Patrick Miller
Patrick Miller (1731-1815), banker and inventor, of Dalswinton, just north of Dumfries
He became a Scottish banker and shareholder in the Carron Co engineering works and an enthusiastic experimenter in ordnance and naval architecture, including double or triple hulled pleasure boats propelled by cranked paddle-wheels placed between the hulls.
He built 8 or more paddle-driven vessels using manual labour to turn the paddles. [1]
On seeing a steam-carriage model made by the engineer William Symington (or on the suggestion of Symington's friend James Taylor), he got Symington to build his patent steam engine with its drive into a twin-hulled pleasure boat. This was successfully tried out on Dalswinton Loch near Miller's house on the 14 October 1788.
He is reported to have spent £30,000 in experiments. [2]
The next year a larger engine was fitted to a 60 ft long twin hull paddle boat and tried on the Forth and Clyde Canal. After initial problems of paddle wheels breaking up on 2 December, the vessel travelled some distance along the canal at a "motion of nearly seven miles an hour" on 26 December and 27 December 1789.
Miller had been complaining about the cost of the venture, and he then abandoned the project. Ten years later, Lord Dundas restarted Symington's work on a steamboat, leading to the famous paddle steamer Charlotte Dundas.
1807 Featured in William Walker et al’s painting of men of science alive in 1807-8[3]
‘Cross-Channel and Coastal Paddle Steamers’ by George Frank Burtt
THE first really conclusive practical experiment of a steam paddle boat was made on a small inland loch at Dalswinton, near Dumfries, Scotland, towards the end of the eighteenth century. In 1786, Patrick Miller, a resident of Dalswinton, entered into negotiations with William Symington, an engineer at Wanlockhead, to fit one of his newly-invented steam engines into a double-hulled pleasure boat of Miller’s on the above loch. The boat was a sort of CASTALIA, 25 feet long and 7 feet wide.
The engine was made by George Watt, of Low Calton, Edinburgh, and in October, 1788, was fitted into the boat and connected to two paddle wheels placed fore and aft in the boat’s length. They were driven with intermittent motion by rod and chain work attached to ratchet wheels on the paddle wheel shafts. A speed of five miles an hour was recorded. The engine was of the single acting type, having two cylinders, 4 inches diameter and 9 inches stroke.
See Also
Sources of Information
- [2] Wikipedia
- ↑ London Science Museum
- ↑ The Engineer 1902/04/04
- ↑ National Portrait Gallery: [1]