Among the men who stood upon the bank of the Delaware when Fitch's first steamboat plied its difficult way up that stream was one who did not laugh with his neighbors at its efforts. This man was John Stevens, and he came from the city of New York. His life. had been cast in a vastly different mold from that of John Fitch. For he was a rich man, a man of family and of influence. And because he had his summer home in Hoboken and was compelled to cross the Hudson twice a day through many months of the year, he became tremendously interested in the application of mechanical propulsion to a boat. Being naturally of a mechanical mind, he sought to work out some plan by which the improved steam-engine of James Watt-descriptions of which had interested him tremendously—might be the means of driving such a mechanical propulsion. And in 1791 his ideas took such definite form that he was able to patent a steamboat of his own. It was a crude enough affair, but he had profited by Fitch's mistakes. He had no mechanical oars. His boat was driven forward by means of the propellor-screw-the method in use today upon all of the great ocean steamships of the world, as well as upon many steamboats.

While Robert Fulton's Clermont-which we shall see in a moment-is generally hailed as being the first practicable steamboat ever builded, the Pheonix, builded by Col. John Stevens, was coincident in the time of her construction. And her engines were builded in America, while those of the Clermont were imported from England. Moreover, in June, 1800, the Phoenix stood to sea; for the first time in the history of steam navigation. Because of the monopoly which the legislature of New York granted Fulton upon the Hudson, Stevens was compelled to take his first real ship to the Delaware. Hence the trip out into the waters of the Atlantic, a journey which was undertaken not without trepidation. But, despite the fact that a great storm arose, the Phoenix made the trip in safety; and continued for many years thereafter to ply between Philadelphia and Trenton.

It is the Clermont, however, that today is regarded as the mothercraft of all steamboats the world over; her builder, Robert Fulton, to whom was accorded half honors in the great Hudson tercentenary celebration in New York nine years ago. For from the day her wheels began splashing in the Hudson River the steamboat began to reign there; and has not since abdicated its fine throne. The Clermont-as one might quickly see when he watched her replica in the Hudson-Fulton celebration was not an elaborate craft and of but 160 tons burthen. But she was a stout and a substantial one. In her hold rested a Boulton & Watt engine, which cost Robert Fulton $2,670 when he had purchased it at the famous Soho Engineering works near Birmingham and which he had personally brought over from England. Charles Brown, an experienced ship-builder, had fabricated the hull of the Clermont at his shipyard at Corlears Hook, upon the East River-at which was then the edge of the growing city of New York, but which long since has become part and parcel of it. Once when Fulton and his partner, Chancellor Livingston, of New York, were halted for lack of funds, and Brown was pressing for the money due his yard, they offered Col. John Stevens a third interest in the venture if he would come to their aid. But Stevens said he disapproved of their design and refused. Fulton had to raise the money elsewhere. And the men who loaned it to him finally were afraid of public ridicule, and so stipulated that their names should not be published as being behind the enterprise.

Yet within a twelvemonth they were proud, indeed, to be connected with it. For the little Clermont had not only ventured out upon the Hudson, but had made a complete success of of the venture; so that Fulton and Livingston were already building the Car of Neptune, which, rated at 295 tons, and far more of a steamboat than the Clermont. Yet the little Clermont was not quickly abandoned. named the North River, she continued for some years to ply between New York and Albany within her advertised time of thirty-six

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hours. Occasionally, under favorable conditions of wind and tide, she would traverse the one hundred and fifty miles in thirty hours. Which was hardly to be compared with the record of eleven hours which was reached only a little later, or the present standing record of seven hours and a few minutes over, achieved within the past quarter of a century.

There was no doubting the success of Fulton's steamboat. He was tremendously proud of it, and in 1811 was building the Paragon, 311 tons, while an Albany firm which hoped to wrest the mastery of the river from him in that same year launched the Hope and the Perseverance, each of 380 tons. Yet how were any of these to be compared with the Chancellor Livingston, which came upon the river in 1816 to run upon the New York and Albany route and had 495 tons written upon her license papers? The steamboat developed rapidly. And in 1841 the Hudson boasted the swift South America, 638 tons, which in the following year was quite outclassed by the Empire of 936 tons. Nor was size quite all. For speed and completeness, too, the Hudson River steamboat was leading the world. Why, in 1863, when the Drew made her first bow to the towns along its banks, she was 380 feet long and larger than the biggest of ocean steamships in the port of New York at that time-the old Cunarder Scotia. She continued to be the largest boat upon the river until comparatively recent years.

