THE ENGINEER.
'I exult,
Casting reserve away, exult to see
An intellectual mastery exercised
O'er the blind elements; a purpose given;
A perseverance fed; almost a soul
Imparted—to blind matter. I rejoice,
Measuring the force of those gigantic powers,
That, by the thinking mind have been compelled
To serve the will of feeble-bodied Man.'
Wordsworth's 'Excursion.'
TREVITHICK,
THE ENGINEER.
'Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam, afar
Drag the slow barge and drive the rapid car.'
Darwin.
It would not be unreasonable to inquire how it can be necessary now to write an account of Richard Trevithick, seeing that only nine or ten years ago two elaborate volumes on the subject were published by his son Francis.[141] But, apart from the propriety of including so remarkable a man in the fasciculus of our Cornish worthies, it may be observed that the very amplitude of the 'Life' to which I have referred renders it inaccessible to the general reader; and moreover it is (as the talented civil engineer who wrote that valuable and interesting work himself observes), almost as much a technical history of the development of the steam-engine as a memoir of him who was so intimately associated with its rise and progress. Our purpose is biography; and, unless I am grievously mistaken, this aspect of the subject will be found full of interest.
The steam pumping-engine is to a mine what the heart is to a man: were its action to cease, or to be inefficiently performed, the mine would be flooded, and would cease to be. It is therefore not to be wondered at if, so soon as men ceased to find the precious ores in granules on the surface, washed down by mountain streams from the denuded veins which seam the hillsides, attention should be directed towards finding the coveted treasures in the bowels of the earth itself. But here a difficulty met the searchers. As they sunk their pits they often tapped the sources of streams, which, gushing out, at once put an end to their quest. Rude expedients were at first employed to remedy this; wooden pumps, worked by the hand, and such-like feeble attempts at getting over the difficulty. But it was not until 1702 that, according to some accounts, the first steam pumping-engine was erected in Cornwall, by Savery. Newcomen, whose name will always be honourably associated with the improvement of this invaluable machine, very soon was able to increase its efficiency, and erected one of his best engines in 1720, at the mine-works of Ludgvan-lez, near Penzance. By 1756 there were several steam-engines at work in Cornwall; but their defects, especially as regards their low power, and their extravagant consumption of coal, were inconveniently felt. It was at length perceived that the solution of the difficulty lay in a diminution of the size of the boiler, and an increase in the elastic force of the steam; and for the accomplishment of these objects we are mainly indebted to the subject of this memoir, as well as, in some degree, also to his father. The circumstances which surrounded them were by no means encouraging. Coal, of course, had to be imported, and also iron plates for the boilers; and the latter it was necessary, in those days, to make of small size, on account of the indifferent condition of the Cornish roads, along which (as no heavy wheeled-traffic was practicable), the burdens had to be transported from the ports to the mines, and vice versa, on the backs of mules. Now-a-days the huge boilers are moved entire, and there are few more gladsome as well as picturesque sights to be seen in Cornwall than the transit of a gigantic new boiler through the streets of one of the West-country towns. It means that mining enterprise, which has flagged of late years, owing to the increased importation of foreign ores, and has caused deep depression and cruel poverty in many a Cornish home, is awakening once more; and the teams of thirty or forty horses, with their noisy conductors, and the ponderous mass which slowly toils along the weary road, are hailed with shouting and songs. We see, then, of what vital interest to a mining county, such as Cornwall, must ever be all that is connected with that seemingly prosaic structure, the steam-engine; and how full of interest, to Cornish folk at least, should be the story of any Cornishmen who have been prominently connected with its development and history. Such certainly were the Trevithicks, especially the younger.
Though in later times they settled in the western part of the county, the family seems to have sprung, in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, from Trevemeder, a 'town place' in the seaboard parish of St. Eval, four or five miles north-west of St. Columb Major, a parish which contains some of the finest cliff scenery in Cornwall, at the far-famed Bedruthan Steps and Sands. Some of the family monuments are still to be found in the church, which lies two miles south of Trevemeder.
The elder Trevithick, who, like his more illustrious son, was christened Richard, was born in 1735; and that he was a man of sound judgment and much force of character may be surmised from his having been appointed, when only thirty years of age, manager of some of the leading Cornish mines, in days when mine-managers were expected to be their own engineers. In 1760 he married Ann Teague, one of a family (said to be of Irish extraction) distinguished for many a long year past in the annals of Cornish mining. By her, a woman of large and portly figure,[142] he had a tall stately family of four daughters and one son, all of whom were, I believe, born in an unpretending house amongst the mine-heaps which lie between Dolcoath and North Crofty, in sight of the noble hill of Carnbrea crowned with its old castle, and still more antique remains of ancient Britons.
An example of the elder Richard's inventive skill as an engineer was given when he repaired, or rather, almost reconstructed, about 1775, Newcomen's old Carloose, or Bullan Garden engine; especially by adding thereto a strong top of new form to the boiler, a drawing of which is given in the Appendix to Price's 'Mineralogia Cornubiensis,' 1778. The old boiler-tops were scarcely more than kettle-lids, and were actually weighted down in order to keep them in their places; indeed, there is a tradition that the first Cornish boilers were nothing more than stone fire-places! In effecting this improvement Richard Trevithick, senior, was assisted by one John Harvey,[143] the founder of the celebrated firm of Harvey and Co., of Hagle Foundry, of whom we shall hear more by-and-by.
