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October 24-30, 1814

Robert Fulton Launches the First Steam Warship

By 1810, the British Empire had embarked on an attempt to recapture the former colonies which had been lost to the Empire by the successful American Revolution. British ships were actively harassing American commerce, and the British Navy was kidnapping American seamen from their ships and forcing them into British military service. In this crisis, the leading American inventors who had been dealing with steam navigation advocated the development of steam-powered warships.

Oliver Evans, who had designed the first fully-automated flour mill, and was about to build steamboats for the Ohio River, proposed warships with armored decks. John Stevens, who had invented the screw propeller for steamships, proposed a sophisticated design that was eventually brought to fruition by his son just before the Civil War. And Robert Fulton, after the success of his steamboat on the Hudson River, began turning his thoughts to the designs for torpedoes and submarines which he had developed in France.

By early 1810, Fulton was giving a series of lectures in Washington, D.C. on the subject of the "Mechanism, Practice and Effects of Torpedoes. His talks were well-attended by U.S. Senators and Representatives, who subsequently allocated $5,000 for the Navy Department to conduct research on the subject. In 1813, Fulton patented the Columbiad gun, which fired below the surface of the water in order to hit enemy ships below the waterline. Fulton's largest project, however, was the design and construction of a massive steam-powered warship which could defend America's harbors.

When the War of 1812 began, the memory of the disastrous British occupation of New York City during the Revolution was still fresh in people's minds. Using the present technology, there seemed to be no way to defend the harbor and city against the awesome power of the British fleet. But Robert Fulton was instrumental in forming the Coast and Harbor Defense Association, which contracted to build a steam warship at the cost of $320,000, provided that Congress would reimburse the group when the ship succeeded. In March 1814, Congress so agreed. Fulton also contracted to build a similar ship to protect the City of Baltimore and its harbor.

Building a large ship of any kind was a very difficult undertaking, because the British Navy had blockaded the American coast, so no imported goods could reach America, and no material could be moved up or down the coast by water. All supplies had to move laboriously on wagons, utilizing the very primitive American roads. Nevertheless, Fulton worked night and day to gather the materials, and the keel of his new ship was laid on June 29, 1814. By Oct. 29, the warship, without its armaments and engine, was ready to be launched. Fulton named it the Demologos (Word or Spirit of the People), but the Navy christened it as the Fulton the First.

Fulton designed the first steam warship in the world with a double hull, measuring 167 feet long, 56 feet wide, and 13 feet deep, weighing 2,475 tons. He anticipated the basic principle of the ironclad by building her sides and deck of five-foot-thick lumber, which protected the paddle wheel between the twin hulls. For armament, he called for thirty 32-pounders shooting red-hot shot, and added a hose attached to a steam pump which could spray the enemy decks, forcing the sailors below and wetting the guns so they could not fire. The ship's engine was to have 120 horsepower.

The British were keeping a close watch on the development of the ship, and the exaggerated press accounts in Europe reflected their growing fears. The Edinburgh Evening Courant reported the warship's capabilities as follows: "Length on deck, three hundred feet; breadth two hundred feet; thickness of her sides, thirteen feet of alternate oak plank and cork wood—carries forty-four guns, four of which are hundred pounders; quarter-deck and forecastle guns, forty-four pounders; and further to annoy an enemy attempting to board, can discharge one hundred gallons of boiling water in a minute, and by mechanism, brandishes three hundred cutlasses with the utmost regularity over her gunwales; works also an equal number of heavy iron pikes of great length, darting them from her sides with prodigious force, and withdrawing them every quarter of a minute!"

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