She also had a direct influence on the design of another innovative vessel, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Britain, then the world's largest ship and the first screw-propelled steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

It was not until the 18th century however, and the invention of the steam engine, that a practical means of delivering effective power to a marine screw propulsion system became available, but initial attempts to build such a vessel met with failure.

Experimentation with screw propulsion continued in some quarters, however, and between 1750 and the 1830s numerous patents for marine propellers were taken out by various inventors,[7] though few of these inventions were pursued to the testing stage, and those that were proved unsatisfactory for one reason or another.

[9] Smith quickly built a small model boat to test his invention, which was demonstrated first on a pond at his Hendon farm, and later at the Royal Adelaide Gallery of Practical Science in London, where it was seen by the Second Secretary of the Admiralty, Sir John Barrow.

In the summer of 1837, Ericsson demonstrated his boat on the River Thames to senior members of the British Admiralty, including Surveyor of the Navy Sir William Symonds.

In spite of the boat achieving a speed of ten miles per hour (16 km/h), comparable with that of existing paddle steamers, Symonds and his entourage were unimpressed.

In September 1837, he took his small vessel (now fitted with an iron propeller of a single turn) to sea, steaming from Blackwall, London to Hythe, Kent, with stops at Ramsgate, Dover and Folkestone.

Built to a schooner pattern, with classic hull lines and a slender, raking funnel and masts, she was considered by contemporaries to be a beautiful vessel.

Following the ship's entry into service, the propeller would subsequently undergo a number of modifications, the most important of which were an alteration to a double threaded/half turn format, and a division of the original 360° screw into two separate blades.

[12] After this initial trial Archimedes embarked on a return voyage to London, but while in transit the ship's boiler, which lacked both a gauge and a safety valve, exploded, killing the second engineer and scalding several others.

On the voyage to the Texel however, Archimedes broke her crankshaft and was forced to return to England for further repairs, which on this occasion were effected by the firm of Miller, Ravenhill & Co.

From April to May 1840, Archimedes was tested against the Navy's fastest Dover-Calais mail packets, the paddlewheelers Ariel, Beaver, Swallow and Widgeon.

Widgeon proved to be slightly faster than Archimedes in smooth seas, but Chappell concluded that as the latter had a lower horsepower-to-weight ratio, the screw propeller as a means of propulsion had proven "equal, if not superior, to that of the ordinary paddle-wheel.

These included the exposure of the paddlewheel and its engines to enemy fire, as well as the reduction of space available for the placement of cannon which impinged upon a warship's broadside firepower.

This journey provided an occasion not only to conduct additional tests but also to showcase the technology to shipowners, engineers, and scientists at various ports across the nation.

The ship subsequently made further voyages to Antwerp, to Amsterdam via the North Holland Canal, and to various other ports on the continent, exciting interest in the new propulsion method everywhere.

Great Western's principal engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, took advantage of the loan to test Archimedes with a variety of different propellers in an attempt to find the most efficient design, which was eventually determined to be a new four-bladed model submitted by Smith.

[24] Smith and his fellow investors had originally hoped to sell Archimedes to the Royal Navy, but when this did not eventuate, the Ship Propeller Company sold the vessel into commercial service.

[29] Although the adoption of the screw propeller was an historical inevitability given the work of John Ericsson and others, Archimedes considerably hastened acceptance of the technology.