Abstract
IN the story of man's struggle with the forces of Nature, there are few more fascinating chapter than that relating to the conquest of the Atlantié by steam. To cross the western ocean is an every. day affair, and except that no ship can be built that will not roll and pitch amidst the great waves of an ocean swept by gales for more than half the year, travellers are carried in comfort and luxury and with regularity and dispatch undreamt of a century ago. The first ever to carry passengers by steamboat, to form a steamboat company, and to advertise his project, was John Fitch, whose experiments were made on the Delaware and who died in 1798. There were many other pioneers, but of them all, Fitch alone en. visaged the future of steam on the western ocean, and with prophetic vision wrote of steam naviga tion that “The Grand and Principle Object must be on the Atlantick, which would soon overspread the wild forests of America with people, and make us the most oppulent Empire on Earth”.
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Ships of the Atlantic Ferry. Nature 124, 677–678 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124677a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124677a0