Fitch sailed a scrczv steamer on the old collect pond in New York before the Clermont was built ; but both Rumsey and Fitch died before their tasks were accomplished. Then there were Ormsbee, Morey, and others, busy with experiments. The thing was so evidently in the air that it would have been almost a miracle if a busy brain like Fulton's had not caught the infection. When Fulton took up the problem of steam navigation he was fortunate in having as his coadjutor one of the remarkable men of his time. The Honourable Robert R. Livingston was one of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, he was a member of the committee that framed the first constitution of New York, was the first Chancellor of the State and forever to be remembered as having administered the oath of office to the first President of the United States. Livingston, who had himself experimented with steam navigation, fell in with Fulton when he was in France as American Minister. They became acquainted about 1802, and were soon mutually engrossed in the plans for a steamboat which was made under Fulton's immediate supervision. In the following year the contrivance was completed. It had been built at their joint expense, but we do not find that then or after-

Fulton and the Hudson River Steamboat 121

wards Livingston was practically engaged in the actual labour of invention or construction. His connection seems rather to have been that of a business partner or backer. Preparations for a trial of their boat in the Seine were interrupted by the collapse of the contrivance, which broke in two and sunk in the river. Fulton succeeded, however, in raising the wreck, and, having repaired the hull, proceeded to demonstrate his theory. The trial was pronounced a success and the partners agreed to construct a larger boat on the Hudson River.