Death by Fire and Ice. The Steamboat Lexington Calamity

Книга на английском языке
Mans fascination with the power of steam dates to antiquity. Hero of Alexandria is generally credited with constructing, or at least designing, the first primitive steam engine, an apparatus that used steam to force water through a pipe to create a fountain. That modest beginning planted the seed for the dream of harnessing steam’s power for industrial use.
It would take centuries and the efforts of myriad inventors, however, before that seed germinated to produce a practical engine capable of propelling a boat by steam. Its inventors included the English engineers Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen, the Scottish engineer James Watt, and the American inventors James Rumsey, John Fitch, Samuel Morey, and John Stevens, each of whom can lay claim in part to inventing the steam engine. Yet despite their efforts, none was successful in finding a commercial application for his work. Some died destitute, and one, Fitch, even took his own life, overwhelmed by despair.

Содержание
Introduction
Harnessing the Power of Steam
1. A “Fire Engine to Raise Water”
2. “Fulton’s Folly” and the New York Monopoly
3. The Competition Emerges
4. Gibbons v. Ogden the Demise of the New York Monopoly
5. High-Pressure Engines and Anthracite
6. Steam-Propelled Navigation on the Sound Vanderbilt Launches the Lexington fires and Exploding Boilers
8. Congressional Power to Regulate Steamboat Safety
9. The Steamboat Act of 1838
10. Vanderbilt Sells the Lexington to the Boston and New York Transportation Company
11. All Aboard the Lexington for Stonington
12. The Fire Alarm Sounds
13. Rescue Efforts Prove Too Little, Too Late
14. The Coroner’s Inquest the Owner’s Testimony
15. The Coroner’s Inquest the Lexington’s Safety Record
16. The Coroner’s Inquest the Survivors’ Testimony
17. The Inquest Jury’s Verdict
18. The Public Demands Retribution and Improved Safety
19. The Lexington's Owner’s Liability for Property Lost on Board
20. The Shipowners’ Limitation of Liability Act of 1851
21. The Call to Overhaul the Steamboat Act of 1838
22. Congress versus the States
23. The Steamboat Act of 1852
24. The Steamboat Act of 1871
25. Salvaging the Lexington
Epilogue
Requiescat in Pace
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index