I used to know something about this subject, but I'm going to have to rely on a none-too-reliable memory. Take all the following with a grain of salt.
I used to work in a maritime museum. One of the last projects I worked on was a temporary exhibition of the patent drawings of Robert Fulton. They were on loan from some major professional organization of engineers; I'm afraid I don't remember which one. This must have been in 1982 or 1983.
The drawings were fascinating. They included all sorts of mechanisms Fulton had conceived for steam engines, steamboat drive systems, and various other kinds of machinery. Some of them he actually built; others, we were pretty sure, never got beyond the theoretical stage.
While I was working on that exhibition I did all the reading I could about Fulton and his steamboats in the museum library. This was twenty-plus years ago, but I think I remember the basic facts about the situation pretty firmly.
1. Whether the boat in question actually was named
Clermont is extremely iffy. Fulton sometimes referred to her formally as "The North River Steamboat of Clermont," but in his private and business papers he usually just called her "the steamboat." (Clermont, if I remember right, was the name of his house - or maybe that of one of his fellow investors. My memory's foggy about that one.)
2. There are no contemporary plans that show the complete vessel. The patent drawings did include a fairly detailed plan of the machinery - the engine, boiler, gear arrangement, etc. And I seem to recall that there was a tiny image of the vessel in the background of one of Fulton's watercolor paintings. In terms of firm, contemporary evidence - that's it.
Several other nineteenth-century images of the vessel have been found. Unfortunately all of them are different in pretty significant ways. Lots of modelers have tackled the subject over the years, with interesting but utterly inconsistent results. So far as I know, there's no reliable information on how long she was (though her beam can be estimated from the patent drawing). Some models give the hull a gracefully curving shape in plan view; others are shaped like a six-sided lozenge, with parallel sides amidships and straight, sharp points on both ends. At least one of the contemporary pictures seems to imply that she had cabins (with windows) in the after part of her hull, but others don't. Some show one mast, forward, with a square sail on it; others show two, one forward, one aft.
The museum where I worked (the Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Virginia) had a model of the boat that had been built back in, I believe, the 1930s. When I compared it with the patent drawing it was clear that the modeler had worked from the drawing. (It's been published in several books - but I'm afraid I don't recall the titles or authors.) Otherwise the model was based on speculation and inference.
I have an extremely vague recollection of having seen an ad for a wood
Clermont kit somewhere many years ago, but I'm afraid it was from Marine Models or some other long-defunct company. I'm not aware of a wood kit on the market now. Certainly not one as big as 65PRB43 is looking for.
I do remember two plastic kits. One was from ITC; I don't remember anything about it except that it existed. The other was from Lindberg, and was one of my favorites when I was considerably younger. It was about eighteen inches long, was molded in brown and white plastic, and had a remarkably sophisticated power plant. The paddle wheels and all the gears were reproduced more-or-less to scale, and the piston and its crosshead moved up and down above the single cylinder. You had to look closely to see the worm gear that connected the mechanism to the little Mabuchi moter concealed under the foredeck, along with its AA batteries. The kit was reasonably detailed for its time (the early sixties, I think). It even featured a set of crew and passenger figures. (I think it may have a tiny place in plastic kit trivia lists: the only ship model kit to contain a figure of a woman.) I haven't seen one for years; I suspect it's a collector's item today. That's a shame. With modern NiMH batteries it probably could make it from Albany to New York on one charge.
A set of plans purporting to represent the vessel may be on the market somewhere. I'll check a source or two and see if I can find any; if so, I'll do another post. But if they exist, they're highly speculative.
So the bad news, from 65PRB43's perspective, is that there's no kit and no really reliable plans. The good news is that there's plenty of room for imagination, personal interpretation, and personal taste. Lots of historians and model builders have tried their hands at reconstructing this extremely important vessel. There's no reason why somebody else shouldn't.