Robert Fulton (1765-1815)
(Source: "Robert Fulton"; They Made America)
Fulton “became known as the ‘father of steam navigation’” (Bellis, “The History of Steamboats”). In 1791, Fulton pursued technology and engineering. He spent years in England and France working on numerous projects. Circa 1803, Fulton and Robert Livingston met in Paris and decided to build a steamboat. Fulton returned to America in 1806. “Fulton’s Clermont made its debut on August 17, 1807, steaming upriver [on the Hudson\ from New York to Albany” ("Robert Fulton") and becoming the first commercially successful steamboat; this marked a turning point in river navigation.
Robert R. Livingston (1746-1813)
(Source: "Robert Livingston"; Biography.com)
Livingston, a U.S. Founding Father, met Fulton while he was the Minister to France. Livingston “obtained an exclusive license for steamboat services on New York's Hudson River” (“Robert Fulton”) with Fulton and worked together on steamboats like the Clermont and New Orleans, which, in 1811, “was the first steamboat on western waters. She steamed down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans” (“Steamboat History”).
John Fitch (1743-1798)
(Source: "John Fitch"; Invent Now)
Fitch created the first steamboat in the U.S. “On August 22, 1787, John Fitch demonstrated the first successful steamboat, launching a forty-five-foot craft on the Delaware River in the presence of delegates from the Constitutional Convention. He went on to build a larger steamboat which carried passengers and freight between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey” (“John Fitch”). On August 26, 1791, Fitch was granted a patent. However, Fitch’s steamboat business failed due to high expenses and skeptical investors. Nevertheless, Fitch proved the potential of steam navigation.
Henry Miller Shreve (1785–1851)
(Source: "Henry Miller Shreve"; They Made America)
Shreve opened America's western rivers for steam navigation. In 1814, Shreve's Enterprise was built. “This . . . steamboat made its inaugural voyage to New Orleans in 1814, where Shreve assisted Andrew Jackson in the city's defense during the War of 1812. His success encouraged him to design a steamboat even better adapted to the Mississippi” (Brantley) — the Washington, “the first grand steamboat of the era and prototype for the ‘floating palaces’ of later years” (Haven). However, Shreve was sued for violating the Fulton-Livingston monopoly. In 1817, Shreve successfully nullified the monopoly, ushering in an era of steamboats on the western rivers. In 1829, he made the Heliopolis and cleared the Great Raft, “a logjam on the Red River between Baton Rouge and present-day Shreveport” (Brantley). “Shreveport, Louisiana, was named after Shreve and his efforts at clearing a hundred mile stretch of snags that blocked the Red River, a major artery to the far west” (Haven).