Austria, also, claims the honour of the invention of the screw
steamer. At Trieste and Vienna are statues erected to Joseph
Ressel, on whose behalf his countrymen lay claim to the
invention; and patents for some sort of a screw date back as far
as 1794.
Patents were also taken out in England and America--by W.
Lyttleton in 1794; by E. Shorter in 1799; by J. C. Stevens, of
New Jersey, in 1804; by Henry James in 1811--but nothing
practical was accomplished. Richard Trevethick, the anticipator
of many things, also took out a patent in 1815, and in it he
describes the screw propeller with considerable minuteness.
Millington, Whytock, Perkins, Marestier, and Brown followed, with
no better results.
The late Dr. Birkbeck, in a letter addressed to the 'Mechanics'
Register,' in the year 1824, claimed that John Swan, of 82,
Mansfield Street, Kingsland Road, London, was the practical
inventor of the screw propeller. John Swan was a native of
Coldingham, Berwickshire. He had removed to London, and entered
the employment of Messrs. Gordon, of Deptford. Swan fitted up a
boat with his propeller, and tried it on a sheet of water in the
grounds of Charles Gordon, Esq., of Dulwich Hill. "The velocity
and steadiness of the motion," said Dr. Birkbeck in his letter,
"so far exceeded that of the same model when impelled by
paddle-wheels driven by the same spring, that I could not doubt
its superiority; and the stillness of the water was such as to
give the vessel the appearance of being moved by some magical
power.
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