"I will thank you for an account of the meeting.
"Your obedient servant,
"R. Trevithick.
Mr. Phillip was the financial managing shareholder—more particularly with the Londoners—at that resuscitation of Herland Mine; and though the new engine was comparatively cheap, both in its first cost and in its consumption of coal, and satisfactorily reduced the water in the mine, payment for it was withheld because the currents of self-interest were against Trevithick. Mr. Joseph Price was the manager of a steam-engine manufactory at Neath Abbey, in South Wales, and had been in the habit of supplying castings for Cornish mines. Arthur Woolf was then striving to bring into use his patent double-cylinder engine, and patent high-pressure steam-boiler, which Trevithick looked on as copies from Hornblower and himself. This, added to Woolf's sarcastic manner of speech, roused Trevithick's anger.
Putting aside the words of the disputants, the fact is stated that the pole-engine, with a reduced steam pressure, worked a pump 14½ inches in diameter, 10-feet stroke, fourteen strokes per minute; while the largest and best engine by Watt in Cornwall, placed on the same mine, with a 72-inch steam-cylinder, gave motion to a pump of 14 inches in diameter, 7-feet stroke, at twelve strokes a minute; being in round numbers just one-half the amount of the work performed by Trevithick's comparatively small engine, which had not a single feature of the Watt engine in it.
[Rough draft.]
"Penzance, March 7, 1816.
""Captain Joe Odgers,
"Sir,—I have your favour of the 27th February, and requested Mr. Page to send to you a sketch of the agreement. On seeing him yesterday, I found that he had neglected to send it to you. He will leave the country for London in a few days, and intends to call on you at Dolley's as soon as he arrives. I do not know that the agreement matters much for a few days up or down. The terms are well understood between us, which is that the adventurers and I equally share the advantages that may arise from this new engine over Boulton and Watt's. When you have fully arranged with your adventurers about the engine, please to write me, and I will immediately proceed to order the engine; and in the interim the agreement will be drawn up by Mr. Page, and executed either here or in London, just as may suit.
"I remain, &c.,
"R. Trevithick.