But about 1777 Watt, the celebrated 'low-pressure' engineer, appeared on the scene with his improvements in the steam-engine; travelling into Cornwall for the purpose of obtaining orders, erecting his first engine at Wheal Busy, and exciting the most angry jealousy on the part of all the local mine-managers and engineers—and notably our Richard: who, however, had the magnanimity and good sense at length to acknowledge and to adopt many of his illustrious rival's improvements.
The old man, who was a pious Methodist, a 'class-leader,' and an intimate friend of John Wesley, died when sixty-two years old at Penponds, near Camborne, on the 1st August, 1797, and, I believe, was buried on the summit of Carn Brea, but no monumental stone marks the spot. The whole of his life was spent amongst mines and steam-engines, an industry which was deeply depressed at the time of his death; and Richard, the younger (who had married Jane, John Harvey's tall and buxom daughter, shortly prior to his father's decease), may be said to have succeeded to a 'heritage of woe: 'not one in ten of the steam-engines which his father had contributed so much towards putting into operation being at that time at work, and our hero had almost to begin the work anew.
So much as the foregoing seemed necessary in order to rightly estimate Trevithick's position and surroundings when he had arrived at the age of twenty-six. But it will now be desirable to retrace our steps, and begin at the beginning. He was born in the centre of a group of some of our most important Cornish mines, in the parish of Illogan, on the 13th April, 1771, one of a family of five, of whom Richard was the only surviving son, and, as a matter of course, his mother's pet. One can picture the tall, sturdy lad, 'creeping reluctantly' to the little school at Camborne, where he was reputed a lazy, inattentive, and obstinate pupil, always drawing upon his slate lines and figures, unintelligible to any but himself, but, likely enough, containing the germs of those inventions which were destined hereafter to contribute largely to the success of Cornish mining, and make his own name famous. As he grew up he seems to have been more noted as a wrestler, and for his feats of strength, than for anything else, except, perhaps, for his rapid power as a mental arithmetician. He was a great hand at throwing the sledge-hammer, and could lift half-a-ton. A huge mass of iron of about this weight, which tradition says Trevithick used to lift, is still shown at the Patent Museum, South Kensington. He would climb the mine-shears—a height of fifty or sixty feet—stand, balancing himself on the summit, and then and there swing round his sledge-hammer 'to steady his head and foot.' There is a story told of his being attacked by pickpockets while walking with his friend, Captain Andrew Vivian, in London; but Trevithick seized two of them, knocked their heads together, and then flung them away from him in opposite directions, not to return to the Tartar whom they had caught! The mark was long shown on the ceiling of Dolcoath account-house, which was imprinted by the heels of one Captain Hodge, who had dared Trevithick to try a fall with him, but who found himself first flying through the air, and then flat on his back on the table, before he knew what had happened!
But Richard Trevithick was endowed with something more than mere physical strength; for, having first received some instruction in his calling from an engineer, well-known in Cornwall, of the name of Bull, he at length got to work, in 1790, at Stray Park Mine, at 30s. a month. Whilst here he was selected, when only twenty-one years of age, to report upon the relative merits of Watt's and Hornblower's engines, a fact which, surely, speaks volumes for his powers of observation, and for the solidity of his judgment.
In 1795 he erected at Wheal Treasury, when his pay was 3s. 6d. a day, his double-acting steam-engine—a model of which is still, I believe, in operation at Battersea—and in 1796 or 1797, he removed to Ding Dong Mine, near Penzance. It was about this time that he, fortunately for himself, met with Davies Gilbert, of Tredrea, afterwards President of the Royal Society, whose impressions of Trevithick are recorded in the following letter to J. S. Enys, Esq., of Enys:
'Eastbourne, April 29, 1839.
'My dear Sir,
'I will give as good an account as I can of Richard Trevithick. His father was the chief manager in Dolcoath Mine, and he bore the reputation of being the best informed and most skilful captain in all western mines; for as broad a line of distinction was then made between the Eastern and Western mines (the Gwennap and the Camborne Mines) as between those of different nations.
'I knew the father very well, and about the year 1796 I remember hearing from Mr. Jonathan Hornblower, that a tall and strong young man had made his appearance among engineers, and that on more than one occasion he had threatened some people who had contradicted him to throw them into the engine-shaft. In the latter part of November of that year I was called to London as a witness in a steam-engine case between Messrs. Boulton and Watt and Maberley. Then I believe that I first saw Mr. Richard Trevithick, Jun., and certainly there I first became acquainted with him. Our correspondence commenced soon afterwards, and he was very frequently in the habit of calling at Tredrea to ask my opinion on various projects that occurred to his mind—some of them very ingenious, and others so wild as not to rest on any foundation at all. I cannot trace the succession in point of time.
'On one occasion Trevithick came to me and inquired with great eagerness as to what I apprehended would be the loss of power in working an engine by the force of steam raised to the pressure of several atmospheres; but instead of condensing, to let the steam escape. I, of course, answered at once that the loss of power would be one atmosphere, diminished power by the saving of an air-pump with its friction, and in many cases with the raising of condensing water. I never saw a man more delighted; and I believe that within a month several puffers were in actual work.
'Davies Gilbert.'
