When pioneer Robert Fulton successfully steered his newly-built North River Steam Boat 150 miles up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany, NY in 1807, he shattered a long-standing belief that mankind was destined, in terms of navigating waterways, to be subservient to Nature and the vagaries of winds, tides and currents.

The advent of steamboats meant that people could, for the first time in history, travel by water from one place to another and expect to arrive at their destination within a predictable period of time. More significantly, Fulton had proven that, in the words of author John Laurence Busch, “it was, in fact, possible to overcome Nature to practical effect.” Observing “Fulton’s Folly” (as the skeptics called it) with especially keen interest was a coastal sloop captain from New London, CT named Moses Rogers, who soon became one of the very first steamboat captains in history. Within a few short years, Rogers and other trailblazers began introducing steamboats to new waterways that could benefit from this “new mode of transport.”