It would not be unreasonable to inquire how it can be necessary now
to write an account of Richard Trevithick, seeing that only nine or
ten years ago two elaborate volumes on the subject were published by
his son Francis.[141] But, apart from the propriety of including so
remarkable a man in the _fasciculus_ of our Cornish worthies, it may
be observed that the very amplitude of the 'Life' to which I have
referred renders it inaccessible to the general reader; and moreover
it is (as the talented civil engineer who wrote that valuable and
interesting work himself observes), almost as much a technical history
of the development of the steam-engine as a memoir of him who was
so intimately associated with its rise and progress. Our purpose is
biography; and, unless I am grievously mistaken, this aspect of the
subject will be found full of interest.
The steam pumping-engine is to a mine what the heart is to a man: were
its action to cease, or to be inefficiently performed, the mine would
be flooded, and would cease to be. It is therefore not to be wondered
at if, so soon as men ceased to find the precious ores in granules
on the surface, washed down by mountain streams from the denuded
veins which seam the hillsides, attention should be directed towards
finding the coveted treasures in the bowels of the earth itself. But
here a difficulty met the searchers. As they sunk their pits they
often tapped the sources of streams, which, gushing out, at once put
an end to their quest. Rude expedients were at first employed to
remedy this; wooden pumps, worked by the hand, and such-like feeble
attempts at getting over the difficulty. But it was not until 1702
that, according to some accounts, the first steam pumping-engine was
erected in Cornwall, by Savery. Newcomen, whose name will always
be honourably associated with the improvement of this invaluable
machine, very soon was able to increase its efficiency, and erected
one of his best engines in 1720, at the mine-works of Ludgvan-lez,
near Penzance. By 1756 there were _several_ steam-engines at work in
Cornwall; but their defects, especially as regards their low power,
and their extravagant consumption of coal, were inconveniently felt.
It was at length perceived that the solution of the difficulty lay
in a diminution of the size of the boiler, and an increase in the
elastic force of the steam; and for the accomplishment of these
objects we are mainly indebted to the subject of this memoir, as
well as, in some degree, also to his father. The circumstances which
surrounded them were by no means encouraging. Coal, of course, had to
be imported, and also iron plates for the boilers; and the latter it
was necessary, in those days, to make of small size, on account of the
indifferent condition of the Cornish roads, along which (as no heavy
wheeled-traffic was practicable), the burdens had to be transported
from the ports to the mines, and _vice versa_, on the backs of mules.
Now-a-days the huge boilers are moved entire, and there are few more
gladsome as well as picturesque sights to be seen in Cornwall than the
transit of a gigantic new boiler through the streets of one of the
West-country towns. It means that mining enterprise, which has flagged
of late years, owing to the increased importation of foreign ores, and
has caused deep depression and cruel poverty in many a Cornish home,
is awakening once more; and the teams of thirty or forty horses, with
their noisy conductors, and the ponderous mass which slowly toils along
the weary road, are hailed with shouting and songs. We see, then, of
what vital interest to a mining county, such as Cornwall, must ever
be all that is connected with that seemingly prosaic structure, the
steam-engine; and how full of interest, to Cornish folk at least,
should be the story of any Cornishmen who have been prominently
connected with its development and history. Such certainly were the
Trevithicks, especially the younger.
Though in later times they settled in the western part of the county,
the family seems to have sprung, in the sixteenth or seventeenth
century, from Trevemeder, a 'town place' in the seaboard parish of St.
Eval, four or five miles north-west of St. Columb Major, a parish which
contains some of the finest cliff scenery in Cornwall, at the far-famed
Bedruthan Steps and Sands. Some of the family monuments are still to be
found in the church, which lies two miles south of Trevemeder.
The elder Trevithick, who, like his more illustrious son, was
christened Richard, was born in 1735; and that he was a man of sound
judgment and much force of character may be surmised from his having
been appointed, when only thirty years of age, manager of some of the
leading Cornish mines, in days when mine-managers were expected to be
their own engineers. In 1760 he married Ann Teague, one of a family
(said to be of Irish extraction) distinguished for many a long year
past in the annals of Cornish mining. By her, a woman of large and
portly figure,[142] he had a tall stately family of four daughters and
one son, all of whom were, I believe, born in an unpretending house
amongst the mine-heaps which lie between Dolcoath and North Crofty, in
sight of the noble hill of Carnbrea crowned with its old castle, and
still more antique remains of ancient Britons.
