The Quarterly Review for October, 1867, has an article on 'George Stephenson and Locomotion,' in which George Stephenson is described as 'the father of railway locomotion;' and yet two pages after (p. 499) the writer of the article mentions, with greater accuracy, Richard Trevithick (or, as he spells it, 'Trevethick') as 'the first who put together the two ideas of the steam horse and the iron way.' Alas for our Cornishman! such is fame! It has been shown above that Trevithick not only first put together the steam horse and the iron way, but that he first worked the steam horse on the turnpike road; and to him therefore is due the chief credit for there being 'not a line or a locomotive which does not bear testimony to his genius, his sagacity, and his perseverance; nor is there a traveller upon a railway, who saves time, money, fatigue and anxiety ... who has not reason to think of Richard Trevithick with gratitude for the benefits which he has conferred, and with admiration for the intellectual triumphs which he achieved.'
Fortunate it was for him that he was a remarkably good-tempered man, most simple and frugal in his habits, and richly endowed with that 'friend of the brave'—Hope!
His freedom from debt and imprisonment seems to have been at length due to the sale of one of his patents for iron tanks (for ships) and iron buoys, to Mr. Maudslay, founder of the now eminent firm of London engineers of that name. Trevithick had pressed his proposals on the Admiralty for a long time in vain; and at last, with characteristic impetuosity, settled the matter for ever, it is said, by calling the Navy Board to their faces 'a lot of old women.'
Mrs. Trevithick now joined her husband in London, but not until after prolonged importunity on his part; and her reluctance is scarcely to be wondered at when we think of the difficulties which then existed in making the journey from Cornwall to the metropolis. She had to post all the way, three hundred miles, with four children, one of them a baby, and probably with no servant. Besides which, her brother, Mr. Henry Harvey, of Hayle, represented to her that Trevithick's position in London was hardly sufficiently assured as yet to warrant her making the move. Conjugal love, however, at length prevailed over every other consideration; and on her welcome arrival, a touching little incident occurred. She found her two last letters, unopened, in her husband's pocket; and on her reproaching him with this seeming forgetfulness, which she attributed to his being so thoroughly immersed in his multifarious engineering schemes, he confessed that he had not dared to open them, lest her arguments against their reunion should have prevailed over his wishes. It was well for both that the faithful wife came to town: for soon afterwards, had she not ransacked London for a doctor, whilst her husband lay almost dying in a sponging-house, it is unlikely that he would have survived to return to his native county. To Cornwall, however, he at length returned, in broken health and spirits, in 1810, to find that his mother had just died. Trevithick went home by sea, a six days' voyage, and, as we were then at war with France, the Falmouth Packet in which he sailed was under convoy. They were chased by a French man-of-war, from whom they luckily escaped; her commander little dreaming that his small craft (which seems to have owed her safety chiefly to her captain's knowledge of the coast) had on board her the man who had laid proposals before the Government for fitting vessels with high-pressure engines and launching them against the French fleet equipped at Boulogne for the invasion of England.
Trevithick's first idea of steam navigation appears to have arisen in 1804, though his specification was not dated till 1808;[152] and in this, as in almost every other important step in his life, he relied very much on the sound judgment and sympathetic advice of his friend Davies Gilbert. Paddle-wheels, however (the original mode of propulsion), were found cumbrous to ships, especially in heavy weather; and this led Trevithick to the invention of the screw-propeller, a design for which he laid before the Navy Board in 1812, but without effect. The patent was not dated till the 6th of June, 1815; nor was success assured until after the busy engineer had left his native county on a voyage to Peru, which seemed to hold out promises of proving an El Dorado for him. His son and biographer, taking into consideration the numerous marine inventions and appliances of his progenitor, claims for his father, and not without much show of justice, that he may be regarded as the originator of our present iron steam fleet.
But, in fact, the man's versatility in his profession seems to have been unbounded. In 1813 he was the life and soul of the arrangements for constructing the Plymouth Breakwater; then he turns his attention to the manufacture of agricultural engines, and constructs the first steam thrashing-machine, which was until recently at work at Trewithan, in Probus, but now occupies a place of honour in the South Kensington Museum of Patents, together with a boiler of curious construction by him.[153] This invention, like some others of Trevithick's, seems to have been almost still-born; yet it was destined, as we now know, to re-appear as a powerful factor in the development of agriculture.
His next great stride was the new 'pole-puffer-engine' of 1816, in connection with which squabbles arose between the engineer and his relations, Henry Harvey and Andrew Vivian, both of whom were said to have been moved to jealousy by Trevithick's having arranged to get the castings for the first of these engines (viz., that for Wheal Herland, near Gwinear) made at Bridgenorth, instead of at Hayle. The first trial of the new engine, when at length set up, seems to have been somewhat of a failure, owing to the inaccurate way in which it was made. Here is an eye-witness's amusing account of its starting:
'I was a boy working in the mine, and several of us peeped in at the door to see what was doing. Captain Dick Trevithick was in a great way; the engine would not start. After a bit, Captain Dick threw himself down upon the floor of the engine-house, and there he lay upon his back; then up he jumped, and snatched a sledge-hammer out of the hands of a man who was driving in a wedge, and lashed it in, in a minute. There never was a man could use a sledge like Captain Dick; he was as strong as a bull. Then he picked up a spanner, and unscrewed something, and—off she went! Captain Vivian was near me, looking in at the doorway. Captain Dick saw him, and, shaking his fist, said, "If you come in here, I'll throw you down the shaft." I suppose Captain Vivian had something to do with making the boilers, and Captain Dick was angry because they leaked clouds of steam. You could hardly see, or hear anybody speak in the engine-house, it was so full of steam and noise; we could hear the steam-puffer roaring at St. Erth, more than three miles off.'
Another altercation on the subject of this engine took place at a meeting of the Wheal Herland adventurers, when Trevithick said: 'I could not help threatening to horsewhip Joseph Price for the falsehoods that he, with the others, had reported. I hear that he is to go to London to meet the London Committee on Monday. I hope the Committee will consider J. Price's report as from a disappointed man. It is reported that he has bought very largely in Woolf's patent, which now is not worth a farthing, besides losing the making my castings, which galls him very sorely.'
The final result was that the Wheal Herland engine proved a great success.