The Civil Engineers, with Robert Stephenson, M.P., in the chair, entertained him at a dinner and presented him with a handsome salver and claret jug.

And that he might have something to put upon his salver and into his claret jug, a number of his friends and admirers subscribed over 2000L.

as a testimonial.
The Government appointed him Curator of the Patent Museum at South Kensington; the Queen granted him a pension on the Civil List for 200L.
a year; he was raised to the honour of knighthood in 1871, and three years later he died.
Francis Pettit Smith was not a great inventor.

He had, like many others, invented a screw propeller.

But, while those others had given up the idea of prosecuting it to its completion, Smith stuck to his invention with determined tenacity, and never let it go until he had secured for it a complete triumph.