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The Seine River was the scene of many early experiments with steam navigation. The steamship has a long ancestry, dating back at least to 1783 when the Marquis de Jouffray d'Abbans steamed his little boat, the Pyroscaphe, across the Seine. Robert Fulton even exhibited one to Napoleon's regime. With the success of the steam engine by the 1820s, the Second Republic embarked on a series of navigation improvements to raise weirs and locks with which to deepen the navigation channel. By the 1860s improvements had changed the riverbed from low-lying sand banks and trickle to a series of cascading ponds with a depth of 6 and a half feet. ==Early history== Early experiments with steam were started in 1780s on the Rhone River in France, and were perfected with Fulton's boat on the Seine in 1803. The British had the early lead with steam, from James Watt, William Symington, and Henry Bell, and thus it became logical that the technology transfer would migrate across the English Channel. The ''Rob Roy'' did such a task in 1816, while the ''Aaron Maltby'' left London and sailed up the Seine to Paris in 1822. A charter was issued for a tourist day tripper steamboat company in Paris. Alfred Binyon, an English cloth merchant, travelled to France to see a trade show and wrote of it. "We took a hasty cup of coffee and went on board the Seine steam packet, a French built boat with English engines and engineer. The sail was delightful - the banks of the Seine are steep chalk cliffs on one side, and fine rich meadow land with abundance of cattle on the other. Baum said it was superior to the Rhine in many parts. We arrived at Rouen." Many early vessels used Boulton and Watt steam engines. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Seine River Steamers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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