An example of the elder Richard's inventive skill as an engineer was
given when he repaired, or rather, almost reconstructed, about 1775,
Newcomen's old Carloose, or Bullan Garden engine; especially by adding
thereto a strong top of new form to the boiler, a drawing of which is
given in the Appendix to Price's 'Mineralogia Cornubiensis,' 1778. The
old boiler-tops were scarcely more than kettle-lids, and were actually
weighted down in order to keep them in their places; indeed, there is a
tradition that the first Cornish boilers were nothing more than stone
fire-places! In effecting this improvement Richard Trevithick, senior,
was assisted by one John Harvey,[143] the founder of the celebrated
firm of Harvey and Co., of Hagle Foundry, of whom we shall hear more
by-and-by.
But about 1777 Watt, the celebrated 'low-pressure' engineer, appeared
on the scene with his improvements in the steam-engine; travelling into
Cornwall for the purpose of obtaining orders, erecting his first engine
at Wheal Busy, and exciting the most angry jealousy on the part of all
the local mine-managers and engineers--and notably our Richard: who,
however, had the magnanimity and good sense at length to acknowledge
and to adopt many of his illustrious rival's improvements.
The old man, who was a pious Methodist, a 'class-leader,' and an
intimate friend of John Wesley, died when sixty-two years old at
Penponds, near Camborne, on the 1st August, 1797, and, I believe, was
buried on the summit of Carn Brea, but no monumental stone marks the
spot. The whole of his life was spent amongst mines and steam-engines,
an industry which was deeply depressed at the time of his death;
and Richard, the younger (who had married Jane, John Harvey's tall
and buxom daughter, shortly prior to his father's decease), may be
said to have succeeded to a 'heritage of woe: 'not one in ten of the
steam-engines which his father had contributed so much towards putting
into operation being at that time at work, and our hero had almost to
begin the work anew.
So much as the foregoing seemed necessary in order to rightly estimate
Trevithick's position and surroundings when he had arrived at the age
of twenty-six. But it will now be desirable to retrace our steps,
and begin at the beginning. He was born in the centre of a group of
some of our most important Cornish mines, in the parish of Illogan,
on the 13th April, 1771, one of a family of five, of whom Richard was
the only surviving son, and, as a matter of course, his mother's pet.
One can picture the tall, sturdy lad, 'creeping reluctantly' to the
little school at Camborne, where he was reputed a lazy, inattentive,
and obstinate pupil, always drawing upon his slate lines and figures,
unintelligible to any but himself, but, likely enough, containing the
germs of those inventions which were destined hereafter to contribute
largely to the success of Cornish mining, and make his own name famous.
As he grew up he seems to have been more noted as a wrestler, and for
his feats of strength, than for anything else, except, perhaps, for his
rapid power as a mental arithmetician. He was a great hand at throwing
the sledge-hammer, and could lift half-a-ton. A huge mass of iron of
about this weight, which tradition says Trevithick used to lift, is
still shown at the Patent Museum, South Kensington. He would climb the
mine-shears--a height of fifty or sixty feet--stand, balancing himself
on the summit, and then and there swing round his sledge-hammer 'to
steady his head and foot.' There is a story told of his being attacked
by pickpockets while walking with his friend, Captain Andrew Vivian,
in London; but Trevithick seized two of them, knocked their heads
together, and then flung them away from him in opposite directions, not
to return to the Tartar whom they had caught! The mark was long shown
on the ceiling of Dolcoath account-house, which was imprinted by the
_heels_ of one Captain Hodge, who had dared Trevithick to try a fall
with him, but who found himself first flying through the air, and then
flat on his back on the table, before he knew what had happened!
But Richard Trevithick was endowed with something more than mere
physical strength; for, having first received some instruction in his
calling from an engineer, well-known in Cornwall, of the name of Bull,
he at length got to work, in 1790, at Stray Park Mine, at 30s. a month.
