A little later, Trevithick was engaged upon the first and unsuccessful attempt to carry a tunnel under the Thames, at London; but no sooner had that costly scheme been given up, than he returned to his favorite pursuits, and continued his work on interrupted schemes for ship-propulsion. Trevithick at last left England, spent some years in South America, and finally returned home and died in extreme poverty, April, 1833, at the age of sixty-two, without having succeeded in accomplishing the general introduction of any of his inventions.
Trevithick was characteristically an inventor of the typical sort. He invented many valuable devices, but brought but few into even experimental use, and reaped little advantage from any of them. He was ingenious, a thorough mechanic, bold, active, and indefatigable; but his lack of persistence made his whole life, as Smiles has said, "but a series of beginnings."
It is at about this period that we find evidence of the intelligent labors of another of our own countrymen--one who, in consequence of the unobtrusive manner in which his work was done, has never received the full credit to which he is entitled.
COLONEL JOHN STEVENS, of Hoboken, as he is generally called, was born in the city of New York, in 1749; but throughout his business-life he was a resident of New Jersey.
His attention is said to have been first called to the application of steam-power by seeing the experiments of John Fitch with his steamer on the Delaware, and he at once devoted himself to the introduction of steam-navigation with characteristic energy, and with a success that will be indicated when we come to the consideration of that subject.
But this far-sighted engineer and statesman saw plainly the importance of applying the steam-engine to land-transportation as well as to navigation; and not only that, but he saw with equal distinctness the importance of a well-devised and carefully-prosecuted scheme of internal communication by a complete system of railroads. In 1812 he published a pamphlet containing "Documents tending to prove the superior advantages of Railways and Steam-Carriages over Canal-Navigation."[49] At this time, the only locomotive in the world was that of Trevithick and Vivian, at Merthyr Tydvil, and the railroad itself had not grown beyond the old wooden tram-roads of the collieries. Yet Colonel Stevens says, in this paper: "I can see nothing to hinder a steam-carriage moving on its ways with a velocity of 100 miles an hour;" adding, in a foot-note: "This astonishing velocity is considered here merely possible. It is probable that it may not, in practise, be convenient to exceed 20 or 30 miles per hour. Actual experiment can only determine this matter, and I should not be surprised at seeing steam-carriages propelled at the rate of 40 or 50 miles an hour."