Thus was born the high-pressure engine, with which the name of Richard Trevithick will for ever be associated; and in a few months many of these machines were at work, notwithstanding Watt's allegations that they were dangerous to public safety. Indeed Trevithick, writing to Davies Gilbert, observed that 'James Watt said, ... that I deserved hanging for bringing into use the high-pressure engine.' Trevithick never afterwards reverted to the low-pressure model. And here it may be observed that Mr. Michael Williams considered that this invention, in conjunction with Trevithick's improved cylindrical boiler, doubled or trebled the work done by the old Boulton and Watt engines. The saving to the Cornish mines thus effected by Trevithick has been estimated at nearly £91,000 per annum.
He was now in full swing of work; much to the surprise of his father, was engaged in twenty different mines; and was everywhere recognised as a worthy successor of his father, and as the chief Cornish engineer in the county.
It was at this time, too (1797), that he married Jane Harvey. A tall man, 6 feet 2 inches high, broad-shouldered, as most Cornishmen are, with a massive head, bright blue eyes, and a large but shapely mouth, with a firm but kind expression. His bust was presented to the Royal Institution of Cornwall by Mr. W. J. Henwood, and his portrait—by Linnell, in 1816—is preserved at the National Portrait Gallery at South Kensington.
The young couple took up their abode at Moreton House, near Redruth, close to the residence of Murdock, the inventor, in 1792, of the gas-light. Watt lived not far off, at Plain-an-Guarry (the Playing-place), but the two rival engineers did not visit each other. Watt and his engines were patronized by the Eastern or Gwennap mine-owners, but Trevithick and his inventions were adopted by the Camborne, Illogan and Redruth or Western adventurers. As an instance of the strong feeling which existed in those days between the rival mine-engineers, Smiles, in his 'Lives of Boulton and Watt,' states that it was reported that old Captain Trevithick and Murdock had actually fought a duel over the subject of their inventions.
From Redruth, after only a few months' residence there, Richard and his wife moved to Camborne. Whilst here, and about this time, he invented his improved plunger-poles, the forcer temporary pump, the plunger-pole pump, the pole-pressure[144] engine, and the double-acting pressure-engine for Wheal Druid; all of them greatly conducing to the facilities required for removing the water out of deep mines.[145] He seems, too, to have been particularly happy in the methods which his versatile ingenuity employed in adapting old machinery to more modern requirements; and, though he was always busy as a bee, he was full of fun and good-humour, and noted for being a capital story-teller.
But Trevithick did not confine himself to the steam pumping-engine. The improvements which he and others had made and were making in that most important machine necessitated improvements in other parts of the mine. The ore must be drawn more rapidly to the surface, and the mode of sending it up the shafts must be improved. He was equal to the occasion: the steam whim solved the former, and the wrought-iron kibble (formerly a bucket, constructed of wood) the latter difficulty. About this period an amusing incident occurred which is worth recording, as exhibiting Trevithick's force of character in other than merely professional matters. His remuneration would appear to have consisted partly of a fixed salary, partly of the profits incident to the supply of machinery, and partly of royalties payable upon instruments of his invention. Now one of his engines was supplied to a mine called Wheal Abraham, whose shareholders, on somewhat fanciful and possibly unfair grounds, appear to have unnecessarily delayed satisfying Trevithick's just claims; whereupon, one night, the engineer and his men took the matter into their own hands, and (to the astonishment of the staff of the mine next morning) removed the huge engine bodily.
We now approach a very interesting episode in Trevithick's career—namely, the invention of his 'Camborne common road-locomotive.'[146] The idea of this may possibly have suggested itself to him (as doubtless other causes suggested similar ideas to Murdock, and to others before and after Trevithick) from his having to transport one of his portable engines from mine to mine, as required—sometimes at a considerable cost. To such a practical genius as his the idea doubtless occurred, 'Why not, with all this available power, make the engine move herself?' However this may be, the curtain now rises on an amusing little group in Trevithick's house; Davies Gilbert acting as stoker, and Lady De Dunstanville of Tehidy (on whose estate most of the great Camborne Mines were situated) playing the part of engine-man to a little model locomotive which ran round the table. The original working model of 'the Trevithick high-pressure locomotive,' the first working model for which was made in 1797, is still to be seen at the South Kensington Museum, in the machinery department; but it was not till Christmas Eve or (according to other authorities) Christmas Day, 1801, that the 'puffing devil,'[147] as it was locally termed by the astonished Cornish folk, made its first performances on the roads round Camborne, Tuckingmill, and Tehidy, carrying its ten or a dozen passengers uphill faster than a man could walk. The success, though not complete, was sufficient to determine Trevithick, with his brother-in-law Andrew Vivian—who found the money and shared in the speculation—to proceed forthwith to London in order to obtain a patent (his first), which was accordingly secured on the 24th March, 1802. Smiles points out, in his 'Lives of the Engineers,' that a remarkable feature in this engine was that it not only raised but also depressed the piston by the action of the steam; and he also tells how, in 1803, the wonder was exhibited to the public first at Lord's Cricket Ground, and afterwards near the spot where the London and North-Western Railway Station, Euston Square, now stands. This engine attained a speed of twelve miles an hour. When the noisy machine worked its way along Oxford Street, all horses and carriages were ordered out of the way; many of the shops were shut for fear of accidents, and the roofs of the houses were crowded with spectators. I believe it was also exhibited at one time on the site of the present Bedlam. To Trevithick, also, Smiles awards the credit of 'putting the two things together—the steam-horse and the iron way,' when he invented his second or railway locomotive. The controversy as to the priority of the invention has been thus ably summed up in the following extract from 'Locomotive Engineering,' by Zerah Colburn, C.E. (vol. i., pp. 32, 33; 1871):
'As a true inventor, no name stands in so close connexion with the locomotive-engine as that of Richard Trevithick. It was he who first broke through the trammels of Watt's system of condensation and low, if not negative, pressure; it was he who first employed the internal fire-place and internal heating surface; he was the first to create or promote a chimney-draught by means of exhaust steam; the first to employ a horizontal cylinder and cranked axle, and to propose two such cylinders with the cranks at right angles to each other; the first to surround the cylinder with hot air; the first to draw a load by the adhesion of a smooth wheel upon a smooth iron bar; and the first to make and work a railway locomotive-engine. Trevithick and George Stephenson were contemporaries;[148] the first locomotive seen by the latter was constructed by the former; and a personal acquaintance was afterwards established between them. Although irrelevant to the present purpose, it may be added that Trevithick patented the screw-propeller, and specified several forms of that instrument, and various modes of applying it, in 1815—years before those to whom the invention is more commonly ascribed had turned their attention to it.'
