With this success, Livingston then contracted with Fulton to take advantage of his Hudson River monopoly and build a larger version for commercial service.

In the Nautical Gazette the editor, Mr. Samuel Ward Stanton, gives the following additional details: The bottom of the boat was formed of yellow pine plank 1.5 in.

[4]: 45 Fulton wrote to a friend, Joel Barlow:[3]: 234 I had a light breeze against me the whole way, both going and coming, and the voyage has been performed wholly by the power of the steam engine.

The morning I left New York, there were not perhaps thirty persons in the city who believed that the boat would ever move one mile an hour, or be of the least utility, and while we were putting off from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic remarks.

Having employed much time, money and zeal in accomplishing this work, it gives me, as it will you, great pleasure to see it fully answer my expectations.The 1870 book Great Fortunes quotes a former resident of Poughkeepsie who described the scene:[5] It was in the early autumn of the year 1807 that a knot of villagers was gathered on a high bluff just opposite Poughkeepsie, on the west bank of the Hudson, attracted by the appearance of a strange, dark-looking craft, which was slowly making its way up the river.

What seemed strange in the vessel was the substitution of lofty and straight black smoke-pipes, rising from the deck, instead of the gracefully tapered masts that commonly stood on the vessels navigating the stream, and, in place of the spars and rigging, the curious play of the working-beam and pistons, and the slow turning and splashing of the huge and naked paddle-wheels, met the astonished gaze.

Anticipating future passenger requirements, her twin paddle wheels were enclosed above the waterline to quiet their loud splashing noise, reducing heavy river mist, while also preventing floating debris from being kicked up into the vessel's mid-hull area.

[7] Livingston's heirs later granted an exclusive license to Aaron Ogden to run a ferry between New York and New Jersey, while Thomas Gibbons and Cornelius Vanderbilt established a competing service.

The Livingston Fulton monopoly was dissolved in 1824 following the landmark Gibbons v. Ogden Supreme Court case, opening New York waters to all competitive steam navigation companies.

[10] Since Colden was a friend of both Fulton and Livingston, his book was considered an authoritative source, and his errors were perpetuated in later accounts up to the present day.

[11] The replica's design and final appearance was decided by an appointed commission who carefully researched Fulton's steamer from what evidence and word-of-mouth had survived to the early 20th century.

[13][14] She started sea trials along the Staten Island and Jersey shores on September 3, 1909, and proved to be faster than the Fulton's original, making about 6 miles an hour against the tide in the bay.

[15] She was to be seen in the parade with a replica of the Henry Hudson's ship Half Moon, brought from Rotterdam to New York that July by the Holland America Line vessel SS Soestdyk.

The company eventually lost interest in the steamboat as a money-making attraction and placed her in a tidal lagoon on the inner side of their landing at Kingston Point, New York.

The film, based on the play by Rida Johnson Young, was directed by Henry King, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, and stars Alice Faye, Fred MacMurray, and Richard Greene.