Bell, Henry
Bell, Henry (1767–1830). Bell was apprenticed as a millwright, but spent part of his career as the proprietor of a hotel in Helensburgh, where he conceived the idea of a steamboat to bring his clients more easily from Glasgow. Another Scotsman, William Symington, had already demonstrated the effectiveness of a steam-engine in a canal boat in 1789, and Robert Fulton was experimenting with small steam-powered vessels in France and America around the same time. Bell, however, deserves the credit for converting the idea into an economically viable proposition, commissioning the first commercially successful steam vessel, Comet, which was launched on the river Clyde in 1812. Comet, a 30-ton boat equipped with a 3-horse-power steam-engine, plied regularly between Glasgow and Greenock until it was wrecked in 1820.
R. Angus Buchanan
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