The history of steam locomotion by rail was thus conveniently summarized by a writer in the Times, on the occasion of the George Stephenson Centenary, 8th June, 1881:
'It may be mentioned that there were iron railways before Stephenson's time. The earliest account is of a timber tram-line laid down near Newcastle in 1602. Lines were made of iron at Whitehaven in 1738. In 1776 an iron railway was laid down near Sheffield, by John Curr, but it was destroyed by the colliers. Ten years later the first considerable iron railway was laid down at Coalbrookdale. The first iron railway sanctioned by Parliament—with the exception of local lines used by canal companies—was the Surrey iron railway, worked by horses, from the Thames at Wandsworth to Croydon, laid down in 1801. In the year 1802 Trevithick and Vivian obtained a patent for a high-pressure locomotive engine. In 1813 William Hedley, of Wylam Colliery, constructed the first travelling locomotive engine in a colliery; and in the following year[149] the first locomotive constructed by George Stephenson travelled at the rate of six miles per hour.'
Notwithstanding, however, this practical success, from a pecuniary point of view Trevithick's position was far from flourishing. It is true that he was engaged, not only on his Cornish work, but also at Pen-y-darran in South Wales, at Coalbrookdale, and at Newcastle-on-Tyne; and it is also true that the exhibition of his 'Catch-me-who-can' engine, as Mr. Davies Gilbert's sister named the railway locomotive, working on a circular railway of about 100 feet in diameter, drew crowds of Londoners to witness its performance. But the shilling admission fees did not come in fast enough to counterbalance the legal difficulties which our engineer had to contend with in the working of ill-defined Patent Laws; and the breaking of a rail caused the engine to overturn—thus putting an end to the exhibition. Ill-health, too—typhus, gastric, and brain fever supervened; bankruptcy and imprisonment were the result; and, to anticipate a little, poor Trevithick was driven from London, after an unsuccessful application had been made to the Government for remuneration for his truly national services. He was not only, as his biographer contends, the real inventor of the blast-pipe; but, up to 1808, had constructed two road-locomotives (one for Camborne and one for London), railway locomotives for Coalbrookdale and Newcastle, and a tramroad locomotive for Pen-y-darran; to say nothing of his steam-dredger engine, his travelling steam-crane, his brilliant though ineffectual attempt to construct a driftway under the Thames at Rotherhithe,[150] etc., etc.
The following extract from the 'Catalogue of the South Kensington Museum' gives the official account of Trevithick and his patents:
'Inventor and constructor of the first high-pressure steam-engine, and the first steam-carriage used in England; constructor of a tunnel beneath the Thames, which he completed to within 100 feet of the proposed terminus, and was then compelled to abandon the undertaking; inventor and constructor of steam-engines and machinery for the mines of Peru (capable of being transported in mountainous districts), by which he succeeded in restoring the Peruvian mines to prosperity; also of coining-machinery for the Peruvian mint, and of furnaces for purifying silver ore by fusion; also inventor of other improvements in steam-engines, impelling-carriages, hydraulic engines, propelling and towing vessels, discharging and towing ships' cargoes, floating-docks, construction of vessels, iron buoys, steam-boilers, cooking, obtaining fresh water, heating apartments, etc.'
The following is a list of his patents:
| NOS. | DATES. | PATENTS. |
| 2599 | (1802) | Steam Engines for Propelling Carriages. |
| 3148 | (1808) | Ship Propeller. |
| 3172 | (1808) | Iron Tanks for Ships. |
| 3231 | (1809) | Iron Docks, Ships, Masts and Spars, Buoys, Steam-arm, etc. |
| 3922 | (1815) | Screw-propeller.[151] |
| 6082 | (1831) | Surface Condenser. |
| 6083 | (1831) | Heating Apparatus for Rooms. |
| 6308 | (1832) | Superheating Steam. |
But this list by no means exhausts the whole of his inventions, for he was so fond of talking of them before they were matured that many were found sharp enough to seize Trevithick's ideas, and then to reduce them into some practical and remunerative form for themselves.
