Tinted lithograph depicting a twin hulled very early steam yacht on a river, with a crew of men clad in Victorian attire with top hats, two masts with furled sails, and a steam engine with a single chimneypipe. Title and artist attributions printed in the lower margin. The attire of the crew is anachronistic with the period of the depicted vessel's construction (1788) and looks to be appropriate for the 1820s or 1830s.
Patrick Millar was an experimenter with various designs of multi-hulled boats, which were powered by a combination of sail and initially man-powered paddle wheels. In 1787, upon seeing one of these vessels, a Mr. James Taylor suggested to Millar the possibility of using steam to power the paddle-wheels. Although Millar was initially apprehensive, he eventually decided to try the idea and hired the young mechanic William Symington to superintend its construction. The resulting vessel, depicted in this lithograph, achieved a maximum speed of 7 m.p.h., although the first trial at full power was unsuccessful as the paddle-wheels gave way.
