Henry Burden - Steamboats

Steamboats

Henry Burden's mind took an even larger leap - from spikes to steamboats. He had a great ambition to build a vessel which, with less draft of water than the boats then plying on the Hudson, should achieve greater speed. Accordingly, in 1833, he created the steamboat "Helen," named in honor of his wife. Its deck rested upon two cigar-shaped hulls, three hundred feet in length, with a paddle-wheel amidships thirty feet in diameter. A experimental trip was made December 4, 1833, and the following July her speed evaluated, developing the rate of eighteen miles per hour. Another vessel, launched in 1837, had many improvements upon the first boat, for all of which Mr. Burden obtained patents.He was "the first advocate of the plans at present adopted by English and American naval architects in the construction of long vessels for ocean navigation. As early as 1825 he laid before the Troy Steamboat Association certain original plans whereby the construction of steamboats for inland navigation could be greatly improved, and which some years later were adopted in the building of the steamer 'Hendrick Hudson.' Besides increasing the length of the boats, he wisely suggested, for the convenience and accommodation of passengers, the erection of sleeping-berth-rooms on the upper decks, being a decided change from the holds of vessels, where they had previously been placed. In 1846 he devised the huge plan of a transatlantic steam-ferry company. His prophetic ideas again were shown in the prospectus of "Burden's Atlantic Steam-Ferry Company." Although the company was never organized, the salient points advanced by Mr. Burden were subsequently imitated by the Cunard and other ocean lines. He was also among the first to suggest the use of plates for iron-clad sea-going vessels, and sent specimen plates of his own manufacture to Glasgow for test.