Whilst here he was selected, when only twenty-one years of age, to
report upon the relative merits of Watt's and Hornblower's engines, a
fact which, surely, speaks volumes for his powers of observation, and
for the solidity of his judgment.
In 1795 he erected at Wheal Treasury, when his pay was 3s. 6d. a day,
his double-acting steam-engine--a model of which is still, I believe,
in operation at Battersea--and in 1796 or 1797, he removed to Ding Dong
Mine, near Penzance. It was about this time that he, fortunately for
himself, met with Davies Gilbert, of Tredrea, afterwards President of
the Royal Society, whose impressions of Trevithick are recorded in the
following letter to J. S. Enys, Esq., of Enys:
'Eastbourne, April 29, 1839.
'MY DEAR SIR,
'I will give as good an account as I can of Richard Trevithick.
His father was the chief manager in Dolcoath Mine, and he bore the
reputation of being the best informed and most skilful captain in
all western mines; for as broad a line of distinction was then made
between the _Eastern_ and _Western_ mines (the Gwennap and the
Camborne Mines) as between those of different nations.
'I knew the father very well, and about the year 1796 I remember
hearing from Mr. Jonathan Hornblower, that a tall and strong young
man had made his appearance among engineers, and that on more than
one occasion he had threatened some people who had contradicted him
to throw them into the engine-shaft. In the latter part of November
of that year I was called to London as a witness in a steam-engine
case between Messrs. Boulton and Watt and Maberley. Then I believe
that I first saw Mr. Richard Trevithick, Jun., and certainly there I
first became acquainted with him. Our correspondence commenced soon
afterwards, and he was very frequently in the habit of calling at
Tredrea to ask my opinion on various projects that occurred to his
mind--some of them very ingenious, and others so wild as not to rest
on any foundation at all. I cannot trace the succession in point of
time.
'On one occasion Trevithick came to me and inquired with great
eagerness as to what I apprehended would be the loss of power in
working an engine by the force of steam raised to the pressure of
several atmospheres; but instead of condensing, to let the steam
escape. I, of course, answered at once that the loss of power would
be one atmosphere, diminished power by the saving of an air-pump with
its friction, and in many cases with the raising of condensing water.
I never saw a man more delighted; and I believe that within a month
several puffers were in actual work.
'DAVIES GILBERT.'
Thus was born the _high-pressure_ engine, with which the name of
Richard Trevithick will for ever be associated; and in a few months
many of these machines were at work, notwithstanding Watt's allegations
that they were dangerous to public safety. Indeed Trevithick, writing
to Davies Gilbert, observed that 'James Watt said, ... that I deserved
hanging for bringing into use the high-pressure engine.' Trevithick
never afterwards reverted to the low-pressure model. And here it may be
observed that Mr. Michael Williams considered that this invention, in
conjunction with Trevithick's improved cylindrical boiler, doubled or
trebled the work done by the old Boulton and Watt engines. The saving
to the Cornish mines thus effected by Trevithick has been estimated at
nearly £91,000 per annum.
He was now in full swing of work; much to the surprise of his father,
was engaged in twenty different mines; and was everywhere recognised as
a worthy successor of his father, and as the chief Cornish engineer in
the county.
It was at this time, too (1797), that he married Jane Harvey. A tall
man, 6 feet 2 inches high, broad-shouldered, as most Cornishmen are,
with a massive head, bright blue eyes, and a large but shapely mouth,
with a firm but kind expression. His bust was presented to the Royal
Institution of Cornwall by Mr. W. J. Henwood, and his portrait--by
Linnell, in 1816--is preserved at the National Portrait Gallery at
South Kensington.
The young couple took up their abode at Moreton House, near
Redruth, close to the residence of Murdock, the inventor, in 1792,
of the gas-light. Watt lived not far off, at Plain-an-Guarry (the
Playing-place), but the two rival engineers did not visit each other.