In the summer before the coming of the Drew, a ship was launched at Jersey City which was destined to become known for many years as "the queen of the Hudson." This was the Mary Powell, and, in my humble opinion, no more graceful or altogether lovely 'steamboat has ever been built. And sometimes, even now, you may see her upon the river of a summer's day, stately and serene in her old age, as some ancient lady who in her youth has known the glory of conquest, but who in her old age has not been compelled to taste the bitterness of defeat. She has, too, the proud distinction of having carried in more than half a century of usefulness, many hun

dreds of thousands of passengers, and without an iota of injury to a single blessed one of them.

The news of the success of the steamboat upon the Hudson was spread quickly to other sections of the land, and a fine fervor of steam-shipbuilding quickly followed. The Ontario was launched upon the lake of that name in 1816 and the following year the Walk-inthe-Water started out from Black Rock, near Buffalo, to essay the perilous passage of the upper lakes. The steamboat fever seized the Mississippi and the many rivers that empty into it. By 1840 it was in full swing, the big flat-bottomed steamers increasing in numbers and in size. A decade later it had reached its height, and folk of the East were being thrilled with tales of the racing craft-of the Robert E. Lee and the Natchez and the Belle of the Bends. But the Civil War ended the glories of steamboating upon the Mississippi. Too many boats were sacrificed to it. And when the conflict finally was over the railroad was asserting itself in the Middle West in so determined a fashion as to make the locomotive whistle in reality the death knell of the river steamboat. In recent years-in fact, even within recent months-events have transpired which go to show that steamboating may yet come back in strength in the watershed of the Mississippi valley; for heavy freight, if not for passenger service. It is a form of revival of our marine in which every American can well afford to have a patriotic interest.

In the East, particularly in the Northeast, the steamboat has never lost its popularity or its appeal. As we have already seen, there are more steamboats in service upon the Hudson River today than ever before in its history. Up Long Island Sound, out from Boston, from Baltimore and from Norfolk, there start each evening whole flotillas of steamboats, wellfilled and prosperous. And upon the Great Lakes there throbs one of the largest waterbound traffics in all the world. In the West one finds the steamboat, too—upon the waters of the Sacramento and the Columbia, here and there upon Puget Sound, even thrusting itself

The Austro-Germans possess, very nearly, 64 squadron armored ships or fighting cruisers and 7 armored cruisers.

The number of light ships, on our side, is much more considerable than on the side of our adversaries; the proportion appreciably exceeds that of the units of the line.

As to the submarines, whilst it is difficult to present figures by reason of the rigorously guarded secret on this point in all the navies, it is very probable that the allied submarines are, in comparison with the enemy submersibles, in the ratio of 3.5, perhaps 4 to 1.

Altogether, we can affirm that the Entente powers are, on sea, at least three times stronger than the Central Coalition. So the German fleet has been forced to shut itself up in the entrenched camp of which the sea canal of Kiel is the "redoubt."

The Austrian war fleet scarcely leaves Pola, the maritime arsenal of the south of Istria. It has a detachment in the narrow straits at the

entrance to the Gulf of Cattaro, but the sorties in question in these last days are executed only by light ships. It is the same thing for the Germans in the North Sea, where they have been able, in reality, to procure for themselves a supporting point on the Belgian coast, Zeebrugge; but the only time when our adversaries have been willing to put to sea with ships of the line their fine fighting cruiser squadronthey were beaten by the English (Doggerbank combat).

It will be objected that the German submarines to-day have a wide circle of action. But however active they may be, whatever harm they may do, especially to merchantmen, they can exercise no decisive influence on the final maritime operations: consequently they will not prevent the mastery of the sea belonging to the Allies. Let us see now the consequences of this mastery.

II. The Blockade and the German Colonies

The German colonial empire, deprived of the succor of the mother country, is gradually falling to pieces. The flourishing colony of Kiaou-Tchou (of the Chinese Chantoung) was the first to disappear. The excellent port of Tsing-Tao, defended and fortified in modern method, on the 7th of November, 1914, fell under the blows of the Japanese, aided by the English and French naval divisions of the Chinese seas. This was the normal base of operations of that "cruiser squadron" which was destroyed off the Falkland Islands by Admiral Sturdee on the 8th of December, 1914.

Then came the turn of Togo (Togoland), then of Deutsch Sud-West Afrika, conquered