Robert Fulton
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40 free Robert Fulton trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Robert Fulton is the name most people attach to the steamboat, yet he did not invent it, and steam was only one chapter of a restless life. He trained for a completely different career, spent twenty years in Europe pitching canals and undersea weapons to rival governments, and came home to launch the river service that changed American travel. This quiz collects the fun facts behind the textbook line: what his famous boat was really called and why people laughed at it, who paid for it, how his submarine worked, what went wrong on his first trip down the Mississippi, and how an act of kindness cost him his life. A few questions cover his wife, his four children and their names, and the places that still honour him. It suits students working on a report, teachers who want a ready-made review, and anyone who likes the odd corners of early American invention. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn the story even when you miss.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Robert Fulton fell fatally ill in 1815 after rescuing his lawyer friend from which accident?
A fall through ice
A fall through ice on the frozen river nearly drowned his friend Thomas Addis Emmet. Fulton hauled him out, got soaked, and died soon afterwards at 49.
Q 02Robert Fulton named his floating bombs torpedoes, a word that first meant which sea creature?
Electric ray
Electric ray was the original meaning of torpedo, from the Latin for sluggishness. Fulton borrowed it for his mines and titled an 1810 book Torpedo War.
Q 03Before he became an engineer, Robert Fulton earned his living in London in which profession?
Portrait painter
Portrait painter was Fulton's first career, and Benjamin Franklin was among his sitters. His London pictures won so little notice that he gave up art in his late twenties.
Q 04Besides its steam engine, Robert Fulton's 1807 steamboat carried which older means of propulsion?
Sails
Sails could be unfurled on a short mast at each end of the boat. Fulton boasted that the first trip was made wholly by steam, against a light headwind both ways.
Q 05Which French ruler branded Robert Fulton a swindler after he scrapped his leaky submarine?
Napoleon
Napoleon asked to see the submarine in 1801, only to learn Fulton had already broken it up. The French navy thought such a weapon suicidal for its crews.
Q 06Robert Fulton's wealthy steamboat backer had once sworn in which president at a first inauguration?
George Washington
George Washington took the oath in 1789 from the man who later bankrolled Fulton, then Chancellor of New York. The same partner helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase.
Q 07Which natural disaster struck during the 1811 Mississippi debut of a Robert Fulton steamboat?
An earthquake
An earthquake centred on New Madrid, Missouri, the first of a violent series, reshaped the river as the boat passed. Villagers begged to be taken aboard.
Q 08After France rejected his submarine, Robert Fulton began building weapons for which country in 1804?
Britain
Britain hired Fulton to build floating mines for use against the French invasion fleet. His contract paid £200 a month plus a bounty for every ship destroyed.
Q 09Robert Fulton did not invent the steamboat, so what is his 1807 vessel credited as the first to do?
Succeed commercially
Succeed commercially is what set Fulton's boat apart: earlier steamboats ran but lost money. His turned a profit in its first three months of carrying passengers.
Q 10Robert Fulton gave his 1800 submarine which name, later reused by Jules Verne for Captain Nemo?
Nautilus
Nautilus was built of copper sheets over iron ribs and stayed under for an hour in trials. Verne took the name for his fictional submarine seven decades later.
Q 11Robert Fulton registered his boat as the North River Steamboat, using an old name for which river?
Hudson
Hudson River was often called the North River in 1807, so the boat's working name simply said where it ran. Its famous nickname came later.
Q 12Robert Fulton's steamboat made its first trip from New York City 150 miles upriver to which city?
Albany
Albany was reached in 32 hours of steaming, a trip that took sailing sloops about four days. Regular passenger runs began within weeks.
Q 13Robert Fulton's 1807 steamboat is best known by which name, taken from his partner's estate?
Clermont
Clermont was the country estate where the boat stopped on its maiden trip. Fulton himself just called his vessel the Steamboat.
Q 21Robert Fulton's first experimental steamboat was tried out in 1803 on which European river?
Seine
Seine trials in Paris reached only about three miles an hour, and an earlier hull broke under the engine. Even so, they proved the design could work.
