Comet (1813 steamboat)

The steamboat Comet was the second steamboat to navigate the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.[1] Comet's owner was Daniel D. Smith and she was launched in 1813 at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[2][3] With an engine and power train designed and built by Daniel French, the Comet was the first of the Western steamboats to be powered by a horizontal high-pressure engine with its piston rod connected to a stern paddle wheel.[4][5] Smith was the first to defy the steamboat monopoly in Orleans Territory granted to Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton.

History
United States
Name:	Comet
Owner:	Daniel D. Smith
Builder:	The Comet was built and launched at Pittsburgh. Daniel French designed and built the engine and power train at Brownsville.
Laid down:	Winter, 1813
Launched:	Spring, 1813
In service:	June, 1813
Out of service:	After July 3, 1814
Fate:	Decommissioned after engine was removed.
Notes:	The Comet was the second steamboat to navigate the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Daniel D. Smith was the first to defy the steamboat monopoly in Orleans Territory granted to Livingston and Fulton.
General characteristics
Length:	52 ft (15.8 m)
Beam:	8 ft (2.4 m)
Propulsion:	One steam engine One paddlewheel at stern

Pittsburgh

Daniel French built Comet's steam engine and drive train at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, and installed them in the steamboat at Pittsburgh prior to July 13, 1813, her first voyage.[6][7] The Pittsburgh Gazette announced that Comet had departed Pittsburgh for Louisville, Kentucky, on July 13:

"The Steam Boat COMET, lately built at this place by Mr. Smith, sailed on Tuesday last for Louisville, in Kentucky. She is intended as a regular packet between this place and the Falls of Ohio, and is handsomely fitted up for the accommodation of passengers."[8]

On September 7, 1813, Robert Fulton wrote to John Livingston at Pittsburgh requesting specific information about the Comet.[9] In October 1813 a public notice was published in The Pittsburgh Gazette:

"TO THE PUBLIC. FULTON & LIVINGSTON, have ordered a suit to be brought against Daniel French, and the owners of the Steam Boat COMET, for a violation of the essential part of their patent. When good boats, such as are now constructing in every part of the United States, can be built under Fulton and Livingston's undoubted patent rights, persons should be cautious of involving themselves in a labyrinth of expensive and tedious law suits. The infraction of their rights, in the State of New-York, cost a company their boats, damages and expenses, amounting to sixty thousand dollars, and was the ruin of many of the parties concerned. FULTON & LIVINGSTON. October 14, 1813" [10]

On November 11, 1813, Fulton wrote to Livingston at Pittsburgh:

"As to Mr. Smith and his steam boat I must attack him where he does me damage there is no damage in making a steam boat the damage is in using her to the detriment of the original inventor"[11]

No trial date was entered in the docket book at the Allegheny County Courthouse. Apparently, the threatened lawsuit was not pursued.[12]

New Orleans

After steaming from Pittsburgh to the port of New Orleans, the Comet was entered for the first time in the New Orleans Wharf Register on February 25, 1814.[13] Payment of the wharfage fee, in the amount of "$6", for the "Steam Boat, Capt. Lake" was recorded.[13] Subsequent entries in the New Orleans Wharf Register, on March 15, April 7, May 2 and July 3, 1814, identified the Comet as "Steam Boat (Lake)", with a wharfage fee of $6.[13]

