The story goes that Samuel Morey sank his own steamboat, the Aunt Sally, beneath the waters of Fairlee Pond. How did he do it? As an inventor, maybe he did it methodically, boring holes into the hull. Or perhaps he lashed out in rage after being denied fortune and fame for his invention and took an ax to his creation. Either way, what could have been Morey’s gift to humanity ended up as a gift to Fairlee Pond.
The poignancy of that scene, which is said to have happened in about 1825, is diminished by the fact that it might not actually have happened. But never mind that for now. The scene conveys the right mood.
Because one thing is certain: Morey felt anguish during his later years. And the source of his suffering was a man who was hailed as one of the greatest of his day: Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, or more precisely the creator of the first commercially successful steamboat. Fulton’s name was like a curse to Morey. “Blast his belly!” Morey would say of his competitor. “He stole my patent!”
Morey’s fury is understandable. After all, by 1790, Morey had successfully tested his small boat on Fairlee Pond, and one weekend day three years later he ventured several miles up and down the Connecticut River at the prodigious speed (for the time) of 4 miles an hour. The only others to have witnessed the historic cruise that Sunday were said to be several boys who were playing by the river after skipping church.
For some historians, those details put the paternity of the steamboat into question. After all, Fulton didn’t make his famous first voyage up the Hudson until 1807. Steamboat devotees have debated who deserves credit for the innovation ever since. Morey and other late 18th-century inventors each have their supporters.
Some credit American John Fitch, who steamed on the Delaware River near Philadelphia in 1786. One Morey admirer complained that the paddles on Fitch’s boat propelled it “in the manner of a waddling duck,” noting that Morey devised side-mounted paddlewheels that made steamboat navigation steadier.
Others credit James Rumsey, who in 1787 created a steamboat that drew water in its bow and ejected it out the stern. One Rumsey advocate claims that Fitch spied on Rumsey and stole valuable ideas. Whatever injustices Morey may have endured in his quest to perfect the steamboat, he probably wouldn’t have traded places with either Fitch or Rumsey — Fitch overdosed on opium pills at the age of 55, and Rumsey died in his late 40s of “emotional apoplexy.”
Invention is usually an iterative process, with inventors building on the ideas of others. But Morey and his supporters accuse Fulton of outright theft. They claim that Fulton and his financier Robert Livingston pretended to collaborate with Morey in order to steal his designs.
Born in Connecticut, Morey moved as a young child with his family to Orford, New Hampshire, where his father ran a ferry across the Connecticut River. When he was old enough, Morey worked with his father on the ferry. Some people see this experience as the root of his enduring interest in transportation.
As a young man, Morey married Hannah Avery and together they raised their daughter, Almira, in town. Most of his work took place just across the Connecticut River in Fairlee, Vermont. It was there that he built his workshop and, to help support his inventing, ran a sawmill, which he supplied with lumber from the large tracts of land he owned on both sides of the river.
Many people believed Morey possessed, as one biographer put it, a “massive brain and mind.” Patent records reinforce that impression. During his 40-year career, Morey registered 20 patents. His earliest patent, granted in 1793 under the signatures of President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, was for a turning spit. Borrowing a kettle from Hannah, Morey fashioned a device to pipe steam into a flywheel mounted in a chimney and attached to a spit, which would turn automatically like a modern rotisserie.
He also patented the “American Water Burner,” which combined the vapor from flammable substances and added them to steam to create heat and light. Morey used this “water gas” to heat and light his house, but the idea didn’t catch on.
Even late in his career, Morey kept innovating. In 1826, he received a patent for a motor that ran on turpentine. Automotive pioneer Charles Duryea, who founded his automobile company in 1895 — eight years before Henry Ford launched his own — said of Morey: “He discovered the full germ of the carburetor idea. He was well advanced of his time in many things. He was first to solve the problem of steam navigation. Far too little credit has been given this marvelous man, and his advance contribution to the world of science. No one can correctly evaluate the far-reaching influence of this truly remarkable man.” Indeed, Duryea said, others reaped where Morey sowed.
Unfortunately, Morey wouldn’t live to hear this high praise. His contributions went largely unrecognized during his lifetime, but it was the insult involving his role in inventing the steamboat that stung most.
Working on his steamboat in the 1790s, Morey knew he needed financial backing to make his vessel a commercial success. To that end, he sought to gain publicity by steaming his boat from Hartford, Connecticut, to New York City in 1793. The trip attracted some attention, especially since he cruised at the blazing speed of 5 miles an hour, but not the funding he sought.
Morey was undeterred.
Through a friend, a prominent Yale professor, Morey was invited to visit the wealthy and well-connected Robert Livingston in New Jersey. According to Morey’s firsthand account, the inventor was greeted enthusiastically by Livingston and Fulton. The pair was intrigued by Morey’s work, and the inventor was happy to show them his drawing, models and patents. For his work, Morey says he was promised the princely sum of $100,000.
Later, however, Livingston and Fulton said the payment would not be in cash, but in the equivalent value of shares in their company. As an added incentive, they said they’d also name the first boat the Lady Morey. Not trusting the theoretical value of the shares, Morey offered to sell the men his steamboat patents for $15,000 in cash. They countered with $7,500. Morey found the offer insulting; it wouldn’t fairly compensate him for his years of experimentation.
Livingston and Fulton went ahead with their plan, or perhaps Morey’s plan, to build a steamboat and in 1807 launched the famed Clermont. When that boat made the journey from New York to Albany with paying passengers aboard, Livingston and Fulton declared their steamboat line open.
Whether or not you think they used Morey’s design, Livingston and Fulton were credited with launching a revolution. What seemed like an obscure invention just a few years earlier was suddenly part of everyday life in 19th century America.
You can imagine Morey’s growing rage as he heard Fulton and Livingston hailed as the creators of this new mode of transportation. “I have often been a passenger in these steamboats, and do not see in them any new principle,” Morey wrote. “I fail to detect, after careful examination, any basic difference between Fulton’s ‘invention’ and my own.”
You can see why some people would believe that Morey, feeling that his idea had been stolen, would be angry enough to sink his steamboat.
The story rings so true that in 1874 the Antiquarian Society of New Hampshire sent an expedition across the river to Fairlee to search for the Aunt Sally. Using grappling hooks, members of the society methodically searched the waters, but pulled up only weeds. Later expeditions by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and others have failed to find definitive proof that the boat and its innovative engine are down there.
If Samuel Morey is mostly forgotten today, perhaps he would take some solace in knowing he is remembered locally, where the name Fairlee Pond was long ago replaced with one honoring the inventor — Lake Morey.
