CHAPTER XVI.
More Difficulties and more Inventions—Boulton again in Cornwall.
The battle of the firm had hitherto been all up-hill. Nearly twenty years had passed since Watt had made his invention. His life since then had been a constant struggle, and it was a struggle still. Thirteen years had passed since the original patent had been taken out, and seven since the Act had been passed for its extension. But the engine had as yet yielded no profit, and the outlay of capital continued. Notwithstanding Boulton’s energy and resources, the partners were often in the greatest straits for money, and sometimes, as Saturday nights came round, they had to beat about among their friends for the means of paying the workmen’s wages.
Though Watt continued to imagine himself on the brink of ruin, things were not really so gloomy as he supposed. We find Boulton stating in a confidential letter to Matthews, that the dues payable on the pumping-engines actually erected in 1782 amounted to 4320l. a year; and that when all the engines in progress had been finished, they would probably amount to about 9000l. It is true, the dues were paid with difficulty by the mining interest, still in a state of great depression, but Boulton looked forward with confidence to better days coming round. Indeed, he already saw his way through the difficulties of the firm, and encouraged his doleful partner to hope that in the course of a very few years more, they would be rid of their burdens.
As Cornwall was, however, now becoming well supplied with pumping-engines, it became necessary to open up new branches of business to keep the Soho manufactory in full work. With this object, Boulton became more and more desirous of applying the engine to the various purposes of rotary motion. In one of his visits to Wales, in 1781, he had seen a powerful copper-rolling mill driven by water, and when told that its defect was that it was liable to be stopped in summer during drought, he immediately asked—“Why not use our engine? It goes night and day, summer and winter, and is altogether unaffected by drought.” Immediately on his return home, he made a model of a steam rolling-mill, with two cylinders and two beams, connecting the power by a horizontal axis; and by the end of the year he had a steam forge erected at Soho on this plan. “It answers very well,” he wrote to Matthews, “and astonishes all the ironmasters; for, although it is a small engine, it draws even more steel per day than a large rolling-mill in this neighbourhood draws by water.” Mr. Wilkinson was so much pleased with it that he ordered one to be made on a large scale for the Bradley ironworks; and another was shortly after ordered for Rotherham. But the number of iron mills was exceedingly limited, and Boulton did not anticipate any large extension of business in that quarter. If, however, he could once get the rotary engine introduced as the motive power for corn and flour mills, he perceived that the demand would be considerable. Writing to Watt on the subject, he said, “When Wheal Virgin is at work, and all the Cornish business is in good train, we must look out for orders, as all our treaties are seemingly at an end, having none now upon the tapis. There is no other Cornwall to be found, and the most likely line for increasing the consumption of our engines is the application of them to mills, which is certainly an extensive field.”
Watt, on his return to Birmingham from Cornwall, proceeded to embody his plan for securing rotary motion in a working engine, so that he might be enabled to exhibit the thing in actual work. He was stimulated to action by the report which reached his ears that a person in Birmingham had set agoing a self-moving steam rotator, in imitation of his, on which he exclaimed, “Surely the Devil of Rotations is afoot! I hope he will whirl them into Bedlam or Newgate.”[244] Boulton, who had by this time gone to Cornwall for the winter, wrote to him from Cosgarne, “It is certainly expensive; but nevertheless I think, as we have so much at stake, that we should proceed to execute such rotatives as you have specified.... You should get a good workman or two to execute your ideas with despatch, lest they perish. The value of their wages for a year might be 100l., but it would be the means of our keeping the start that we now have of all others. But above all, there is nothing of more importance than the perfect completion of the double expansive reciprocating engine as soon as may be.”[245] Watt replied that he was busily occupied in getting the rotative motion applied to one of the Soho engines. “These rotatives,” said he, “have taken up all my time and attention for months, so that I can scarcely say that I have done anything which can be called business. Our accounts lie miserably confused. We are going on in a very considerable weekly expense at Soho, and I can see nothing likely to be produced from it which will be an equivalent.” Speaking of the prospect of further improvements, he added, “It is very possible that, excepting what can be done in improving the mechanics of the engine, nothing much better than we have already done will be allowed by Nature, who has fixed a ne plus ultra in most things.”[246]
While thus hopelessly proceeding with the rotative engine, Watt was disquieted by the intelligence which reached him from Boulton, as to the untoward state of affairs in Cornwall. At some of the most important mines, in which Boulton and Watt held shares, the yield had considerably fallen off, and the price of the ores being still very low, they had in a great measure ceased to be remunerative. Hence appeals were made to Boulton on all sides for an abatement of the engine dues. Unwilling to concede this, the adventurers proceeded to threaten him with the Hornblowers, whose engine they declared their intention of adopting. As, however, Boulton and Watt’s engines were all going exceedingly well, and as the Hornblowers had not yet been able to get one of their boasted engines to work satisfactorily,[247] the adventurers hesitated for the present to take any overt steps in the matter.
Boulton had a long and disagreeable battle to fight with the adventurers on this point, which lasted for many months, during which the Hornblowers continued to stimulate them with the agreeable prospect of getting rid of the dues payable in respect of the savings of fuel by the condensing engines. Boulton resisted them at every point single-handed; the battle being, as he said, “Boulton and Watt against all Cornwall.”[248] He kept Watt fully informed from day to day of all that passed, and longed for more rapid means of communication,—the postal service being then so defective that no less than thirteen days elapsed before Boulton, at Truro, could receive an answer from Watt at Birmingham. On one occasion we find Watt’s letter eleven days on the road between the two places. The partners even had fears that their letters were tampered with in transit; and, in order to carry on their correspondence confidentially, Watt proposed to employ a shorthand alphabet, which he had learnt from Dr. Priestley, in which to write at least the names of persons, “as our correspondence,” he observed, “ought to be managed with all possible secrecy, especially as to names.”
Boulton, as usual, led a very active life in Cornwall. Much of his time was occupied in riding from mine to mine, inspecting the engines at work, and superintending the erection of others. The season being far advanced, the weather was bad, and the roads miry; but, wet or dry, he went his rounds. In one of his letters he gives an account of a miserable journey home on horseback, on a certain rainy, windy, dark night in November, when he was “caught in water up to 12 hands.” “It is very disagreeable,” he adds, “that one cannot stay out till dark upon the most emergent business without risking one’s life.” But once at home he was happy. “The greatest comfort I find here,” he says, “is in being shut out from the world, and the world from me. At the same time I have quite as much visiting as I wish for.” One of his favourite amusements was collecting and arranging fossils, some for his friend Wedgwood, and others for his own “fossilry” at Soho. Boulton was well supported out of doors by William Murdock, now regarded as “the right hand” of the concern in Cornwall.
“Murdock hath been indefatigable,” he wrote Watt, “ever since they began [at Wheal Virgin new Engine]. He has scarcely been in bed or taken necessary food.... After slaving day and night on Thursday and Friday, a letter came from Wheal Virgin that he must go instantly to set their engine to work or they would let out the fire. He went and set the engine to work: it worked well for the five or six hours he remained. He left it and returned to the Consolidated Mines about eleven at night, and was employed about the engines till four this morning, and then went to bed. I found him at ten this morning in Poldice Cistern, seeking for pins and casters that had jumped out, when I insisted on his going home to bed.”[249]