own views of such undertakings as follows:

But I hope the gentlemen of Cornwall will view them in a better light; and, considering them as of national utility, contemplate the infinite advantages they give to the numerous operations of society....

In such investigation, if by a facility in carriage I find the expence of manure reduced, I then see that the farmer may improve more land, give a greater polish to his estates, and nourish agriculture to the benefit of the mass of society and the emolument of his landlord....

In towns, if the grocers, carpenters, ironmongers, or other tradesmen, have the carriage of their commodities reduced, they or their customers are benefitted; and so on in all professions where much carriage is required. If the housekeeper or cottager have their coals reduced, the comfort becomes more extended. In fact there is no point in which a canal can be viewed but it exhibits advantages to the mass of the people; and for an evident reason, because all improvements which reduce manual labour, or which give a greater produce with the same quantity of labour, will render the conveniences of life more abundant, cheap and diffused....

By 1786, Fulton had definitely devoted himself to canal engineering, or, as he says himself in the Report of the Board of Commissioners of the Western Canal, published at Albany and dated February 22, 1814:

I passed three years at various canals in England to obtain practical knowledge on the manner of constructing them and to make myself familiar with their advantages.

With Fulton’s work on canals, his designs for inclined planes to take the place of locks, his financial difficulties and his acquaintance with the Earl of Stanhope, the present story has no concern, except as such work is the intermediate step in Fulton’s career between art and mechanical navigation.

That Fulton was sorely pressed as to money in these days, the following extract from a long letter addressed to Lord Stanhope, and given in full in Dickenson’s “Robert Fulton,” clearly proves:

Works of this kind Require much time, Patience and application. And till they are Brought About, Penury frequently Presses hard on the Projector; And this My Lord is so much my Case at this Moment, That I am now Sitting Reduced to half a Crown, Without knowing Where to obtain a shilling for some months. This my Lord is an awkward sensation to a feeling Mind, which would devote every minuet to Increase the Comforts of Mankind. And Who on Looking Round Sees thousands nursed in the Lap of fortune, grown to maturity, And now Spending their time In the endless Maze of Idle dissipation. Thus Circumstanced My Lord, would it be an Intrusion on your goodness and Philanthropy to Request the Loan of 20 guineas Which I will Return as Soon as possible. And the favour shall ever be greetfully Acknowledged By your lordship’s

Most obliged

Robert Fulton

In 1797, Fulton conceived the idea of making a short trip to France and then returning to America. From various letters he appears to have had expectations, or perhaps they were only hopes, that he could find opportunity to apply his canal ideas in his own country. Accordingly, the summer of 1797 finds him in France en route for America. But instead of tarrying for a few weeks as he had in mind, he remained seven fruitful and critical years.

In France he began at once to devote himself, as he had been doing in England, to the development of small canals, republishing in French his “Treatise on Canals” under the title, “Recherches sur les Moyens de Perfectionner les Canaux de Navigation, etc.” It bore date an 7, the French revolutionary equivalent to 1799, and contained not only all the matter of the English edition of 1796, but also new material of particular application to France. In 1798, he was granted a French patent for certain details of canal construction, and in the same year attempted to secure the interest of Napoleon in the utilization of his ideas. The letter in which he makes the attempt was written in French, and a copy made by Fulton is now preserved in the New York Public Library.^[1]

To General Bounaparte

Citizen General

Citizen Perier having advised me that you desire to know of my work on the System of Small Canals, I take the liberty of presenting you a copy of that book, only too happy if you will find therein some means of improving the industry of the French Republic.

Of all the causes of War, every day, it is true, sees those disappear which appertain to the existence of kings, priests and all that accompany them. But, nevertheless, republics will not be free of these lamentable properties so long as they do not free themselves from the erroneous systems of exclusive commerce and distant possessions. It is therefore a reason for every man who loves his fellows to endeavor to destroy these errors. Even ambition cannot seek a greater glory than in pointing out to men the path of truth and removing obstacles that impede nations from arriving at a durable peace. What glory can stand against time if it does not receive the approval of philosophy? In order to free nations, Citizen Bounaparte, you have executed vast enterprises and the glory with which you are covered should be as permanent as time itself. Who then can support with more efficacious approbation, projects which contribute to the general welfare? It is with this idea that I submit to you my work, hoping that if you find therein any useable truths that you will deign to support them with an influence as powerful as your own, and in effect to patronize projects the execution of which should render millions of men happy. Can there be for virtuous genius a more delicious reward? It is from this point of view that interior improvements and freedom of commerce are of the highest importance.

Should success crown the efforts of France against England, there will remain but gloriously to terminate this long war, to give freedom to commerce and make other powers adopt the system. Political liberty will then acquire that degree of perfection and breadth of which it is susceptible and philosophy will see with joy the olive branch of an eternal peace shade the course of science and industry.

This letter possesses two great points of interest. One that it marks the first approach of Fulton to Napoleon, leading as will be seen below to a far more important suggestion than that of building small canals; and the other that it is animated by an intense desire for French success over England. That this was in the beginning Fulton’s hope is to be borne in mind when, as will be shown, having developed in 1804 the opposite or pro-British sympathy, he lived and worked during two years in England for the destruction of Napoleon’s power though perhaps not of French ascendancy. The letter speaks of a “lasting peace.” That is something that the same nations a century and a quarter later are still seeking.

How delightfully charming and naïve is Fulton’s confidence that his picture of an altruistic ambition would excite a sympathetic emotion in Bonaparte. If Napoleon read the letter he must have smiled at Fulton’s enthusiastic simplicity.

Fulton’s leaning to French views at this time is explained by the fact that in politics he was intensely republican, in fact, somewhat extreme, a position that was undoubtedly encouraged and strengthened by his mentor, Barlow, who we have seen was a candidate for the celebrated Convention of 1793. This same leaning very likely influenced his remaining in France, rather than undertaking his contemplated return to his native land, because at this period his political ideals seemed more probable of realization in the former than in the latter country.