The following year, however, the engine was taken out of the craft.

And it was not until 1833 that a real steamship crossed the Atlantic.

This time it was the Royal William, which made a successful passage from Quebec to London.

Four years more passed before the Great Western was launched at Bristol, the first steamship to be especially designed for transatlantic service, and the era of great steam liners began.
If steam could be made to drive a boat on the water, why not a wagon on the land?
History, seeking origins, often has difficulty when it attempts to discover the precise origin of an idea.

"It frequently happens," said Oliver Evans, "that two persons, reasoning right on a mechanical subject, think alike and invent the same thing without any communication with each other."* It is certain, however, that one of the first, if not the first, protagonist of the locomotive in America was the same Oliver Evans, a truly great inventor for whom the world was not quite ready.
The world has forgotten him.