The first boat used by man was probably the trunk of a fallen tree, moved about by means of a broken branch or pole. Then some savage saw that a better boat could be made by tying a number of logs together to make a raft. But rafts are hard to move, so the heart of a log was hollowed out by means of a stone ax or fire, to make a still better boat, or strips of birch bark were skillfully fastened together to form a graceful canoe. Boats were constructed also of rough-hewn boards. With such primitive craft, voyages of hundreds of miles were made up and down great rivers like the Mississippi, or along the shores of inland seas like the Great Lakes.

The Phœnicians were the first great sailors. Their boats, called galleys, were sometimes two to three hundred feet long. These were of two kinds, merchantmen and war vessels. The merchantmen were propelled partly by sails and partly by oars, but on the war vessels, when in battle, oars only were used. On a single boat there were often several hundred oarsmen or galley slaves. These galley slaves were as a rule prisoners of war. They were chained to the oar benches, and to force them to row, they were often beaten within an inch of their lives. In enormous sail-and-oar vessels the Phœnicians crossed the Mediterranean in every direction, pushed out into the Atlantic Ocean, and went as far north as England.

The chief improvement in boat making, from the time of the Phœnicians until the first trip of the Clermont, was to do away with oars and to use sails only.

It was not until about fifty years before the time of Columbus that oars were generally discarded and large boats were propelled entirely by sails. Sailboats were, to be sure, a great improvement over oar boats. Yet at best they were slow and unreliable, held back alike by calm and storm. The Pilgrims were ten weeks in crossing the Atlantic, and the regular trip, in the time of Washington, required six weeks.

Boats were thus from the very earliest times important in trade and travel. For this reason it is not surprising that Watt's engine was scarcely perfected, before men tried to make it propel a boat.

The first American to attempt the propelling of a boat by steam was William Henry, a gunsmith of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 1760, Mr. Henry was in England on business. He took great interest in the talk going on then about the use of steam to drive machinery, propel boats, and the like. On his return to America, he built an engine fashioned after one of Newcomen's engines, and so placed it in a boat that it worked a number of paddles. The boat did not go well, and a little later was accidentally sunk. Though unsuccessful, Henry never lost his interest in steamboats.

The first American to propel a boat by steam successfully was John Fitch. Fitch was a frequent visitor at the home of Henry, and probably got the idea of building a steamboat from him. However that may be, Fitch built a better boat than Henry, and he is regarded by some people as the real inventor of the steamboat.

Fitch built his first boat in 1787. The engine was made in America, but was copied from that of Watt. Along each side of the boat stood two sets of three paddles. To move the boat, these were given a motion like the stroke in paddling a canoe. Six paddles entered the water, while six came out. Fitch had great difficulty in obtaining the money to build the boat, and even after it was built the boiler had to be made larger. Finally, after much delay and anxiety, all was ready for a public trial. This took place at Philadelphia. Men like Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin came to see the new wonder. It was marvelous to see a boat propelled by steam, but the speed was only three or four miles an hour, so there was no great enthusiasm over the steam oar boat.

The next year, Fitch built a second boat, with the paddles placed at the stern. But the boat could not be made to go faster than a man could walk, and it was no more of a success than the first. Fitch succeeded, however, in 1790, in making a boat sixty feet long and eight feet wide with paddles at the stern, which had a speed of seven miles an hour. After a trial at Philadelphia, it made regular trips, during the rest of the summer, between Philadelphia and Trenton running between two and three thousand miles with no serious accident. But it cost more to run the boat than the fares amounted to, and the venture failed.

Fitch found his way to New York, and might have been seen there in 1796, working on a screw steamboat. He had long since spent all his own money. Nobody would help him, and therefore the screw steamboat had to be given up. Completely discouraged, Fitch retired to a farm in Kentucky. He believed in the steamboat until the last, and was confident that the day would come when steamboats would be running on all our large rivers and across the ocean. "The day will come," said he, "when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from my invention; but now no one will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention."

Driving along the shore of the Delaware one day, John Stevens of New Jersey saw Fitch's little steamboat puffing slowly along between Philadelphia and Trenton. He followed it to the next landing and examined it with care. He had long been interested in steamboats and now decided to build one. He set to work with great energy, and by his enthusiasm he induced Robert R. Livingston of New York to share in the enterprise. After almost ten years of planning and experimenting, these men thought they were on the point of success. The boat of which they expected so much was launched in 1798. But alas! it could run only three miles an hour in still water, and was soon given up as a failure.

Stevens, undaunted, continued his experiments year after year. Model after model was made. Some of these boats had paddle wheels extending from the sides; some were propelled by a single revolving screw at the stern, and others had two screws. Stevens experimented also with different kinds of boilers. So successful was he that he came very near winning the prize that was afterwards awarded to Robert Fulton. The very next month after Fulton's first boat made its trial trip, Stevens launched the Phoenix, which was quite as good a boat as the Clermont. His screw propeller, as well as his boilers, afterwards came to be used extensively on ocean steamships. Thus, after Fulton, Stevens did more than any other man to make the steamboat a practical success.

Inventors in England were likewise busy. The most successful of these was William Symington. The money to build the trial boat was supplied by Lord Dundas, who hoped that steam might take the place of horses in towing canal barges. The Charlotte Dundas, Symington's boat, was ready for trial in 1802. She was a stern-wheeler, that is, she was propelled by a paddle wheel at the stern. An engine built by Boulton and Watt supplied the power. The new boat took two barges of seventy tons burden each, and in the face of a strong wind towed them down the canal twenty miles in six hours.

Lord Dundas was delighted. He wanted this way of towing adopted. The other owners of the canal were not convinced, however, that there would be much saved by the change, and besides, they feared that the new boat would damage the banks of the canal. Lord Dundas finally succeeded in interesting the Duke of Bridgewater, who gave Symington an order for eight boats like the Charlotte Dundas. Had these been built, Symington would to-day probably be known as the inventor of the steamboat. Unfortunately the Duke died about this time, and the boats were never built. The Charlotte Dundas  was anchored in a side creek to rot, and Symington gave up the project in despair.

Though men had been working and experimenting for many years, a practical steamboat, that is, one which could be used at a good profit to its owners, was yet to be built. There was great need of such a steamboat, and Watt's engine was strong enough to propel it. But no one seemed able to build a boat of the right shape, to make the right kind of a propeller, or to harness Watt's engine to it in the right way. So many attempts had been made, and there had been so many failures, that most men came to believe it was impossible to make a successful steamboat. The man who first succeeded in accomplishing the "impossible" was Robert Fulton.