experimenters in Europe. In 1804 an eight-mile trip which Fulton
made on the Charlotte Dundas in an hour and twenty minutes
established his faith in the undeniable superiority of two
fundamental factors of early navigation--paddle wheels and
British
engines. Fulton's splendid fame rests, and rightly so, on his
perception of the fact that no mere ingenuity of design could
counterbalance weakness, uncertainty, and inefficiency in the
mechanism which was intended to make a steamboat run and keep
running. As early as November, 1803, Fulton had written to
Boulton and Watt of Birmingham that he had "not confidence in any
other engines" than theirs and that he was seeking a means of
getting one of those engines to America. "I cannot establish the
boat without the engine," he now emphatically wrote to James
Monroe, then Ambassador to the Court of St. James. "The question
then is shall we or shall we not have such boats."

But there were difficulties in the way. Though England forbade
the exportation of engines, Fulton knew that, in numerous
instances, this rule had not been enforced, and he had hopes of
success. "The British Government," Fulton wrote Monroe, "must
have little friendship or even civility toward America, if they
refuse such a request." Before the steamboat which Fulton and
Livingston proposed to build in America could be operated there
was another obstacle to be surmounted. The rights of steam
navigation of New York waters which Livingston had obtained on
the death of Fitch in 1798 had lapsed because of his failure to
run a steamboat at the rate of four miles an hour, which was one
provision of the grant. In April, 1803, the grant was renewed to
Livingston, Roosevelt, and Fulton jointly for another period of