Watt and his engines were patronized by the _Eastern_ or Gwennap
mine-owners, but Trevithick and his inventions were adopted by the
Camborne, Illogan and Redruth or _Western_ adventurers. As an instance
of the strong feeling which existed in those days between the rival
mine-engineers, Smiles, in his 'Lives of Boulton and Watt,' states that
it was reported that old Captain Trevithick and Murdock had actually
fought a duel over the subject of their inventions.
From Redruth, after only a few months' residence there, Richard and
his wife moved to Camborne. Whilst here, and about this time, he
invented his improved plunger-poles, the forcer temporary pump, the
plunger-pole pump, the pole-pressure[144] engine, and the double-acting
pressure-engine for Wheal Druid; all of them greatly conducing to the
facilities required for removing the water out of deep mines.[145] He
seems, too, to have been particularly happy in the methods which his
versatile ingenuity employed in adapting old machinery to more modern
requirements; and, though he was always busy as a bee, he was full of
fun and good-humour, and noted for being a capital story-teller.
But Trevithick did not confine himself to the steam pumping-engine.
The improvements which he and others had made and were making in that
most important machine necessitated improvements in other parts of
the mine. The ore must be drawn more rapidly to the surface, and the
mode of sending it up the shafts must be improved. He was equal to the
occasion: the steam whim solved the former, and the wrought-iron kibble
(formerly a bucket, constructed of wood) the latter difficulty. About
this period an amusing incident occurred which is worth recording,
as exhibiting Trevithick's force of character in other than merely
professional matters. His remuneration would appear to have consisted
partly of a fixed salary, partly of the profits incident to the supply
of machinery, and partly of royalties payable upon instruments of his
invention. Now one of his engines was supplied to a mine called Wheal
Abraham, whose shareholders, on somewhat fanciful and possibly unfair
grounds, appear to have unnecessarily delayed satisfying Trevithick's
just claims; whereupon, one night, the engineer and his men took the
matter into their own hands, and (to the astonishment of the staff of
the mine next morning) removed the huge engine bodily.
We now approach a very interesting episode in Trevithick's
career--namely, the invention of his 'Camborne common
road-locomotive.'[146] The idea of this may possibly have suggested
itself to him (as doubtless other causes suggested similar ideas to
Murdock, and to others before and after Trevithick) from his having
to transport one of his portable engines from mine to mine, as
required--sometimes at a considerable cost. To such a practical genius
as his the idea doubtless occurred, 'Why not, with all this available
power, make the engine move herself?' However this may be, the curtain
now rises on an amusing little group in Trevithick's house; Davies
Gilbert acting as stoker, and Lady De Dunstanville of Tehidy (on whose
estate most of the great Camborne Mines were situated) playing the
part of engine-man to a little model locomotive which ran round the
table. The original working model of 'the Trevithick high-pressure
locomotive,' the first working model for which was made in 1797, is
still to be seen at the South Kensington Museum, in the machinery
department; but it was not till Christmas Eve or (according to other
authorities) Christmas _Day_, 1801, that the 'puffing devil,'[147] as
it was locally termed by the astonished Cornish folk, made its first
performances on the roads round Camborne, Tuckingmill, and Tehidy,
carrying its ten or a dozen passengers uphill faster than a man could
walk. The success, though not complete, was sufficient to determine
Trevithick, with his brother-in-law Andrew Vivian--who found the money
and shared in the speculation--to proceed forthwith to London in order
to obtain a patent (his first), which was accordingly secured on the
24th March, 1802. Smiles points out, in his 'Lives of the Engineers,'
that a remarkable feature in this engine was that it not only raised
but also depressed the piston by the action of the steam; and he also
tells how, in 1803, the wonder was exhibited to the public first at
Lord's Cricket Ground, and afterwards near the spot where the London
and North-Western Railway Station, Euston Square, now stands. This
engine attained a speed of twelve miles an hour. When the noisy
machine worked its way along Oxford Street, all horses and carriages
were ordered out of the way; many of the shops were shut for fear of
accidents, and the roofs of the houses were crowded with spectators. I