Sorry reward this for such incessant industry and varied inventive skill as induced Hyde Clarke to write as follows:
'In the establishment of the locomotive, in the development of the powers of the Cornish engines, and in increasing the capabilities of the marine engine, there can be no doubt that Trevithick's exertions have given a far wider range to the dominion of the steam-engine than even the great and masterly improvements of James Watt effected in his day.'
The Quarterly Review for October, 1867, has an article on 'George Stephenson and Locomotion,' in which George Stephenson is described as 'the father of railway locomotion;' and yet two pages after (p. 499) the writer of the article mentions, with greater accuracy, Richard Trevithick (or, as he spells it, 'Trevethick') as 'the first who put together the two ideas of the steam horse and the iron way.' Alas for our Cornishman! such is fame! It has been shown above that Trevithick not only first put together the steam horse and the iron way, but that he first worked the steam horse on the turnpike road; and to him therefore is due the chief credit for there being 'not a line or a locomotive which does not bear testimony to his genius, his sagacity, and his perseverance; nor is there a traveller upon a railway, who saves time, money, fatigue and anxiety ... who has not reason to think of Richard Trevithick with gratitude for the benefits which he has conferred, and with admiration for the intellectual triumphs which he achieved.'
Fortunate it was for him that he was a remarkably good-tempered man, most simple and frugal in his habits, and richly endowed with that 'friend of the brave'—Hope!
His freedom from debt and imprisonment seems to have been at length due to the sale of one of his patents for iron tanks (for ships) and iron buoys, to Mr. Maudslay, founder of the now eminent firm of London engineers of that name. Trevithick had pressed his proposals on the Admiralty for a long time in vain; and at last, with characteristic impetuosity, settled the matter for ever, it is said, by calling the Navy Board to their faces 'a lot of old women.'
Mrs. Trevithick now joined her husband in London, but not until after prolonged importunity on his part; and her reluctance is scarcely to be wondered at when we think of the difficulties which then existed in making the journey from Cornwall to the metropolis. She had to post all the way, three hundred miles, with four children, one of them a baby, and probably with no servant. Besides which, her brother, Mr. Henry Harvey, of Hayle, represented to her that Trevithick's position in London was hardly sufficiently assured as yet to warrant her making the move. Conjugal love, however, at length prevailed over every other consideration; and on her welcome arrival, a touching little incident occurred. She found her two last letters, unopened, in her husband's pocket; and on her reproaching him with this seeming forgetfulness, which she attributed to his being so thoroughly immersed in his multifarious engineering schemes, he confessed that he had not dared to open them, lest her arguments against their reunion should have prevailed over his wishes. It was well for both that the faithful wife came to town: for soon afterwards, had she not ransacked London for a doctor, whilst her husband lay almost dying in a sponging-house, it is unlikely that he would have survived to return to his native county. To Cornwall, however, he at length returned, in broken health and spirits, in 1810, to find that his mother had just died. Trevithick went home by sea, a six days' voyage, and, as we were then at war with France, the Falmouth Packet in which he sailed was under convoy. They were chased by a French man-of-war, from whom they luckily escaped; her commander little dreaming that his small craft (which seems to have owed her safety chiefly to her captain's knowledge of the coast) had on board her the man who had laid proposals before the Government for fitting vessels with high-pressure engines and launching them against the French fleet equipped at Boulogne for the invasion of England.
Trevithick's first idea of steam navigation appears to have arisen in 1804, though his specification was not dated till 1808;[152] and in this, as in almost every other important step in his life, he relied very much on the sound judgment and sympathetic advice of his friend Davies Gilbert. Paddle-wheels, however (the original mode of propulsion), were found cumbrous to ships, especially in heavy weather; and this led Trevithick to the invention of the screw-propeller, a design for which he laid before the Navy Board in 1812, but without effect. The patent was not dated till the 6th of June, 1815; nor was success assured until after the busy engineer had left his native county on a voyage to Peru, which seemed to hold out promises of proving an El Dorado for him. His son and biographer, taking into consideration the numerous marine inventions and appliances of his progenitor, claims for his father, and not without much show of justice, that he may be regarded as the originator of our present iron steam fleet.
But, in fact, the man's versatility in his profession seems to have been unbounded. In 1813 he was the life and soul of the arrangements for constructing the Plymouth Breakwater; then he turns his attention to the manufacture of agricultural engines, and constructs the first steam thrashing-machine, which was until recently at work at Trewithan, in Probus, but now occupies a place of honour in the South Kensington Museum of Patents, together with a boiler of curious construction by him.[153] This invention, like some others of Trevithick's, seems to have been almost still-born; yet it was destined, as we now know, to re-appear as a powerful factor in the development of agriculture.
