In 1802 William Symington designed and commissioned a model steam boat which he presented to Lord Dundas at his London residence in Arlington Street. He demonstrated the model at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, London; an account was published in the July 1802 number of the Proceedings of the Royal Institution.

The Royal Institution of Great Britain had been founded in 1799 with the aim of nurturing scientific research and introducing new technologies.  Lord Dundas F.R.S. was elected as a manager in 1802; his fellow managers at the time included Henry Cavendish and Sir Joseph Banks.  Two of the greatest experimentalists in the history of science, Faraday and Rutherford, were to conduct lecture-demonstrations in that august Institution. Michael Faraday 1791-1867 conducted experiments on electro-magnetism and ran a hugely popular series of public lectures. In 1904 Ernest Rutherford lectured on the structure of atoms at the Royal Institution.  At a prestigious event held at the Royal Institution in 1934, Rutherford presented a seminal demonstration of nuclear fission. 

William Symington's model is illustrated in the Journal of the Institution, along with a description of his steam boat experiments. The joint editors of the Journal at the time were Thomas Young M.D., Professor of Natural Philosophy and Superintendent of the Institute, and Professor Humphrey Davy, the discoverer of sodium and potassium, who was appointed as the director of the chemistry laboratory at the Institute in 1802. Dr. Young was the author of the Account of Mr. SYMINGTON'S New Steam Boat, reproduced below.  [1]

Sadly, the model steam boat has been lost. Descendants of Lord Dundas did not retain the model, nor can it be traced within the Royal Institution.

In 1838 Robert Bowie wrote of the "strange and rather suspicious circumstance that the model of a steam boat left by the late Lord Dundas and Mr. Symington in the Royal Institution, disappeared unaccountably from that building." [2]

Beneath the lecture theatre of the Royal Institution was a spacious repository in which models and mechanical contrivances were kept. [3] According to Thomas Tredgold, in his “The Steam Engine”, published in 1827, this model steam boat could still be viewed within the Royal Institution at that time and that advice was reiterated in the “New Edition” of 1838. [4] [5]  

[1] Journals of the Royal Institution of Great Britain London: 1802 Volume 1, pages 195-196

[2] Letter to the Shipping and Mercantile Gazette 5 May 1838

[3] Bence Jones, The Royal Institution 1871 page 155

[4] Tredgold, Thomas, The Steam Engine, Comprising an Account of its Invention and Progressive Improvement, etc. London: 1827 page 41

[5] Tredgold, Thomas, The Steam Engine etc., New Edition 1838 Volume I page 41