HENRY BELL, the originator of
steam navigation, was a native of Torphichen, in Linlithgowshire, where
he was born on the 7th of April, 1767. In 1790, Bell settled in Glasgow,
where he wrought as a house carpenter, and in 1797 he became a member of
the Incorporation of Wrights. It appears that in 1803 he laid his plans
for steam navigation before the British Government, and receiving no
encouragement, communicated them also to the principal governments on
the Continent, and to that of the United States. Robert Fulton, who, in
1807, made a successful experiment in the steam navigation of the
Hudson, may thus have seen the plans of Bell, and the latter, it is well
known, always asserted that such was the case.
But even in a successful
experiment Fulton had not the priority, as one Symington was, in 1801,
employed by Lord Pundits to construct a steamboat, and this vessel, when
completed, was called the Charlotte Dundas. It was tried on the
Forth and Clyde Canal, and attained a speed of six miles an hour. "The
use of this vessel," says Dr. Macquarn Rankine, was abandoned, not from
any fault in her construction or working, but because the directors of
the Forth and Clyde Canal feared that she would damage its banks."