His next great stride was the new 'pole-puffer-engine' of 1816, in connection with which squabbles arose between the engineer and his relations, Henry Harvey and Andrew Vivian, both of whom were said to have been moved to jealousy by Trevithick's having arranged to get the castings for the first of these engines (viz., that for Wheal Herland, near Gwinear) made at Bridgenorth, instead of at Hayle. The first trial of the new engine, when at length set up, seems to have been somewhat of a failure, owing to the inaccurate way in which it was made. Here is an eye-witness's amusing account of its starting:
'I was a boy working in the mine, and several of us peeped in at the door to see what was doing. Captain Dick Trevithick was in a great way; the engine would not start. After a bit, Captain Dick threw himself down upon the floor of the engine-house, and there he lay upon his back; then up he jumped, and snatched a sledge-hammer out of the hands of a man who was driving in a wedge, and lashed it in, in a minute. There never was a man could use a sledge like Captain Dick; he was as strong as a bull. Then he picked up a spanner, and unscrewed something, and—off she went! Captain Vivian was near me, looking in at the doorway. Captain Dick saw him, and, shaking his fist, said, "If you come in here, I'll throw you down the shaft." I suppose Captain Vivian had something to do with making the boilers, and Captain Dick was angry because they leaked clouds of steam. You could hardly see, or hear anybody speak in the engine-house, it was so full of steam and noise; we could hear the steam-puffer roaring at St. Erth, more than three miles off.'
Another altercation on the subject of this engine took place at a meeting of the Wheal Herland adventurers, when Trevithick said: 'I could not help threatening to horsewhip Joseph Price for the falsehoods that he, with the others, had reported. I hear that he is to go to London to meet the London Committee on Monday. I hope the Committee will consider J. Price's report as from a disappointed man. It is reported that he has bought very largely in Woolf's patent, which now is not worth a farthing, besides losing the making my castings, which galls him very sorely.'
The final result was that the Wheal Herland engine proved a great success.
'Every engine that was erecting is stopped, and the whole county thinks of no other engine,' wrote its engineer; and that Trevithick had 'the courage of his convictions' may be judged from his saying: 'I have offered to deposit £1,000 to £500 as a bet against Woolf's best engine, and give him 20,000,000 (lbs. "duty"), but that party refuses to accept the challenge.' Indeed, Mr. Francis Trevithick claims that 'This engine performed the same work as the Watt engine, with less than half of the daily coal.'
It would, in fact, be difficult to exaggerate the importance of Richard Trevithick's contributions to this branch of applied mechanics; and had he been as prudent in his management of his business affairs, and as sharp in looking after his pecuniary interests as he was brimful of talent in his scientific inventions, it would never have been necessary for the late Mr. Michael Williams, M.P.,[154] to write of him that 'he was at the same time the greatest and the worst-used man in the county.'
Such was Trevithick's position when he had reached the age of forty-five. Sanguine, impetuous, and brilliant—no sooner finishing one invention than commencing another (nay, sometimes before he had thoroughly completed the first)—a benefactor of incalculable extent to the prosperity of his native county, but so unsuspecting and so indifferent to his own, that he turned at length to the New World for the appreciation and reward that he had failed to secure in the Old.
The circumstances which led to this determination are somewhat curious. A desire having been felt amongst several wealthy Spaniards in Peru to rework certain of the old gold and silver mines which required draining, Don Francisco de Uville, of Lima, a Swiss gentleman, was sent to England to search for the best steam pumping-engines for their purpose. The names of Messrs. Boulton and Watt were so famous, that, almost as a matter of course, he first consulted them; but they discouraged the project, mainly on the grounds that the rare atmosphere of the Cordilleras would interfere with the efficiency of the steam-engine. Thus rebuffed, and much dejected, he chanced to see in the window of a shop, near the spot where the 'Catch-me-who-can' had been exhibited, a small model of one of Richard Trevithick's engines, which he at once secured for £20, and hastened back with it to Peru. Arriving there, he at once put its powers to the test, and was delighted to find that Boulton and Watt's doleful prophecies were not fulfilled. Accordingly he forthwith returned to England with the model, which bore Trevithick's name engraved on it, in search of the engineer who had constructed the wonderful machine, and had the good luck to find on board the same ship as that in which he made the voyage a cousin of Trevithick's—a Mr. Teague—who at once put the Don on the right track. Satisfactory interviews ensued, large orders for engines were put in hand—pumping-engines, winding-engines, sugar-rolling engines, and crushing-engines, to the tune of some £16,000. The anticipated profits were £50,000 a year, and Trevithick was to be paid, not in money, unluckily for him, but in shares, which were to secure to him an income of £10,000 per annum.
At length the engines duly arrived at Lima, and were landed under a salute from the guns of the batteries. But things did not work well. The men sent out were unaccustomed to the use of wood-fires, and they failed to carry out all Trevithick's instructions, whereupon he himself resolved upon going to the rescue; and accordingly he sailed from Penzance in a South Sea whaler, the Asp, on 20th October, 1816, intending to land at Buenos Ayres and work his way across the South American continent—an undertaking which, in those days, it need scarcely be added, was of a most formidable character, and no doubt, therefore, was all the more attractive to the remarkable man whose career we have been considering.
