One August day in 1807 people who lived along the shores of the Hudson River saw a strange craft making its way slowly upstream.

This was the Clermont, the first commercially successful steamboat in the world. Aboard her was Robert Fulton, the American who had at last harnessed the power of steam to machinery that would one day drive ships across ocean.

In Robert Fulton and the Steamboat, Ralph Nading Hill tells the thrilling story of the remarkable young inventor who built a boat that opened a new era in American history. 

From the dust jacket