Who invented the ship's propeller?

Who invented the screw propeller - they all did!

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This page started as a Scottish east-west puzzle, with contenders from Dunbar and Irvine, and the answer must be - no one individual invented it - as Samuel Smiles, the 19th century polymath and writer, put it, in Men of Invention and Industry: "It was not the production of one man, but of several generations of mechanical inventors. . . While others had given up the idea of prosecuting it to its completion, Smith stuck to his invention with determined tenacity, and never let it go until he had secured for it a complete triumph. . . he had made a stride in advance which was almost tantamount to a new invention."
The sources for our information are given below. What's your view? - see below
latest points (incl. Stevens, Ressel)

James Watt, in 1770, wrote: "Have you ever considered a spiral oar?" Joseph Bramah, in 1785, patented the idea of a "screw propeller", but never tried it in practice. The Austrians have statues to Joseph Ressel, whom they claim as the inventor (see below). Various people took out patents in England and America from 1794 onwards, though nothing practical was achieved. Richard Trevethick, in a 1815 patent, describes the screw propeller with considerable minuteness. John Swan was heralded the practical inventor, after a trial boat driven by a spring, in 1824. Read on . . .

James Steadman 1790-1865 championed by Irvine on Scotland's west coast	Robert Wilson 1803-1882 championed by Dunbar on Scotland's east coast	Richard Jordan Gatling 1818-1903 in North Carolina, beaten by Ericsson	Francis Pettit Smith 1808-1874 The Oxford Companion official contender
Steedman (the spelling on his gravestone) or Steadman, a carpenter and cabinetmaker, had an interest in natural history, and his study of fish gave him the idea of rear propulsion; watching a spinning wheel in 1816 suggested the method. He and gunsmith McCririck made models, one of which was taken by an Irvine leading light and fellow inventor, Maxwell Dick, to London in 1830, where - it was alleged - the idea was pirated, and patented without credit to James Steadman. His gravestone at Irvine Old Parish Church bears the carving of a screw propeller: Double-click either picture (the one above or that on right) to enlarge it.	Wilson, always interested in boats (seeing paddle-wheels on a fishing boat at age 5; he lost his father in a boat rescue at age 7), had the idea from watching a windmill. He worked on the invention while apprenticed to a joiner and cabinetmaker. In 1827, the Earl of Lauderdale unsuccessfully approached the Admiralty, the "Edinburgh Mercury" recorded the "new invention", and in 1828, the first practical screw propeller was trialled on the Union Canal (the model being in the Royal Scottish Museum). The Admiralty again rejected the idea in 1833. In 1880, aged 77, the War Office granted him £500 for the use of his double-action screw propeller as applied to the fish torpedo. A 4-ton propeller at Dunbar harbour was unveiled as a memorial to him, on the anniversary of his birth in Sept. 2003.	Gatling, later Dr Gatling, and known for the invention of the Gatling Gun, had, by the age of 21, in 1839, in North Carolina, invented the screw propeller for steamboats, only to discover it had just been independently patented by Smith & Ericsson.	Smith, a farmer, from boyhood had had a passion for constructing models of boats. In 1834, he built a boat with a wooden screw; in 1835, a superior model; in 1836 he took out a patent. Where he got his original idea is not known. In 1839, the "Archimedes", a 237-ton vessel, achieved over 9 knots speed. Isambard Brunel was so impressed that he advised the screw to be adopted as the method for propelling the "Great Britain", which achieved 10 knots on her first voyage. The design was patented in the U.S. in 1838-39. Both Smith & Ericsson introduced the screw propeller on war vessels in 1843, in their respective countries. Smith was knighted in 1871.
		John Ericsson 1803-1889 Ericsson moved from Sweden to England in 1826; his 1829 steam engine "Novelty" lost to the Stephensons' "Rocket". After patenting the screw propeller in May 1836, he moved in 1839 to New York, where he & Smith took out U.S. patents.
		Many others improved the ideas independently of the patents of either Smith or Ericsson.
Maxwell Dick also devised a snowplough, a suspension railway, a bed of hot water pipes for cholera victims, a telegraph insulator, and guano fertilisers.	Robert Wilson went on to be a highly successful engineer, taking out patents for valves, pistons, propellers and hydraulic and other machinery.	As well as the rapid-fire machine gun of 1861, Gatling invented machines for sowing cotton seeds, a hemp-breaking machine and a steam plough.	One of Smith's backers was Sir John Rennie, son of the famous engineer John Rennie, brought up only 5 miles from Dunbar, at East Linton.
Source: Strawhorn, "The History of Irvine" (1982), p.120	Source: Will Collin, "East Lothian Life", issue 45, autumn 2003, p.28-29	Gatling sources: Web sites, mostly repeating the same information.	Sources: various, incl. Samuel Smiles (see below)

We look forward to your contribution - if you have any views on the above, please send them in, and we will publish any further information on this page. Email us at info@irvineayrshire.org

John Ericsson sources included:
www.fact-index.com/j/jo/john_ericsson.html (includes a very full biography)
and
www.history.rochester.edu/steam/stevens/screw.htm (includes technical drawings from 1828 and 1836).
The fascinating Samuel Smiles chapter (perhaps written c.1870) is at:
www.bookrags.com/books/moiai/PART3.htm

[It's not a new question: Robert Wilson, "The Screw Propeller: Who Invented It?" (Murray, Glasgow, 1860)]

Latest Points

What about John Stevens (1749-1838)? (See www.history.rochester.edu/steam/stevens). His steam screw propellers, in operation on the Hudson River from 1802 to 1806, were the first to navigate the waters of any country. He considered himself its inventor, but the screw propeller had been proposed by Bernouli in 1752 and is described by Bushnell (writing to Jefferson) in 1787. Many others later suggested the propulsion of vessels by means of spiral wheels.

Or Josef Ressel (1793-1857), a Czech-born inventor? (See http://www.radio.cz/en/article/33185). We discovered this information on the Radio Praha site. At Vienna University Ressel attended lectures on forestry, chemistry, technology and natural sciences. But due to a lack of money he had to leave the university and became a forester after graduating from a forestry school. At his new job he came up with many gimmicks, for instance how to measure areas of woods quickly and reliably. The job instigated an interest in sea navigation in the young man, as his duty was to care for wood from deforesting to the building of sea ships. So among many other inventions, Ressel became famous for the propeller. In 1826 he applied for an Austrian patent for what he called 'a never-ending screw which can be used to drive ships both on sea and rivers' and he received the license in February 1827.
Ressel was the first to place the propeller between the helm and the stern so that the propeller worked under the water thus being most efficient.
But Ressel's authorship of the invention was put in doubt due to inertia of the Austrian Presidium of Imperial Sciences, when in a suspicious coincidence, English traders Sauvage and Smith came up with the same invention. It is believed now that someone might have secretly sold Ressel's invention to Great Britain. But in 1865, at its arbitrary session, the National Academy in Washington decided the matter in Ressel's favour.

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