On his arrival in Peru, he was received with almost royal honours, and, at once getting to work, soon set matters to rights; for by the early part of 1817 there were four engines at work, including that used for coining at the Mint. An immediate collapse of the whole undertaking would probably have been the result but for the timely arrival of 'Don Ricardo,' as he was styled by the natives. Amongst the difficulties to be overcome in this enterprise may be mentioned those of transit, and these may be estimated from the facts that the Cerro de Pasco Mines were 170 miles from Lima, that the roads were for the most part mule-tracks only, and that the site was 13,400 feet above the sea! No wonder that, on his eventually triumphing over all these difficulties, thoughts were seriously entertained of erecting a statue to him in solid silver, and that, according to Mr. Walker's memoir, he was made a Marquis and Grandee of Spain. But the whole scheme was unhappily doomed to failure. Deaths and dissensions took place amongst the shareholders; Uville died in August, 1818, and the whole brunt of the management fell upon Trevithick. He now, too, foolishly engaged in other undertakings whilst his hands were already sufficiently full, and lost large sums of money in a speculative process for extracting silver by smelting instead of by amalgamation. Then a war of independence broke out, and poor Trevithick had the mortification of learning that the Royalists had actually destroyed his machinery, and flung it—where he had so often before threatened to fling his enemies—'down into the shafts.'[155]
This was the death-blow of the affair, and he immediately set to work on a fresh venture, namely, the raising of the cannon from a Russian ship which had been sunk near Callao. By this he readily made no less than £2,500, but—will it be believed?—he forthwith lost it all by an imprudent speculation in a pearl-fishery at Panama! Some of the money would have been particularly acceptable to poor Mrs. Trevithick, whom her thriftless husband had left at Penzance unprovided for; in fact, he omitted (doubtless from sheer thoughtlessness) to pay, as he had promised to do, the house-rent a year in advance for her. Another curious instance of Trevithick's utter incapacity for understanding business matters appears in the following anecdote. Being very hardly pressed for payment of some account due from him, he snatched the bill from his creditor, and writing, 'Received—Richard Trevithick,' at the foot of it, handed it back to the poor man with an angry exclamation, in his strong Cornish dialect, of 'There! will that satisfy you?'
A strange episode in his career now occurs. Bolivar actually pressed him as a soldier; but Trevithick soon 'tir'd of war's alarms,' and the President readily allowed him to return to more congenial pursuits, sending him on some special mission to Bogota—yet not before Trevithick had signalized his connexion with the army by inventing a most ingenious carbine with an explosive bullet. Whilst in South America he also became, for the nonce, a surgeon, and actually amputated both legs of a poor fellow crushed by the fall of some of Trevithick's heavy machinery. The man was very proud of what he had undergone, and used to boast of his capital stumps.
Having previously paid a short visit to Chili, Trevithick (who had now lost all his property) finally left Peru in 1822, on the above-named special mission; but, distrustful of Bolivar's promises and hearing of something more to his advantage, as he considered, he made his way to certain rich mines that he had heard of in Costa Rica instead. Thither—to that region of snakes, miasma, and earth-quakes—we must now follow him.
There were known to be rich mines of the precious metals near Quebradahonda, in the interior of the little tract of mountainous country which forms part of the narrow belt of land connecting North and South America; but the difficulties of access in 1826-27 rendered them almost valueless, and Trevithick and his party conceived the idea of approaching them from the Atlantic side, by a route which should be practicable for steam conveyances—namely, by way of San Juan (now Greytown) and the rivers San Juan de Nicaragua and Serapique. Rafts and boats were constructed for the descent of those streams, and fearful hardships and dangers befell the explorers—who were bent upon accomplishing a somewhat similar task in Central America to that which Lander had performed a few years before in Western Africa. Three weeks were spent in accomplishing their object—during which the little party subsisted on monkeys and wild fruits; and more than once Trevithick, an indifferent swimmer, but who managed to buoy himself up by bundles of sticks which he placed under his arms, was nearly drowned. He had however, at length the gratification of reaching San Juan—the first European who had made the voyage from Lake Nicaragua to the sea.
By some means or other he contrived to reach Cartagena (de las Indias) on his homeward journey, disconsolate enough no doubt; but what befell him on his way is best told in the following letter:
'Stanwick, Cumberland, 27th November, 1864.
'Sir,
'I read in the public prints that in a speech made by you in Belle Vue Gardens you referred to the meeting of Robert Stephenson with Trevithick at Carthagena, which, if your speech be correctly reported, you attribute to accident. The meeting was not an accident, although an accident led to it, and that accident nearly cost Mr. Trevithick his life; and he was taken to Carthagena by the gentleman that saved him, that he might be restored. When Mr. Stephenson saw him he was so recovering; and if he looked, as you say, in a sombre and silent mood, it was not surprising, after being, as he said, "half drowned and half hanged, and the rest devoured by alligators," which was too near the fact to be pleasant. Mr. Trevithick had been upset at the mouth of the river Magdalena by a black man he had in some way offended, and who capsized the boat in revenge. An officer in the Venezuelan and the Peruvian services (Mr. Bruce Napier) was fortunately nigh the banks of the river shooting wild pigs. He heard Mr. Trevithick's cries for help, and seeing a large alligator approaching him, shot the reptile in the eye, and then, as he had no boat, lassoed Mr. Trevithick, and by his lasso drew him ashore much exhausted and all but dead. After doing all he could to restore him, he took him on to Carthagena, and thus it was he fell in with Mr. Stephenson, who, like most Englishmen, was reserved, and took no notice of Mr. Trevithick, until an officer said to him, meeting Mr. Stephenson at the door, "I suppose the old proverb of two of a trade cannot agree is true, by the way you keep aloof from your brother chip. It was not thus your father would have treated that worthy man, and it is not creditable to your father's son that he and you should be here day after day like two strange cats in a garret; it would not sound well at home." "Who is it?" said Mr. Stephenson. "The inventor of the locomotive, your father's friend and fellow-worker; his name is Trevithick—you may have heard it," said the officer; and then Mr. Stephenson went up to Trevithick. That Mr. Trevithick felt the previous neglect was clear. He had sat with Robert Stephenson on his knee many a night while talking to his father, and it was through him Robert was made an engineer. My informant states that there was not that cordiality between them he would have wished to see at Carthagena.
