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As John Fitch sat and out
stared at the Ohio River back in 1780, his mind wondered around the world. He
sat and thought about the inventor James Watt, the inventor of the new steam
engine. This new device was powering the industrial revolution in Great
Brittan. Fitch thought to himself “I could power a boat by this new power.”
Although most of the history books credit Robert Fulton for the invention of the
first steamboat, it was John Fitch who made the first working steamboat.
A Bardstown historian by the name of David H. Hull would
like to set the record straight. Hall said “Fulton was a master improver he
took Fitch’s idea and made it better.” “Fulton built the first commercial
steamboat Fitch built the first working steamboat,” says David Hall.
Fitch died in Bardstown in 1798, he was almost penny
less. Then in 1927 he was reburied underneath a large monument that the U.S.
Congress had built in his honor.
The memorial is flanked by a replica of the steamboat that
Fitch navigated the Delaware River with, two decades before Fulton’s Clermont
(steamboat) made its way down the Hudson River.
John Fitch had asked the Federal Government for help in
funding the steamboat in 1791, but only received a patent. Fitch also asked the
states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware for some funding
assistance for the steamboat. He got no money, but did receive the exclusive
privileges to navigate certain waterways by boats under power.
Fitch finally asked and received enough backing form
private investors to build several small steamboats on the Delaware River. The
boats that he built had a lot of mechanical problems and his investors left
him. Still Fitch knew that someday a more powerful and richer man would receive
fame and fortune for his invention.
Citation: Berry Craig for the Associated
Press 
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