OF GREAT RARITY ON THE OPEN MARKET. Although the Scott Catalogue lists three copies, the other two were facsimiles of 1860 sold by Christie's as lots 234 and 236 on 4 December, 1974. Maggs priced their copy at the then huge sum of £55 in 1928. Jonathan Hulls had secured a patent on December 21, 1736, and published his pamphlet the following year, proudly referring to his patent on the title page. According to the entry in Maggs Nautica, "his experiments were made on the Avon at Evesham in 1737, the main idea being to have a Newcomen engine -- the only sort then known -- on a tow-boat in front of the vessel which it was intended to propel, and connected with it by a tow-rope ... Hulls undoubtedly showed how to convert the rectilineal motion of a piston-rod into a rotatory motion, which is an essential principle in steam locomotion whether on land or water. But Hull's experiment was a failure, and only excited derision." Edgar Smith in A Short History of Naval and Marine Engineering (Cambridge, 1937, p. 4) says "there appears to be no evidence that Hulls actually constructed a steam boat and, as the only steam engine available at that time was the cumbrous slow-moving Newcomen atmospheric engine, it is exceedingly improbable that he could have driven a boat by steam."