steamboat needed improvement to make it pay; its backers lost
patience and faith, and the inventor gave up the fight and
retired into the fastnesses of the Kentucky wilderness, where he
died.

The next inventor to struggle with the problem of the steamboat,
with any approach to success, was John Stevens of Hoboken. His
life was cast in a vastly different environment from that of John
Fitch. He was a rich man, a man of family and of influence. His
father's house--afterwards his own---at 7 Broadway, facing
Bowling Green--was one of the mansions of early New York, and his
own summer residence on Castle Point, Hoboken, just across the
Hudson, was one of the landmarks of the great river. For many
years John Stevens crossed that river; most often in an open boat
propelled by sail or by men at the oars. Being naturally of a
mechanical turn, he sought to make the crossing easier. To his
library were coming the prints that told of James Watt and the
steam engine in England, and John Fitch's boat had interested
him.

Robert Fulton's Clermont, of which we shall speak presently, was
undoubtedly the pioneer of practicable steamboats. But the
Phoenix, built by John Stevens, followed close on the Clermont.
And its engines were built in America, while those of the
Clermont had been imported from England. Moreover, in June, 1808,
the Phoenix stood to sea, and made the first ocean voyage in the
history of steam navigation. Because of a monopoly of the Hudson,
which the New York Legislature had granted to Livingston and
Fulton, Stevens was compelled to send his ship to the Delaware.
Hence the trip out into the waters of the Atlantic, a journey