Citations

1. Lloyd (1856), p. 42:
   "The second steamboat of the West was a diminutive vessel called the Comet. She was rated at twenty-five tons. Daniel D. Smith was the owner, and D. French the builder of this boat. Her machinery was on a plan for which French had obtained a patent in 1809. She went to Louisville in the summer of 1813, and descended to New Orleans in the spring of 1814. She afterwards made two voyages to Natchez, and was then sold, taken to pieces, and the engine was put up in a cotton factory."
2. Morrison, p. 202-3:
   "In 1813, Daniel French, of Pittsburg, Pa., altered a river barge, giving her more freeboard by building up her sides, into which he placed an engine constructed by himself. This vessel was about twenty-five tons burden, called the 'Comet,' and was owned by Daniel D. Smith. She went as far as Louisville in the summer of the same year, and during the next year went to New Orleans. She made a few voyages between the latter city and Natchez, after which she was sold, her engine taken out and put up in a cotton mill, and her hull broken up."
3. Miller, p. 69:
   "In the summer of 1813, Daniel D. Smith altered a river barge at Pittsburgh, using an engine invented by Daniel French. The craft, called the Comet, was sent down to New Orleans and also made a few trips to Natchez, but apparently was unsuccessful in the trade..."
4. Daniel French granted US Patent (October 9, 1809), Propulsion of Vessels, 1791–1810, US Patent Office Scientific
5. Hunter (1993), p. 127:
   "The first departure from the Boulton and Watt type of engine was the French oscillating cylinder engine with which the first three steamboats built by the Brownsville group were equipped- the Comet (25 tons, 1813), the Despatch (25 tons, 1814), and the Enterprise (75 tons, 1814). The first of these was not a success, and the Despatch made no name for herself; but the Enterprise was one of the best of the early western steamboats."
6. Congressional Edition, Volume 2552 (1889), p. 188:
   "In the mean while, however, several other steam-boats had been built. The Comet was constructed at Pittsburgh in 1813, 52 feet long and 8 feet beam, with 50 to 60 pounds of steam per inch, and 20 to 30 strokes a minute."
7. Congressional Edition, Volume 2552 (1889), p. 193:
   "The first high-pressure engine was built in 1813, by French, at Brownsville, Pa., and was placed on the Comet. It was an oscillating engine, but not working well, was taken out and placed in saw-mill at Natchez in 1814."
8. Pittsburgh Gazette, 16 July 1813
9. Kunz, p. 29:
   "142 Autograph letter from Robert Fulton to John Livingston, dated New York, September 7th, 1813, with inquiries as to the build, capacity and services of the Comet and instructions regarding vouchers for expenditures for the New Orleans boats, etc.
   Loaned from the Estate of Cornelia Livingston Crary."
10. Pittsburgh Gazette, 29 October and 6 November 1813
11. Image of Robert Fulton's letter of November 11, 1813 to John Livingston
12. Prothonotary, County of Allegheny, First Floor City County Building, 414 Grant St., Pittsburgh, PA 15219-2469, Old Docket Book
13. New Orleans Wharf Register

References

• Congressional Edition, Volume 2552 (1889). The executive documents of the House of Representatives for the first session of the Fiftieth Congress, 1887-'88. Washington: Government Printing Office
• Cox, Thomas H. (2009). Gibbons v. Ogden, law, and society in the early republic. Ohio, Athens: Ohio University Press, 264 pages.
• Henshaw, Marc Nicholas (2014). "Hog chains and Mark Twains: a study of labor history, archaeology, and industrial ethnography of the steamboat era of the Monongahela Valley 1811-1950." Dissertation, Michigan Technological University
• Hunter, Louis C. (1993), Steamboats on the western rivers, an economic and technological history. New York: Dover Publications
• Johnson, Leland R. (2011). "Harbinger of Revolution", in Full steam ahead: reflections on the impact of the first steamboat on the Ohio River, 1811-2011. Rita Kohn, editor. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, pp. 1–16. ISBN 978-0-87195-293-6
• Kunz, George Frederick (1910). Hudson-Fulton celebration: a collection of the catalogues issued by the museums and institutions in New York City and vicinities. New York: Trow Press.
• Lloyd, James T. (1856), Lloyd's steamboat directory, and disasters on the western waters..., Philadelphia: Jasper Harding
• Miller, Ernest C., '"Pennsylvania's oil industry", Pennsylvania History Studies, No. 4, Pennsylvania History Association, Gettysburg, Pa. 1954-1974
• Morrison, John Harrison (1908). History of American steam navigation. New York: W. F. Sametz
• New Orleans Wharf Register
  A handwritten document (mostly in French) recording the date of arrival, name, type and fee for each boat in the port of New Orleans. Registration was suspended from December 16, 1814 until January 28, 1815.
  New Orleans Public Library, 219 Loyola Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70112-2044
  Call number: QN420 1806-1823, New Orleans (La.) Collector of Levee Dues. Registers of flatboats, barges, rafts, and steamboats in the port of New Orleans, 1806-1823.