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When the first operating steam engines were observed by common folk, the smoking contraptions must have appeared as an apparatus from a Jules Verne novel.

Billowing black smoke venting from a metal, and not brick, smoke stack was odd enough, but when seething clouds of white steam pumped like a beating heart from the base of the machine, men, women and children could only stand in awe as the age of the industrial revolution began.

Thomas Savery was a British military engineer and was the first person awarded a United Kingdom patent for a steam engine in 1698. Savery based his design on the principals of a pressure cooker invented earlier by French-born physicist Denis Papin.

When Scotsman James Watt was working on a Thomas Newcomen-designed “atmospheric engine” in 1769, he discovered and patented major breakthroughs with the mechanics of the modern steam engine. We remember the famous Scotsman today whenever we refer to a “watt” as a measurable degree of energy.

During the drab and dreary coal mining days of 18th century Newcastle England, a young man was hired to watch over wandering herds of sheep. The challenge of young George Stevenson’s first job was to keep restless legs of moving mutton away from the perils of passing coal wagons. With the nearby mines producing the “black rocks that burned” at an amazing rate, a wide range of employment opportunities ensued.

Oxen, horses, and mules, pulled the heavy “colliers” or coal wagons, and as the young Stevenson earned his two pennies a day to watch over the sheep he began to dream about a new way to transport everything.

Stevenson’s next job was working at the mine where he was fascinated by every mechanical device. The most complicated and intriguing of the machines however was the steam-engine pump that removed seeping water from the depths of the mine.

Richard Trevithick envisioned the steam locomotive as early as 1797, and as George Stevenson advanced at the Newcastle mines, he was overjoyed when his smoking and sparking engine of sorts puffed its way along at a crawling pace pulling four wagons of coal. As Stevenson’s first locomotive based on Trevithick’s earlier work pulled English coal cars up hill, the former British shepherd knew he had found his calling in life.

After his success in hauling coal, Stevenson was engaged and challenged to build an eight-mile stretch of railroad between Hetton and Sunderland England. When completed, the coal wagons that young George had watched oxen pull were now moving along the tracks of the very first railroad ever.

By 1829, the steam engine was as modern as the computer is today and everyone with a talent for tinkering was jumping on the railroad bandwagon. There were so many new inventors and builders that a contest was held to determine who could make the best steam-driven locomotive.

The new railroad between Manchester and Liverpool was to host the contest and when George Stevenson’s “Rocket” was set upon the tracks, it became the winner, despite the fact that it ran over and killed an enthusiastic member of the British parliament. On September 15, 1830, George Stevenson became the father of the railroad.

The steam engine however, made its travel debut on the water. With all the smoke, sparks, leaking steam, and fire, the most sensible application of Mr. Watt’s apparatus was definitively on the water. After all, steam begins with water and without water there can be no steam; perhaps, the early steam engineers preferred an easy out and an escape overboard if the compressing, hissing, and over-pressurized parts turned into a pressure cooker gone bad.

The idea of moving on the water without oars or sails was definitely the brainchild of accountants. Sailing vessels were dependant on the “trade winds” to sail tea from China, or to transport trade and cargo around the world. Sailing vessels, however beautiful and romantic, were dependent on the weather. Whenever in port, if the wind was not “fair” the tea clippers lingered, the whalers waited, and the coal hauling vessels killed time. Time however, was money, so the idea of a vessel that could travel at any time and make dependable schedules was very appealing.

With James Watt’s modern steam engine renovations, remarkable advances of travel began on the water.

In France as early as 1777, a French engineer experimented with the first steamboat near Lyons and was the marquis of the moment as he steamed down the river for several hundred yards before the weight of the steaming engine broke through the bottom of the fragile little boat and extinguished the effort.

It was a warm and sultry day in August when the steamboat and paddle wheelers arrived in America. Only a decade after the French fiasco, John Fitch navigated his steam-driven paddle wheeler down the Delaware River and paraded pass a small collection of the newly formed Continental Congress. Fitch later built a larger steamer that would ferry cargo and passengers from Philadelphia to New Jersey.

The first commercially viable steamboat endeavor began years later in 1807. After Robert Fulton contracted a 150 feet side-wheeler to be built in New York, he anxiously waited with close friends and family at the docks in Greenwich Village as the new boiler was fired, and the steamer prepared to get underway.