Q 22Robert Fulton ordered his 1807 steamboat's engine from which famous firm in Birmingham, England?
Boulton and Watt
Boulton and Watt supplied the 24-horsepower engine. Fulton first had to get around English laws against exporting such machinery.
Q 23Which device, often rammed by rival sloop crews, propelled Robert Fulton's 1807 steamboat?
Side paddle wheels
Q 14While Robert Fulton's 1807 steamboat was under construction, doubters mocked it as Fulton's what?
Folly
Folly was the jeer, and Fulton wrote that barely thirty people in the city believed the boat would move a mile an hour. It overtook sloops as if they were at anchor.
Q 15Which drafter of the Declaration of Independence became the backer of Robert Fulton's steamboat?
Livingston
Robert Livingston met Fulton in Paris while serving as American minister to France. He already held a 20-year monopoly on steamboats in New York, and the two agreed to share costs.
Q 16Which state, Robert Fulton's birthplace, chose him as one of its two statues in the US Capitol?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania sent its statue of Fulton to National Statuary Hall in 1889. The state also restored the Lancaster County farmhouse where his life began.
Q 17Robert Fulton is buried in which Manhattan churchyard, also the resting place of Alexander Hamilton?
Trinity Church
Trinity Church holds Fulton in the family vault of his wife's relatives, at the head of Wall Street. Engineers added a monument to him there in 1901.
Q 18Which American, the Royal Academy's second president, was young Robert Fulton's teacher in London?
Benjamin West
Benjamin West, a family friend, welcomed Fulton to London and oversaw his studies. West was a favourite of King George III and helped launch the Royal Academy.
Q 19As a teenager, Robert Fulton was apprenticed in Philadelphia to which kind of craftsman?
Jeweler
Jeweler's work in a Philadelphia shop was the young Fulton's first trade. Lancaster, where he grew up, was better known for its gunsmiths.
Q 20Robert Fulton gave his only son a middle name honouring which American poet, his host in Paris?
Joel Barlow
Joel Barlow, the boy's godfather, housed Fulton for seven years in Paris and nicknamed him Toot. Fulton's daughters were Julia, Cornelia and Mary.
Side paddle wheels, 15 feet across, were left unprotected at first. After sloop crews rammed them, Fulton fitted guards over the wheels that winter.
Q 24Which fuel fed the boiler of Robert Fulton's 1807 steamboat on its first trips upriver?
Wood
Wood did the job: oak and pine logs raised steam at just two to three pounds per square inch. The engine sat amidships, stacked round with cordwood.
Q 25How was the submarine Robert Fulton built in France in 1800 propelled when it was underwater?
By hand crank
By hand crank: crewmen turned a screw propeller, and in one trial two of them beat two men rowing on the surface over a 360-foot course.
Q 26Robert Fulton's final design, built to guard New York Harbor in 1814, was the world's first what?
Steam warship
Steam warship Demologos had twin hulls five feet thick to shrug off cannon fire. The war ended before it could fight, and it was renamed Fulton after his death.
Q 27Which landmark Supreme Court case broke the New York steamboat monopoly Robert Fulton had shared?
Gibbons v. Ogden
Gibbons v. Ogden held in 1824 that Congress's power over interstate commerce covers navigation, voiding the New York grant. By 1840 more than 100 steamboats were working the river.
Q 28Which future railroad tycoon began as a steamboat captain defying Robert Fulton's old monopoly?
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Cornelius Vanderbilt captained a rival steamboat between New Jersey and New York from 1817, while his employer undercut the monopoly's prices and fought it in court.
Q 29Which inventor ran a steamboat on the Delaware River two decades before Robert Fulton's success?
John Fitch
John Fitch showed off his boat, driven by banks of mechanical oars, before delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He never made it pay.
Q 30Robert Fulton's 1811 steamboat, the first on the Ohio and Mississippi, was named for which city?
New Orleans
New Orleans was both the boat's name and its destination, reached in January 1812. Its captain was a great-granduncle of Theodore Roosevelt.