[By R. P. Leitch.]
Another of Newcomen’s engines was erected about the same time at the Wheal Rose mine, a few miles north of Redruth. The engineer appointed to superintend its erection was Joseph Hornblower, who came from Staffordshire for the purpose about the year 1725. Mr. Cyrus Redding, one of Hornblower’s descendants, says, “how he became in any way connected with Newcomen must have arisen from the latter being at Bromsgrove, when he visited Mr. Potter, who got him to build one of his newly-invented engines at Wolverhampton in 1712.”[46] Another engine was afterwards erected by Hornblower at Wheal Busy, or Chacewater, and a third at Polgooth—all rich and well-known mines in Cornwall.
POLGOOTH.
Though the use of Newcomen’s engine rapidly extended, nothing is known of the man himself during this time. All over the mining districts his name was identified with the means employed for pumping the mines clear of water, and thereby enabling an important branch of the national industry to be carried on; but of Newcomen’s personal history, beyond what has been stated above, we can gather nothing. It is not known when or where he died, whether rich or poor. The probability is that, being a person of a modest and retiring disposition, without business energy, and having secured no protection for his invention, it was appropriated and made use of by others, without any profit to him, whilst he quietly subsided into private life. It is supposed that he died at Dartmouth about the middle of last century; but no stone marks the place where he was laid. The only memorial of Newcomen to be found at his native place is the little steam-boat called by his name, which plies between Totness and Dartmouth.
During Newcomen’s lifetime the proposal was revived of applying the steam-engine to the propelling of ships. Since Papin’s time nothing had been accomplished in this direction. Now that the steam-engine was actively employed in pumping mines, it was natural enough that the idea should be revived of applying it to navigation. The most enthusiastic advocate of the new power was Jonathan Hulls, a native of Campden, in Gloucestershire, where he was born in 1699. He married a wife in 1719, before he was out of his teens; an act of indiscretion in which, however, he had the example of one no less distinguished than Shakspeare. Living as he did in an inland country place, it seems remarkable that he should have directed his attention to the subject of steam-navigation. We find him making experiments with models of boats on the river Avon, at Evesham, and in course of time he duly matured his ideas and embodied them in his patent of 1736.[47] He proposed to place a Newcomen engine on board a tow-boat, and by its means to work a paddle-wheel placed at the stern. His method of converting the rectilinear motion of his piston into a rotary one was ingenious, but, like Savery, he missed the crank on the paddle-shaft, and many years passed before this simple expedient was adopted.[48] “The work to be done by this machine,” said he, “will be upon particular occasions, when all other means yet found out are wholly insufficient. How often does a merchant wish that his ship were on the ocean, when, if she were there, the wind would serve tolerably well to carry him on his intended voyage, but does not serve at the same time to carry him out of the river he happens to be in, which a few hours’ work of the machine would do. Besides, I know engines that are driven by the same power as this is, where materials for the purpose are dearer than in any navigable river in England; therefore experience demonstrates that the expense will be but a trifle to the value of the work performed by those sort of machines, which any person that knows the nature of those things may easily calculate.” His treatise was illustrated by a drawing, of which the following is a copy on a reduced scale.
JONATHAN HULLS’S STEAM-BOAT.
The inventor, aware of the novelty of his proposal and of the readiness of the public to ridicule novelties, deprecated rash censure of his project, and only claimed for it a fair and unprejudiced trial. In order to exhibit the powers of his steam-boat, he constructed an engine in 1737, and had it fixed on board a little vessel for trial in the river Avon at Evesham. The trial was not satisfactory, and the engine was taken on shore again. “A failure! A failure!” cried the spectators, who stigmatised the projector as an ass. The prophet had, indeed, no honour whatever in his own country. Long after his steam-boat experiment had been forgotten, these lines about him were remembered:—
“Jonathan Hull,