With a curious populous crowding the wharf at the East River, and a somewhat skeptical crew of construction engineers and hesitant Fulton friends aboard, the lines of the side-wheeler were cast off. With the blast of a steam whistle and a fanfare of sparks, smoke and steam, the historic voyage began. Only minutes however, after the big side wheels began to mill the water, a shriek of metal sounded amongst a torrent of steam and Robert Fulton’s first venture into steam navigation drifted to a stop.

With all aboard, whispering, frowning, and even a bit fearful that the boiler might explode, Fulton spoke to the anxious passengers and pleaded for a half an hour to inspect the trouble and try for a second chance.

Within minutes, a misalignment of a throttle valve was corrected, and the side wheels that were inspired by the water-driven mill wheels found on most moving rivers once again began to turn.

As the tentative voyage continued from New York City on the East river into the Hudson and onward toward Albany, Fulton’s first foray was uneventful except for the cheering crowds that lined the riverfront whenever the smoking and steaming side-wheeler paddled from township to township. After 110 miles of conquering the Hudson, and twenty-five hours of carefully watching the boiler, the grand riverside home of prominent passenger Robert Livingston came into view. The following day with Fulton’s steamer belching sparks, cinders, and soot, the awkward and ungainly craft docked at Albany and invited passengers aboard for the return trip to New York City.

Despite the copious crowds that cheered the vessel on, and the big sandwich signs placed on the docks advertising passage to New York City, only two paying passengers presented themselves the following morning to book passage on Fulton’s newly named “Clermont.”

Out of all the spectators crowding the docks when the boiler was kindled into life, only two visiting Frenchmen were adventurous enough to book a passage. The price for the 150-mile journey at five-miles-an-hour was based on the equivalent of a sailing vessel fee and was only three dollars. Even after proving herself worthy of an extended voyage, anyone not part of the “Clermont” crew, and the somewhat skeptical Fulton friends, was truly bold to climb aboard as a moving milestone in history arrived.

The voyage back down the Hudson and into New York City was once again successful and as the adventurous Frenchmen departed the vessel, they became the first steamboat paying passengers in America.

In 1854, one of the first steamboat-paddle wheelers constructed in Florida was built on the St. Croix River and named after Native American Seminole Chef Osceola.

The “Osceola” brought the piping note of the steam whistle to tropical waters as she plied the St. Croix River hauling sawmill supplies, newly harvested timber, and the occasional passengers drawn to the wild and floral frontiers of Florida.

With the rise of Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas in 1850, paddlewheel steamers began to probe beyond the Deep South and emerge into southern Florida waters. Millions of masonry bricks were hauled from the Florida panhandle by sailing vessels and paddle wheeler steamers, and when Henry Flagler began the famous overseas railroad between Miami and Key West, steam-driven paddle wheelers were the steaming beasts of burden that ferried the building supplies and work crews between the shallow reef-lined waters.

After the sailing ships, but before the Railroads Kings conquered Florida, paddlewheel steamers ventured out of protected rivers and bays to deliver passengers and cargo along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Paddle wheelers were used before the Spanish American War to transport Florida cattle to Cuba in exchange for the hard currency of pure Spanish gold. At the height of the paddle wheeler heyday, when Samuel Clemens was Mark Twain and the paddlewheel steamers were the rage of the day, there was even a steamboat service from the coasts of Florida all the way to Tampico Mexico.

Whenever the old paddle wheeler captains, tapped a finger on the barometer, and the tiny needle on the all-important weather forecasting device indicated “fair,” a fire was kindled beneath the boilers, pressurized steam rose in the pipes, and huge horizontal pistons were propelled by the laws of physics. After the signal of a steam whistle, and a farewell at the docks, big propulsion wheels began milling the water and the voyage was underway.

Paddle wheel steamers often emerged into the hazards of open water, sometimes traveling distances of several hundred miles without the refuge of a safe harbor. With the barometric pressure signaling fair weather, and no ill or superstitious omens parading across the morning or evening sky, paddlewheel captains and crew would whisper their prayers and set out on the face of the deep.

Excerpt from: “The wreck of the Turtle.”

With all the cattle aboard and corralled on the lower deck and the cotton bales stowed, tied, and made fast on the after sky deck, the old “Turtle” was ready to get underway. With over a hundred feet of water line, the paddle wheeler leaving from Tampa Bay could average about 12 miles-per-hour — as long as the wind stayed down — and maybe even better if the gulf behaved like a lake and not the battering tempest that the shallow waters could conjure in an hour’s notice.

