John Smeaton was born the 28th of May, 1724, at Ansthorpe, near Leeds, Yorkshire. Little is recorded of his parentage or early education: but we find that his father was a respectable attorney, and that the family lived in a house built by the grandfather of the younger Smeaton.
Smeaton seems to have been born an engineer. The originality of his genius and the strength of his understanding appeared at a very early age. His playthings were not the toys of children, but the tools men work with; and his greatest amusement was to observe artificers at work, and to ask them questions. Having watched some millwrights at work, he conceived the idea of constructing a windmill, and to the alarm of his friends was one day perceived on the top of his father’s barn attempting to fix his model. On another occasion he accompanied some men who went to fix a pump at a neighbouring village, and observing them cut off a piece of bored pipe, he managed to procure it, and made a working model of a pump that raised water very well. These anecdotes are related of him while he was yet a mere child in petticoats, and probably before he had attained his sixth year. At the age of fourteen or fifteen he had made for himself an engine to turn rose-work, and he made several presents to his friends of boxes in wood and ivory, as specimens of its operation.
In the year 1742, Mr. Holmes, afterwards his partner in the Deptford Water-works, visited Smeaton and could not conceal his astonishment at the mechanical skill displayed by the young engineer; he forged his iron and steel, and melted his metal; he had tools of every sort for working in wood, ivory, and metals. He had made a lathe, by which he had cut a perpetual screw in brass, a thing very little known at that day. All these resources were not furnished to him by rich and wealthy parents, nor had he the advantage of masters in his various pursuits; on the contrary, by the strength of his genius, and by indefatigable industry, he acquired at the age of eighteen an extensive set of tools, and the art of working in most of the mechanical trades, and Mr. Holmes, himself a good mechanic, says that few men could work better.
Astronomy was one of his most favourite studies, and he contrived and made several astronomical instruments for himself and friends. In later years, after fitting up an observatory at his house at Ansthorpe, he devoted much time to it when he was there, even in preference to engineering.
Smeaton’s father being an attorney was desirous to educate his son for the same profession. He was therefore sent to London in 1742, where during a few terms he attended court; but finding the legal profession distasteful to him, and not to suit “the bent of his genius,” he wrote a strong memorial on the subject to his father, who had the good sense to allow him from that time to pursue the path which nature pointed out to him. He continued to reside in London, and about the year 1750 he commenced the business of mathematical instrument maker. In 1751 he invented a machine to measure a ship’s way at sea, and a compass of peculiar construction, touched by Dr. Knight’s artificial magnet. He made two voyages in company with Dr. Knight for the purpose of ascertaining the merits of these contrivances.
In 1753 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and his admirable papers inserted in the Transactions of that body sufficiently evince how highly he deserved that distinction. In 1759 he received by an unanimous vote their gold medal, for his paper entitled ‘An Experimental Inquiry concerning the natural powers of wind and water to turn mills and other machines depending on a circular motion.’ This paper was the result of experiments made on working models in 1752 and 1753, but not communicated to the society till 1759, by which time he had had abundant opportunity of applying these experiments to practice in a variety of cases, and for various purposes, so as to assure the society that he had found them to answer. He discovered by these means that wind and water could be made to do one third more than was before known. In the year 1754 he made a voyage to Holland, travelling for the most part on foot, or in the trekschuiten or drag-boats, the national conveyance of the country, and thus made himself acquainted with the most remarkable works of art in the low countries.
In December 1755 the Eddystone lighthouse was burnt down. Mr. Weston the chief proprietor, and others, were desirous of rebuilding it in the most substantial manner, and through the recommendation of the Earl of Macclesfield, whose friendly conduct to Smeaton we have already noticed, they were induced to appoint Smeaton as the most proper person to rebuild it.
Smeaton undertook the work, and completed it in the summer of 1759. The history of this great undertaking belongs to another section of this notice. The completion of the work does not seem to have had the immediate effect of procuring him full employment as a civil engineer: in 1764, being in Yorkshire, he offered himself a candidate for the office of one of the receivers to the Greenwich Hospital estates[4]; and on the 31st December in that year he was appointed, at a full board at Greenwich Hospital, in a manner highly flattering to himself. In this appointment he was greatly assisted by his partner Mr. Walter, who managed the accounts, and left Smeaton leisure and opportunity to exert his abilities on public works, as well as to make many improvements in the mills, and in the estates of Greenwich Hospital. By the year 1775 he had so much business as an engineer, that he wished to resign this appointment, but was prevailed upon to continue in the office about two years longer.
Among the many valuable public services of Smeaton a few only can be mentioned in this place. He completed the erection of new lighthouses at Spurn Head at the mouth of the Humber: he built the fine bridge over the Tay at Perth: he laid out the line of the great canal connecting the Forth and Clyde; and made the river Calder navigable; a work that required great skill and judgment, on account of its impetuous floods. On the opening of the great arch at London Bridge by throwing two arches into one, and the removal of a large pier, the excavation around and under the starlings was so considerable, that the bridge was thought to be in great danger of falling. Smeaton was then in Yorkshire, but was sent for by express, and arrived with the utmost dispatch: on his arrival the fear that the bridge was about to fall prevailed so generally, that few persons would pass over or under it. Smeaton applied himself immediately to examine it, and to sound about the starlings as minutely as possible: his advice to the committee was to repurchase the stones which had been taken from the middle pier, then lying in Moorfields, and to throw them into the river to guard the starlings. This advice was adopted with the utmost alacrity, by which simple means the bridge was probably saved from falling, and time afforded for securing it in a more effectual manner. ‘This method of stopping the impetuous ravages of water,’ says Mr. Holmes, ‘he had practised before with success on the river Calder; on my calling on him in the neighbourhood of Wakefield, he shewed me the effects of a great flood, which had made a considerable passage over the land; this he stopped at the bank of the river, by throwing in a quantity of large rough stones, which with the sand, and other materials washed down by the river, filling up their interstices, had become a barrier to keep the river in its usual course.’
In 1771 Smeaton and Holmes made a joint purchase of the water-works for supplying Deptford and Greenwich with water. On examining the books of the former proprietors, it appeared to have been a losing concern during many years; but the skill of Smeaton soon brought the undertaking into such a state as to be of general use to those for whom it was intended, and moderately profitable to himself and partner. In noticing this subject Mr. Holmes makes a few general remarks on the character of Smeaton:—‘His language either in speaking or writing was so strong and perspicuous, that there was no misunderstanding his meaning, and I had that confidence in his abilities as never to consider any plan of improvement which he proposed, but only to see it executed with scrupulous exactness; at the same time, he was so open to reason in all matters, that during a constant communication of our opinions for upwards of twenty years, after we had laid them fully before each other we always agreed, and never had the slightest difference.’