In 1858 a petition signed by more than 100 prominent citizens of Yarmouth was submitted to the Nova Scotia Legislature asking that a pension be granted John Patch who “conceives he has rendered essential service to the world at large.”

The “essential service” that was referred to was the invention of the screw propeller, recognized by then as one of the major inventions of the nineteenth century for steamships of all description. As further evidence that Patch was the inventor, the petition enclosed a declaration from the Butler brothers of Yarmouth who wrote, “We assisted him in making the machinery for the first trial, which took place in 1833. We accompanied him in a small boat to which the propeller was attached and crossed the harbour several times.” The reason for the petition was that John Patch was now a lame, sick, 77-year-old living in a Yarmouth poorhouse.

Patch was born in 1781 — the same year his sea captain father died in a shipwreck off Seal Island — but little is known of his early years in Nova Scotia. It is believed he worked as a fisherman and sailor for many years before getting the idea for a screw propeller while watching a small boat being sculled by a single oar moved in a particular pattern over its stern. According to a half brother writing in the Yarmouth Herald in 1875, Patch had been considering a screw propeller for almost 30 years, but scientific gentlemen to whom he showed his plan “laughed at him, telling him it was just as impractical as perpetual motion.”

Despite such discouragement, in the winter of 1832-33 Patch worked in a shed at nearby Kelley’s Cove on what was described as “two twisting fans appended to a shaft” two and a half feet in diameter, while the Butler brothers, Robert and Nathan, developed a hand crank and wooden gears. That summer Patch carefully tried out his invention alone on a small boat after dark in Yarmouth Harbour, the first tests being made after dark. Later, however, the Butlers were passengers and many other residents saw him hand-propel the boat around the harbour. The following year Patch got the opportunity to try out his propeller on a larger vessel when his friend, Captain Robert Kelley, installed the propeller with its hand crank and wooden gears on board his 25-ton sailing ship, Royal George. Shortly afterwards, on a trip to Saint John, the invention was put to the test. The wind died, becalming all the other sailing ships, but the Royal George, which utilized the hand-cranked propeller, continued its trip to Saint John.

Kelley wanted Patch to go to England and patent the invention, but Patch, whose favourite expression was “time enough yet,” eventually decided to go to Washington instead. There are several versions of what happened next. One, told by a descendant as late as 1947, contends that he was “fleeced” when he befriended two fortune seekers while sailing from Yarmouth to Boston on his way to Washington and that, under the influence of alcohol, he signed over all of the rights to the invention for a bottle of liquor and a barrel of flour. Another account maintains that he reached the patent office in Washington where he became discouraged when told not to waste his money patenting such an impractical invention. A third version suggests that he may have been the victim of a swindling patent office lawyer who talked him out of making the application and later sold the invention to a British peer. 
 What is known is that Patch never made a penny from his invention (or received the barrel of flour) and never received recognition for his invention apart from that accorded by the people of Yarmouth. This was partly because, since paddle wheels were still considered the prime means of propelling large ships, little interest was shown in any other form of propulsion at that time. In 1837, however, a screw propeller was installed in the 3,700-ton British steamship Archimedes and in the 1840s the British navy also turned to this form of propulsion for its fleet.

Patch also made improvements to steam engines and improved the dip of the paddle wheels for steamers. But he never relinquished his interest in propellers. In October 1848, while working at Boston, he was the subject of an article in the Scientific American that published an illustration of what he now called the “Double Action Propeller.” The story accompanying it told how a Mr. John Patch, “a very ingenious mechanic of Boston,” had developed the unit and continued “... it is different from other propellers that have been used and it is exceedingly simple.”

The article also reported that “the inventor would like it if some of our enterprising ship owners would try one on a large scale and he would be perfectly willing to superintend its erection, at a fair mechanic’s wage — a very small consideration indeed.” The new unit, however, was never developed and Patch later returned to Yarmouth.

By 1858 Patch was without money and unable to work. This prompted his fellow citizens to sign the petition that was drafted by one of the city’s best-known lawyers and orators, C.B. Owen. At the Legislature in Halifax, it was referred for study to the committee on trade and manufacture. Six weeks later the committee tabled its recommendation: “Beg leave to report that they do not recommend the prayers of these several petitions to the favourable consideration of the house.”

Patch, therefore, remained in the poorhouse where, three years later, he died penniless and bitter.