WATT’S SINGLE-ACTING PUMPING-ENGINE FOR MINES.
A number of orders for engines had come in at Soho during Watt’s absence; and it became necessary for him to return there as speedily as possible, to prepare the plans and drawings, and put the work in hand. There was no person yet attached to the concern who was capable of relieving him of this part of his duties; while Boulton was fully occupied with conducting the commercial part of the business. By the end of autumn he was again at home; and for a week after his return he kept so close to his desk in his house on Harper’s Hill, that he could not even find time enough to go out to Soho and see what had been doing in his absence. At length he felt so exhausted by the brain-work and confinement that he wrote to his partner, “a very little more of this hurrying and vexation will knock me up altogether.” To add to his troubles, letters arrived from Tingtang, urging his return to Cornwall, to erect the engine, the materials for which had at last arrived. “I fancy,” said Watt, “that I must be cut in pieces, and a portion sent to every tribe in Israel.”
After four month’s labour of this sort, during which seven out of the ten engines then in hand were finished and erected, and the others well advanced, Watt again set out for Cornwall, which he reached by the beginning of June, 1778. He took up his residence at Redruth, as being more convenient for Tingtang than Chacewater, hiring a house at Plengwarry, a hamlet on the outskirts of the town. Redruth is the capital of the mining districts of Camborne, Redruth, and Gwennap. It is an ancient town, consisting for the most part of a long street, which runs down one hill and up another.
All round it the country seems to have been disembowelled; and heaps of scoriæ, “deads,” rubbish, and granite blocks cover the surface. The view from the lofty eminence of Carn Brea, a little to the south of Redruth, strikingly shows the scarified and apparently blasted character of the district, and affords a prospect the like of which is rarely to be seen.
REDRUTH HIGH STREET.
[By R. P. Leitch.]
On making inquiry as to the materials which had arrived during his absence, Watt was much mortified to find that the Soho workmen had made many mistakes. “Forbes’s eduction-pipe,” he wrote, “is a most vile job, and full of holes. The cylinder they have cast for Chacewater is still worse, for it will hardly do at all. The Soho people have sent here Chacewater eduction-pipe instead of Wheal Union; and the gudgeon pipe has not arrived with the nozzles. These repeated disappointments,” said he, “will undoubtedly ruin our credit in the country; and I cannot stay here to bear the shame of such failures of promise.”
Watt had a hard time of it while in Cornwall, what with riding and walking from mine to mine, listening to complaints of delay in the arrival of the engines from Soho, and detecting and remedying the blunders and bad workmanship of his mechanics. Added to which, everybody was low-spirited and almost in despair at the bad times,—ores falling in price, mines filled with water, engine-men standing idle, and adventurers bemoaning their losses. Another source of anxiety was the serious pecuniary embarrassments in which the Soho firm had become involved. Boulton had so many concerns going that a vast capital was required for the purpose of meeting current engagements; and the engine business, instead of relieving him, had hitherto only proved a source of additional outlay, and increased his difficulties at a time of general commercial depression. He wrote Watt, urging him to send remittances for the Cornish engines; but the materials, though partly delivered, were not erected; and the miners demurred to paying on account until they were fixed complete and at work. Boulton then suggested to Watt that he should try to obtain an advance from the Truro bankers, on security of the engine materials. “No,” replied Watt, “that cannot be done, as the knowledge of our difficulties would damage our position in Cornwall, and hurt our credit. Besides,” said he, “no one can be more cautious than a Cornish banker; and the principal of the firm you name is himself exceedingly distressed for money.”[163] Nor was there the least chance, in Watt’s opinion, even if they had the money to advance, of their accepting any security that Boulton and Watt had to offer. “Such is the nature of the people here,” said he, “and so little faith have they in our engine, that very few of them believe it to be materially better than the ordinary one, and so far as I can judge, no one I have conversed with would advance us 500l. on a mortgage of it.”[164]