Tide Runs Against Steamboat ‘Inventor’ : History: A group called the Rumseian Society is trying to replace Robert Fulton’s name with that of their namesake’s as the creator of the steamboat.

“My God, she moves!” exclaimed Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates, formerly of Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army.

“Yes,” echoed Maj. Henry Bedinger, standing at Gates’ side. “And when she moved, the destiny of the world, too, moved.”

So goes an eyewitness account of the demonstration Dec. 3, 1787, of the first successful steamboat by its inventor, James Rumsey, on the Potomac River at Shepherdstown, W.Va., about 75 miles northwest of Washington.

Rumsey’s boat was about 50 feet long and carried 2 tons of rocks and eight women passengers to prove its river-worthiness. It made history by steaming against the current at a speed of about 3 knots.

On a gray and drizzly Sunday this fall, 205 years later, about 100 spectators gathered here on the banks of the Potomac to observe a colorful ritual: re-enactment of Rumsey’s demonstration.

This time the boat--a wooden, half-size replica named the Rumseian Experiment that resides in a shed on the grounds of the local museum--was only 23-feet long. Its passengers were one woman and five men, all dressed in period costume.

This time no one shouted, “She moves!”

On the contrary, the main accomplishments of a long, frustrating day were negative: repairing the mast that broke as the Rumseian Experiment was trucked out of its shed, and pumping and bailing out enough water to keep the boat from sinking while the crew tried without success to start its obstinate engine.

“This was built to be a dry boat, to be in a museum,” Jay Hurley, a local blacksmith, shopowner and craftsman, said sheepishly. “It dries up when it’s not in the water. Eventually the seams will seal up. Normally when boats are launched, they stay in the water.”

Hurley was the prime mover in getting the 5,000-pound wooden replica built--a challenging task, because the inventor left no plans--for the 200th anniversary of Rumsey’s demonstration in 1987.

Since then, he says, the Rumseian Experiment has been in the water 20 to 30 times. Occasionally the engine starts.

With other Rumseian Society members, Hurley has crusaded, unsuccessfully so far, to replace Robert Fulton’s name with Rumsey’s in the history books as the inventor of the steamboat.

The controversy goes back about 200 years and involves three primary figures in the United States:

- Rumsey, who built homes for George Washington in nearby Berkeley Springs, W.Va. (then known as Bath), and was superintendent of Washington’s Potowmack Navigation Co., created to promote boat traffic on the new nation’s waterways.

- John Fitch, a competitor of Rumsey’s who also built a steamboat in the 1780s.

- Fulton, an engineer who bought a boiler from an English company and installed it in the Clermont, which he launched in 1807 on the East River in New York City, spurring creation of the commercial steamboat industry.

“The steamboat,” explained John Fryant, a steamboat model-maker whose handiwork is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, “was like many other great inventions, not just the product of one mind. Fulton got the credit because he built the first commercially successful one. But he wasn’t much of an inventor. He had money, and he was able to buy the best equipment of the time--and it worked.”

Even Hurley, one of Rumsey’s strongest proponents, admitted: “When we say Rumsey invented the steamboat, we say it to get people’s attention. For example, in 1785, apparently a Frenchman ran a steamboat on the Seine River for 15 minutes, but the machinery was so cumbersome that it beat itself to pieces and sank out of sight.”

Two innovations made Rumsey’s invention what Hurley calls “the first practical steamboat.” They were the water-tube boiler and the principle of jet propulsion.

“Rumsey’s boat pumped water through a channel along the keel, creating a jet stream out the back,” explained Bill Warren Mueller, editor of Steamboating magazine. “That’s what moved it. Any other steamboat, then or now, has a propeller or a paddle wheel.”

Thomas Jefferson dubbed Rumsey “the most original and the greatest mechanical genius I have ever seen.” Modern experts in the history of technology, some of whom spoke at the 200th-anniversary event in 1987, also have recognized Rumsey’s accomplishments, which included numerous patents for mechanical innovations.

But his steamboat design was never replicated or produced on a large scale.

Continually searching for funds to further his inventions, Rumsey went to England in 1787 shortly after demonstrating his boat in Shepherdstown. Two weeks before he was to demonstrate a new 100-foot steam-powered launch on the Thames River, he collapsed while addressing an artistic and scientific society in London. He died a day later.

His large boat, the Columbian Maid, did sail on the Thames, but its supporters were unable to convert it into a successful commercial venture.

Starting 20 years later and continuing until after the Civil War, steamboats transported freight and passengers on America’s inland waterways.

“Rumsey was ahead of his time, and his type of boat might have been a success if he’d been able to use modern materials,” including stronger iron and steel needed for a high-pressure boiler, Fryant suggested.

Today only five commercial steamboats, all excursion craft, actively ply major U.S. rivers: the Delta Queen, the Mississippi Queen, the Natchez, the Julia Belle Swain and the Belle of Louisville.

Mueller of Steamboating magazine estimates that there are a total of 500 to 1,000 steamboats in the United States, most of them about 25 feet long and built by hobbyists.

Folks in Shepherdstown take steamboating more seriously than most. A monument to James Rumsey overlooks the stretch of the Potomac where he made history.