His description is as
follows:
"Length on deck three hundred feet, breadth two hundred feet, thickness
of her sides, thirteen feet, of alternate oak plank and corkwood;
carries forty-four guns, four of which are 100-pounders, quarter-deck
and forcastle guns, 44-pounders; and further, to annoy an enemy
attempting to board, can discharge one hundred gallons of boiling water
in a minute, and by mechanism brandishes three hundred cutlasses, with
the utmost regularity, over her gunwales; works also an equal number of
heavy iron pikes of great length, darting them from her sides with
prodigious force, and withdrawing them every quarter of a minute!"
Fulton followed up the "Clermont," in 1807, with a larger boat, called
the "Car of Neptune," which was placed on the Albany route as soon as
completed. The Legislature of New York had enacted a law, immediately
upon his first success, giving to Livingston and himself the exclusive
right to navigate the waters of the State by steam, for five years for
every additional boat they should build in the State, provided the whole
term should not exceed thirty years. "In the following year the
Legislature passed another act, confirmatory of the prior grants, and
giving new remedies to the grantees for any invasion of them, and
subjecting to forfeiture any vessel propelled by steam which should
enter the waters of the State without their license.
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