CARDOZOS PUMPING-ENGINE, UNITED MINES.
UNITED MINES DISTRICT—ST. DAY IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE.
[By R. P. Leitch.]
CHAPTER XIV.
Financial Difficulties—Boulton in Cornwall—Attack and Defence of the Engine Patent.
Boulton again went to Watt’s help in Cornwall at the end of autumn, 1779. He could not afford to make a long stay, but left so soon as he had settled several long-pending agreements with the mine proprietors. The partners then returned to Birmingham together. Before leaving, they installed Lieutenant Henderson as their representative, to watch over their interests in their absence. Henderson was a sort of Jack-of-all-trades and master of none. He had been an officer of marines, and afterwards a West India sugar-planter. He lost all that he possessed in Jamaica, but gained some knowledge of levelling, draining, and machinery. He was also a bit of an inventor, and first introduced himself to Boulton’s notice by offering to sell him a circular motion by steam which he alleged he had discovered. This led to a correspondence, which resulted in his engagement to travel for the firm, and to superintend the erection of engines when necessary.
Henderson experienced the same difficulty that Watt had done in managing the adventurers, and during his stay in Cornwall he was never done calling upon Boulton to hasten to his assistance and help him, as he said, “to put them in good spirits and good temper.” As the annual meetings drew near, Henderson anticipated a stormy time of it, and pleaded harder than ever for Boulton to come to him. It seemed as if it would be necessary for Boulton to take up his residence in Cornwall; and as the interests at stake were great, it might be worth his while to do so. By the summer of 1780, Boulton and Watt had made and sold forty pumping-engines, of which number twenty were erected and at work in different parts of Cornwall; and it was generally expected that before long there would scarcely be an engine of the old construction at work in the county. This was, in fact, the only branch of Boulton’s extensive concerns that promised to be remunerative.[184] He had become loaded with a burden of debt, from which the success of the engine-business seemed to offer the only prospect of relief.
Boulton’s affairs seemed indeed fast approaching to a crisis. He had raised money in all directions to carry on his extensive concerns. He had sold the Patkington estate, which came to him by his wife, to Lord Donegal, for 15,000l.; he had sold the greater part of his father’s property, and raised further sums by mortgaging the remainder; he had borrowed largely from Day,[185] Wedgwood, and others of his personal friends, and obtained heavy advances from his bankers; but all this was found insufficient, and his embarrassments seemed only to increase. Watt could do nothing to help him with money, though he had consented to the mortgage of the steam-engine royalties to Mr. Wiss, by which the sum of 7000l. had been raised. This liability lay heavy on the mind of Watt, who could never shake himself free of the horror of having incurred such a debt; and many were the imploring letters that he addressed to Boulton on the subject. “I beg of you,” said he, “to attend to these money affairs. I cannot rest in my bed until they [i. e. the mortgage and banker’s advance] have some determinate form. I beg you will pardon my importunity, but I cannot bear the uneasiness of my own mind, and it is as much your interest as mine to have them settled.”[186]
The other partner, Fothergill, was quite as downhearted. He urged that the firm of Boulton and Fothergill should at once stop payment and wind up; but as this would have seriously hurt the credit of the engine firm, Boulton would not listen to the suggestion. They must hold on as they had done before, until better days came round. Fothergill recommended that at least the unremunerative branches of the business should be brought to a close. The heaviest losses had indeed been sustained through Fothergill himself, whose foreign connexions, instead of being of advantage to the firm, had proved the reverse; and Mr. Matthews, the London agent, repeatedly pressed Boulton to decline further transactions with foreigners.