The course for the old “Turtle” was simple. After casting off from Demen’s landing in St. Petersburg and steaming across the channel, Pappy Joe would line up the compass at just west of south keeping a weather eye to the sky and every eye aboard on the strength of the wind.

As Pappy stood in the pilothouse and watched mangrove coast creep past the port beam, he once again considered the perils of his profession and the troubles with skippering paddle wheel steamers offshore.

The cattle and cotton run from Tampa to Havana was rewarding for all aboard, but also dangerous. As everyone knew, the devilish dry rot could hide in almost any plank and render the strongest of yellow pine into nothing but useless black pulp. The old boilers were another problem. Sometimes the safety valves worked, and sometimes they didn’t. In a matter of minutes, the steam pressure could spike, a hot spot could form in the boiler, and if the safety valve failed, or the engineer happened to be taking a break from the heat of the brick-lined firebox, the boiler could explode with a scalding torrent and blow a hole through the bottom of the boat. One more than one occasion, offshore paddle wheelers cast off at the Tampa docks and were never heard from again.

For the uncountable time since the “Turtle” left Tampa bay and headed south, Pappy Joe tapped the barometer with a nicotine-stained finger and frowned. The damned needle was dropping, and the cattle, which had remained quiet all the way to Fort Myers, were now beginning to complain. Apart from falling barometer, there wasn’t anything decipherable about the weather, although the humidity had picked up and the cows were bawling.

“Sure is strange,” Jansen, the first mate offered as he climbed into the pilothouse. “I’ve never seen cattle, restless like this.” He then looked as all mariners do over to the barometer.

“Damn! That doesn’t look good.”

“No it don’t,” Pappy shook his head. “But if the wind starts and things get bad we’ll tuck into the Shark River after Cape Romano. We wait till she blows out and then get these cows to Cuba before they get too hungry”

“Well, that’s a plan at least.”

“How’s the firebox gang?” Pappy asked the question, but his eyes were scanning the horizon.

“Old Pete’s got the oil can out for the second piston again, and Harvey is covered in coal dust. With all the racket from those reciprocating valves and worn out bearings neither one of them can hear the cattle complain — and that’s a good thing I reckon.”

As Captain Pappy Joe grunted his agreement, he began to turn the wheel away from the coast and the trickiest part of the voyage. Cape Romano was ahead to the east and every skipper knew to stay away from that shallow water to the south of Marco and Goodland point.

When the wind started, it came out of the worst direction and settled in hard out of the North West. Pappy saw the white water coming, cursed his luck, and hated the sound the cattle made when they began to stumble in the stalls. The Shark River was too far away, the “Turtle” was in a heaving sea thirty miles off Marco, and the paddle wheeler’s only chance was to “sail” the boxy ship before the wind toward Key West and hope for the best.

After the last of Jansen’s pistol shots rang out above the wind and the waves, and most of the cattle were put to rest, Pappy Joe and his crew climbed aboard the long boat, stepped the mast, and set the sails for Key West. The last anyone saw of the “Turtle,” was when the gulf found the boiler and the firebox and the four men turned after the explosion to watch the paddle wheeler buckle and the tall smokestacks settle beneath the waves.

In the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico, strong winds can create dangerous battering waves. Tumultuous seas can rise without notice and can disable or destroy deep-water vessels, but with an already aged paddle wheeler, over loaded, and caught in a rising tempest, there can be little wonder that a mystery paddle wheeler of about one hundred fifty feet lies lost and broken on the sandy sea floor just thirty miles off Marco Island.

According to Marco Island’s very own Scuba Adventures diving club, diving enthusiasts routinely visit the paddle wheeler of unknown origin for exploratory scuba dives.

On the dive site of the lost paddle wheeler, masonry bricks have been recovered from under the sea floor sand that are stamped with the year 1861. According to dive club members, a steam pressure gauge has been recovered that reveals a date of manufacture from 1898. Other masonry bricks have been recovered that are simply stamped with a brick maker’s signature of “St. Louis.”

With the wreck of a mystery, paddle wheeler resting beneath our neighboring coastal waters, the lives and legacies of James Watt, John Fitch and Robert Fulton live on. Imagine the lost and found icons that litter the sea floor today and remain as the tale-tell signs of early steamer navigation.

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*“The wreck of the Turtle” is a work of fiction by Tom Williams. Tom is available at capttom@marcoislandtoday.com

Special Thanks to Pam and David Brink and the Marco Scuba Adventures Dive Club for research assistance with this article.