Scottish engineer. By building Europe's first steamship, he made a great breakthrough in shipping.
Image: An image depicting the PS Comet, built in 1812 by Scottish engineer Henry Bell, which made the first successful steamship transport in Europe.
He was born in Linlithgowshire in Torpicen in 1767. He apprenticed first to his uncle, who was a miller and then to a shipbuilder in Borrotvstounness. Then he went to London and worked with John Rennie (1761-1821), one of the most famous civil engineers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, who built three suspension bridges over the River Thames.
Henry Bell (7 April 1767 – 14 March 1830) was a Scottish engineer who helped to pioneer the development of the steamship. He is mostly widely known for introducing the first successful passenger steamboat service in Europe in 1812.
He returned to Scotland in 1790, after working as a carpenter in Glasgow for a while, he went to Helensburgh and settled on the banks of the Clyde Estuary. Bell, who carried out his work on steamships here, died in the same city on November 14, 1830. There is a memorial to him at Dunglass on the banks of the Clyde.
The first examples of steamships were developed in the USA in the late 18th century. On August 22, 1787, John Fitch made a successful trial on the Delaware River with a small steamship and paddle steamer of his own design, and in 1791 received a patent from the USA and France for his steamships. While development efforts and new examples followed each other, the steam river ship "Clermont", also made by the US Robert Fulton, started regular voyages on the Hudson River and between New York and Albany in 1807. Two years later, steamships had reached the level of switching from river transport to sea transport. The steamship Phoenix, which began operating between Hoboken, New Jersey, and Philadelphia in 1809, pioneered regular sea voyages.
While steamships were sailing in the USA, Bell, who has been working on this issue since 1800, had positive results in his last trials and accelerated his attempts to start steamship transportation in Europe. When his offer to the British Naval Forces Command was accepted, it had 3 horsepower He completed the construction of the 28-ton ship "Comet" equipped with a powerful steam engine. This ship was 13.10 m long, 3.33 m wide, 1.67 m deep, and powered by a single-cylinder engine. The Comet was launched from Glasgow Harbor in July 1812 and carried passengers between Greenock and Helensburgh on the River Clyde from 1812 to 1820. This first ship, which had great commercial success in Europe, was followed by the feeds in a short time, and the ship transportation progressed on the path opened by Bell in European countries.