'The officer that rescued Mr. Trevithick is now living. I am sure he will confirm what I say if needful. A letter will find him if addressed to No. 4, Earl Street, Carlisle, Cumberland.
'There are more details, but I cannot state them in a letter, and you might not wish to hear them if I could.
'I am, sir,
'Your very obedient servant,
'James Fairbairn,
who writes as well as rheumatic gout will let him.
'P.S.—I forgot to say the name of the officer is Hall.
'To E. W. Watkin, Esq., M.P.'
On recognising Stephenson, Trevithick is said to have exclaimed, 'Is that Bobby!—I've nursed him many a time.' The younger engineer had £100 in his pocket, and generously gave his senior half of it to facilitate his return to England, which Trevithick shortly afterwards accomplished, by way of Jamaica, in the autumn of 1827, landing at Falmouth on the 9th October, after a weary, anxious absence of eleven years. His health does not seem to have been much injured; but his belongings were simply the clothes he stood upright in, a gold watch, a pair of dividers, a magnetic needle, and a pair of spurs. A friend had to pay his passage-money before he could leave the ship which brought him home.
But he had the happiness of finding his wife and their family of four sons and two daughters all well. The Church bells rang out a merry peal of welcome; and he was entertained at the houses of all the principal people in the county. A great deal was said of the handsome remuneration which was due to him for having been the means, through his many inventions, of saving Cornwall half a million of money,—but little or nothing seems to have come of all the talk; and when he claimed £1,000 from each of the leading mines which had adopted his machinery, they seem—so far as I can ascertain, with one exception only—to have repudiated them. The exception to which I refer was a compromise of his claims by the Messrs. Williams, of Scorrier, in respect of certain mines in which they were interested, for the sum of £150. Nor was his petition to Parliament, dated 27th February, 1828, setting forth his many truly national claims for consideration, and containing an interesting summary of his inventions (but unfortunately too long to reproduce here), more successful.
Trevithick was now verging upon sixty years of age, and found that he had to begin life anew. His first endeavour was to form a company to work his mines in Costa Rica, but neither he nor his friend Gerard could succeed in doing this either in England, in France, or in Holland; and, if the report be true that he refused a cheque for £8,000 for his share in the mine-grants, he must have lived to repent it bitterly. However, his busy brain was soon at work again with inventions. First an iron ship and a gun with friction-slides; then a recoil gun-carriage, in which he utilized the recoil somewhat after the manner since so effectually accomplished by Moncrieff; then we find him suggesting a mode of making ice by steam. Next he invents a chain-and-ball pump for draining the Dutch marshes; and, soon after, we hear of his being employed by the Government of that country to examine into sundry important engineering works which they had in hand, whilst poor Trevithick had to borrow £2 from a friend to enable him to get over to Holland for the purpose. It may be mentioned, to show what a good-natured fellow he was, that he at once gave 5s. out of this to a poor neighbour who had had the misfortune to lose his pig.
During a great part of this period of his life Trevithick was at Hayle Foundry, engaged in the construction of the great draining engines for Holland; but he, nevertheless, found time for further inventions, notably for applying tubular boilers, a superheating system, and surface-condensers to marine engines, to say nothing of his proposals to make the same water act over and over again by alternate expansion and contraction, so as to avoid the objectionable necessity for using salt water in the boilers. By his method marine engines occupied only half their former space; were half the weight; and consumed half the fuel that they formerly did: and it would scarcely be too much to say that his genius rendered the first voyage across the Atlantic practicable. In connexion with this subject, he took out his eighth and last patent in 1832.
Perhaps his latest project was as original—not to say Utopian—as any that even his fertile brain ever conceived. It was to erect a perforated, gilt, cast-iron column, 1,000 feet high, to commemorate the passing of the Reform Bill. One novel feature in it was the air-elevator, which worked in a tube in the centre of the column, and shot the traveller from the base to the summit, on arriving at which he was to secure a glorious bird's-eye view of London.
But the end was approaching. He had been in indifferent health in the spring of 1830; and, although his son does not state the causes of his father's death, there is too much ground to fear that poverty and misery at least accelerated it. He was at work in April, 1833, in Messrs. Hall's factory, at Dartford, Kent, probably on one of his marine engines, when, on the 22nd of that month, somewhat suddenly—for his relations knew nothing of his illness—the great engineer died. He was penniless, and was indebted to charity for his grave, and to the mechanics of Messrs. Hall's factory for becoming the bearers and the only mourners at his simple funeral.
Unless a tombstone has lately been erected, Richard Trevithick furnishes another example of one of Cornwall's most illustrious sons being without a monument to mark where he lies. Is this creditable to the county, or the country, in which he was born, or to the age which he so much enriched by the versatile power of his genius?
Since the above was written,—and also since the date of a letter which I sent to the Cornish papers in June, 1881, calling attention to the facts above referred to,—endeavours have been made to procure some fitting record in Cornwall in honour of Trevithick's memory; and an influential meeting on the subject was held in London on 20th April, 1883.