"Sir,—I expect to be called to London immediately after the end of this month. The engine with the boring apparatus for Plymouth remains at Redruth. I very much wish to see you on that business before I leave home, and would be much obliged by your dropping me a note by post, saying what day it would be convenient for me to wait on you.
"R. T."
The rock-boring machine was completed, and reached the breakwater two months after his interview with the Foxes, who were prominent in the quarrying work. "The engine for Plymouth will be put to break the ground as soon as I can find time to go up there."[8] It was impossible for any one man, single-handed, to make perfect such numerous practical inventions as were undertaken by Trevithick at that time. His letter of a few months before[9] reveals the facility with which he moulded the steam-engine to his requirements. "The ploughing engine that I sent you a drawing for, after being used for that purpose, was to have been sent to Exeter for pumping water. I have been obliged to take the small portable engine from Wheal Alfred Mine, and have a new apparatus fitted to it for Plymouth Breakwater. A small engine which I had at work at a mine I have been obliged to send to the farmers for thrashing." Messrs. Fox would probably require many engines for the Plymouth Breakwater, having engaged with Government to deliver three million tons of stone; and to prevent delay, the boring apparatus was applied to an engine made for another purpose, while drawings for a new and more suitable engine for boring stone were sent to Mr. Rastrick.
He engaged that an engine should bore holes to split 100 tons of limestone a day; and that on the following day it should, as a locomotive and steam-crane, load that quantity in waggons, convey it from the quarry to the port of shipment, and then by steam-crane place it in the hold of a vessel. The whole of the work to be done by 11 cwt. of coal and four men. The gross cost would be 1s. per ton for breaking and removing, though at that time Mr. Rennie was paying 2s. 9d. a ton, which in after years was reduced to 1s., just what Trevithick said was a fair price.
While this ready application of the high-pressure steam-engine was going on in England, it had also extended to, and was coining money in the Mint at Lima, where Trevithick contemplated going to look after it, intending to land at Buenos Ayres, and make his way across the continent of South America and the mountains of the Cordilleras as best he could, leaving the home field he had made so fertile to be reaped by others, and the stone-boring locomotive to be forgotten for many years.
[Rough draft.]
"Sirs,
"Penzance, December 9th, 1815.
"Your very great neglect in not writing.... Herland engine will work, I expect, in about fifteen days. It is a plunger of 33 inches diameter, 10-feet stroke, with a double packing around the top of the plunger-pole, in the same way as the steam is turned into the stuffing box of a double engine to exclude the air, only there is a small tube from the bottom of the boiler to the middle of the stuffing box to prevent the escape of steam.
"I am sorry to find by Mr. Uville's letter that the Mint engine does not go well. I wish you had put the fire under the boiler and through the tube, as I desired you to do, in the usual way of the long boilers; then you might have made your fire-place as large as you pleased, which would have answered the purpose and worked with wood just as well as with coal. I always told you that the fire-place in the boiler was large enough for coal, but not for wood; also if you found that the cock did not open and shut in proper time, to make the gear to it work the same as the Dolcoath puffer whim-engine instead of the circular gear. The boiler is strong enough and large enough to work this engine with 30 lbs. to the inch, thirty strokes per minute. I hope to leave Cornwall for Lima about the end of this month, and go by way of Buenos Ayres, and cross over the continent of South America, because I cannot get any other passage. None of the South Sea whalers will engage to take me to Lima, as they say they may touch at Lima or they may not. Unless I give them an immense sum they will not engage to drop me there. To be brought back to England after a two years' voyage without seeing Lima would be a very foolish trip. To make a certainty I shall take the first ship for Buenos Ayres, preparations for which I have already made."