But, despite the fact that a great storm arose, the Phoenix made the trip in safety; and continued for many years thereafter to ply the Delaware between Philadelphia and Trenton.
Robert Fulton, like many and many another great inventor, from Leonardo da Vinci down to the present time, was also an artist.

He was born November 14, 1765, at Little Britain, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, of that stock which is so often miscalled "Scotch-Irish." He was only a child when his father died, leaving behind him a son who seems to have been much more interested in his own ideas than in his schoolbooks.

Even in his childhood Robert showed his mechanical ability.

There was a firm of noted gunsmiths in Lancaster, in whose shops he made himself at home and became expert in the use of tools.

At the age of fourteen he applied his ingenuity to a heavy fishing boat and equipped it with paddle-wheels, which were turned by a crank, thus greatly lightening the labor of moving it.
At the age of seventeen young Fulton moved to Philadelphia and set up as a portrait painter.