[ [141] Bonds were given for the 1000l., but the assignees of Roebuck becoming impatient for the money, Boulton discharged them to get rid of their importunity, long before any profits had been derived from the manufacture of the engines.
[ [142] John Wilkinson, the “father of the iron-trade” as he styled himself, was a man of extraordinary energy of character. He was strong-headed and strong-tempered and of inflexible determination. His father, Isaac Wilkinson, who originally started the iron trade at Wrexham, was a man possessed of quick discernment and versatile talents, though he wanted that firmness and constancy of purpose which so eminently distinguished his son. Isaac Wilkinson used thus to tell his own history:—“I worked,” said he, “at a forge in the north. My masters gave me 12s. a week: I was content. They raised me to 14s.: I did not ask them for it. They went on to 16s., 18s.: I never asked them for the advances. They gave me a guinea a week! Said I to myself, if I am worth a guinea a week to you, I am worth more to myself! I left them, and began business on my own account—at first in a small way. I prospered. I grew tired of my leathern bellows, and determined to make iron ones. Everybody laughed at me. I did it, and applied the steam-engine to blow them; and they all cried, ‘Who could have thought it!’” His son John carried on the operations connected with the iron manufacture on a far more extensive scale than his father at Bradley, Willey, Snedshill, and Bersham. His castings were the largest until then attempted, and the boring machinery which he invented was the best of its kind. All the castings for Boulton and Watt’s large Cornish engines were manufactured by him, previous to the erection of the Soho foundry. He also bored cannon for the government on a large scale. Amongst his other merits, John Wilkinson is clearly entitled to that of having built the first iron vessel. It was made to bring peat-moss to his iron furnace at Wilson House, near Castle Head, in Cartmel, in order to smelt the hematite iron-ore of Furness. This was followed by other larger iron vessels, one of which was of 40 tons burden, and used to carry iron down the Severn. Before Wilkinson’s first iron boat was launched, people laughed at the idea of its floating,—as it was so well known that iron immediately sank in water! In a letter to Mr. Stockdale, of Carke, Cartmel, the original of which is before us, dated Broseley, 14th July, 1787, Mr. Wilkinson says, “Yesterday week my iron boat was launched,—answers all my expectations, and has convinced the unbelievers, who were 999 in 1000. It will be only a nine days’ wonder, and afterwards a Columbus’s egg.” In another letter, dated Bradley Iron Works, 24th Oct., 1788, he writes to the same,—“There have been two iron vessels launched in my service since 1st September. One is a canal-boat for this navigation, the other a barge of 40 tons, for the river Severn. The last was floated on Monday, and is, I expect, now at Stourport, a-lading with bar-iron. My clerk at Broseley advises me that she swims remarkably light, and exceeds even my own expectations.” For further notice of John Wilkinson, see ‘Lives of the Engineers,’ ii. 337, 356.
[ [143] Boulton to Watt, 24th February, 1776. Boulton MSS.
[ [144] Watt was himself occupied, during his temporary residence at Broseley, in devising improvements in the details of his engine. Boulton says—“I observe you are thinking of making an inverted cylinder. Pray how are you to counterbalance the descent of the piston and pump rods, which will be a vast weight? If by a counterweight you gain nothing. But if you can employ the power that arises from the descent of that vast weight to strain a spring that will repay its debts—if by it you can compress air in an iron cylinder which in its return will contribute to overcome the vis inertiæ of the column of water to be raised, you will thereby get rid of that unmechanical tax, and very much improve the reciprocating engine.”—Boulton to Watt, 24th February, 1776. Boulton MSS.
[ [145] Boulton to Watt, 23rd April, 1776. Boulton MSS.
[ [146] The arrangement between the partners is indicated by the following passage of Watt’s letter to Boulton:—“As you may have possibly mislaid my missive to you concerning the contract, I beg just to mention what I remember of the terms.
“1. I to assign to you two-thirds of the property of the invention.
“2. You to pay all expenses of the Act or others incurred before June, 1775 (the date of the Act), and also the expense of future experiments, which money is to be sunk without interest by you, being the consideration you pay for your share.
“3. You to advance stock in trade bearing interest, but having no claim on me for any part of that, further than my intromissions; the stock itself to be your security and property.
“4. I to draw one-third of the profits so soon as any arise from the business, after paying the workmen’s wages and goods furnished, but abstract from the stock in trade, excepting the interest thereof, which is to be deducted before a balance is struck.