Dramatic Moments.

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 114, 7 February 1935, Page 7

Dramatic Moments.

4 WOULD IT WORK? ? ~ In days when we talk of the Queen Mary, an ocean giant, it may seem odd to have much to say about a little boat not as long as the Queen Mary is wide. Nevertheless, the little ship made history. . ' , • m There was a small shipyard in New York where work was going on rather lazily. They were building a wooden ship for a. madman with a' ridiculous idea of making, a ship travel without sails.' What a pity it was that Robert Fulton should waste his time and money on scatter-brain ideas! Strangers drifted into the yard to look at the ship and to sneer at what they were pleased to call “Fulton’s Folly.” But Robert Fulton, the clever artist and engineer born in Pennsylvania in 1765, said nothing about his dreams. The work went on. The ship was completed. An engine built by Boulton and Watt iu.Englaud arrived and was put together. Paddlewheels were fitted and the ship was announced to make her maiden voyage. Half New York 'turned out to see it. “Of course it won’t go,” they said. There was smoke from*the funnel, a stir, the revolving of the paddles, and the ship began to forge ahead. ‘For a moment everyone stared. Then the ship stopped. Something had gone wrong vvitli the engines. Everybody turned to everybody else. “What did I say?’’ they asked. “Didn’t I tell you , .

But in the meantime Robert Fulton had put the wrong thing right, and the ship steamed on, and on, and on . . . 150 miles, and back. Nor was that all, for in that year—shortly after Trafalgar—the first financially-success-ful steam packet was inaugurated by the mini whom everyone thought a fool.