After men had learned to carry their burdens on the broad back of the ocean, boat-building took on new life. All the great nations of Europe wanted a share in the new world that had just been found; but no nation could hope to profit greatly by the discovery of Columbus if its vessels were not swift and strong. So there arose a grim contest for the mastery of the Atlantic, just as in ancient times there had been a struggle for the mastery of the Mediterranean. Spain, France, Portugal, Holland and England all joined in the battle. When we see the kind of boats she sent out upon the oceans we are not surprised that England won. Compare the heavy, angular galley of the first century with the graceful ship of the sixteenth century and we see at once the progress the boat made in the Middle Ages (Fig. 14).
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--THE GREAT HARRY.]
The log, the raft, the galley, the sailing-ship, these were the steps in the development of the boat up to the end of the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century another step was taken. You remember that in that century inventors were everywhere trying to make a steam carriage. They were at the same time trying to make a steam boat. Their efforts to use steam to drive boats were rewarded with success earlier than were their efforts to use it to draw carriages. This was to be expected. Boat-building has always moved along faster than carriage-building. Men were gliding about in well-built canoes before they had even the clumsiest of carts. The Londoners who gazed with admiration upon the _Great Harry_ as it sailed on the Thames, had never seen as much as a lumbering coach. And so with the steamboat; it had crossed the Atlantic before the locomotive could carry passengers from one town to the next.
France, England, Germany and America were all eager to have the first steamboat. In this race America won, although France and England came out with their colors flying. As far back as 1663 the Marquis of Worcester, of whom we have heard before (p. 59), described a vessel that could be moved by steam: "It roweth," he said, "it draweth, it driveth (if needs be) to pass London bridge against the stream at low water." It was one thing, however, to describe a steamboat, and quite another thing to make one. Worcester's steam-vessel existed only in the imagination of the inventor. Denys Papin, who did so much for the steam-engine, fitted out a boat with revolving paddles which were turned by horses. This was nothing new. The ancient Roman galley was sometimes propelled by paddle-wheels turned by horses or oxen. It is sometimes claimed that Papin turned the paddle-wheels of his boat by means of steam, but there are no grounds for the claim. If France wants the honor of having made the first steamboat she would do better to turn from Papin and look to Marquis of Jouffroy of Lyons, This nobleman, it is claimed, built a steamboat (Fig. 15) which made a successful trip on the river Soane, in the year 1783, before a multitude of witnesses. This claim may or may not be just. It may be as the French say: the boat after the trial trip may have been taken to pieces, the model may have been lost and the French Revolution may have swallowed up those who witnessed the trip.