The frame had been too weak to support
the weight of the heavy machinery.
Having discovered just what was wrong in this first attempt, Fulton built
another steamboat soon after his return to America, in 1806. This boat was
one hundred and thirty feet long, eighteen feet wide, with mast and sail,
and had on each side a wheel fifteen feet across.
On the morning of the day in August, 1807, set for the trial of the
Clermont--as Fulton called his boat--an expectant throng of curious
onlookers gathered on the banks of the North, or Hudson, River, at New
York. Everybody was looking for failure. For though Fitch's boats had made
trips in the Delaware only some twenty years earlier, the fact did not
seem to be generally known. People had all along spoken of Fulton as a
half-crazy dreamer and had called his boat "Fulton's Folly." "Of course,
the thing will not move," said one scoffer. "That any man with common
sense well knows," another replied. And yet they all stood watching for
Fulton's signal to start the boat.
[Illustration: The "Clermont" in Duplicate at the Hudson-Fulton
Celebration, 1909.]
The signal is given. A slight tremor of motion and the boat is still.
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