believe it was also exhibited at one time on the site of the present
Bedlam. To Trevithick, also, Smiles awards the credit of 'putting
_the two things_ together--the steam-horse and the iron way,' when he
invented his second or _railway_ locomotive. The controversy as to the
priority of the invention has been thus ably summed up in the following
extract from 'Locomotive Engineering,' by Zerah Colburn, C.E. (vol. i.,
pp. 32, 33; 1871):
'As a true inventor, no name stands in so close connexion with the
locomotive-engine as that of Richard Trevithick. It was he who first
broke through the trammels of Watt's system of condensation and low,
if not negative, pressure; it was he who first employed the internal
fire-place and internal heating surface; he was the first to create
or promote a chimney-draught by means of exhaust steam; the first to
employ a horizontal cylinder and cranked axle, and to propose two such
cylinders with the cranks at right angles to each other; the first
to surround the cylinder with hot air; the first to draw a load by
the adhesion of a smooth wheel upon a smooth iron bar; _and the first
to make and work a railway locomotive-engine_. Trevithick and George
Stephenson were contemporaries;[148] the first locomotive seen by the
latter was constructed by the former; and a personal acquaintance
was afterwards established between them. Although irrelevant to
the present purpose, it may be added that Trevithick patented the
screw-propeller, and specified several forms of that instrument, and
various modes of applying it, in 1815--years before those to whom the
invention is more commonly ascribed had turned their attention to it.'
The history of steam locomotion by rail was thus conveniently
summarized by a writer in the _Times_, on the occasion of the George
Stephenson Centenary, 8th June, 1881:
'It may be mentioned that there were iron railways before Stephenson's
time. The earliest account is of a timber tram-line laid down near
Newcastle in 1602. Lines were made of iron at Whitehaven in 1738.
In 1776 an iron railway was laid down near Sheffield, by John Curr,
but it was destroyed by the colliers. Ten years later the first
considerable iron railway was laid down at Coalbrookdale. The first
iron railway sanctioned by Parliament--with the exception of local
lines used by canal companies--was the Surrey iron railway, worked
by horses, from the Thames at Wandsworth to Croydon, laid down in
1801. _In the year 1802 Trevithick and Vivian obtained a patent
for a high-pressure locomotive engine._ In 1813 William Hedley, of
Wylam Colliery, constructed the first travelling locomotive engine
in a colliery; and in the following year[149] the first locomotive
constructed by George Stephenson travelled at the rate of six miles
per hour.'
Notwithstanding, however, this practical success, from a pecuniary
point of view Trevithick's position was far from flourishing. It
is true that he was engaged, not only on his Cornish work, but
also at Pen-y-darran in South Wales, at Coalbrookdale, and at
Newcastle-on-Tyne; and it is also true that the exhibition of his
'Catch-me-who-can' engine, as Mr. Davies Gilbert's sister named the
railway locomotive, working on a circular railway of about 100 feet in
diameter, drew crowds of Londoners to witness its performance. But the
shilling admission fees did not come in fast enough to counterbalance
the legal difficulties which our engineer had to contend with in
the working of ill-defined Patent Laws; and the breaking of a rail
caused the engine to overturn--thus putting an end to the exhibition.
Ill-health, too--typhus, gastric, and brain fever supervened;
bankruptcy and imprisonment were the result; and, to anticipate a
little, poor Trevithick was driven from London, after an unsuccessful
application had been made to the Government for remuneration for his
truly national services. He was not only, as his biographer contends,
the real inventor of the blast-pipe; but, up to 1808, had constructed
two road-locomotives (one for Camborne and one for London), railway
locomotives for Coalbrookdale and Newcastle, and a tramroad locomotive
for Pen-y-darran; to say nothing of his steam-dredger engine, his
travelling steam-crane, his brilliant though ineffectual attempt to
construct a driftway under the Thames at Rotherhithe,[150] etc., etc.
The following extract from the 'Catalogue of the South Kensington
Museum' gives the official account of Trevithick and his patents:
'_Inventor and constructor of the first high-pressure steam-engine,
and the first steam-carriage used in England_; constructor of a tunnel
beneath the Thames, which he completed to within 100 feet of the
proposed terminus, and was then compelled to abandon the undertaking;
inventor and constructor of steam-engines and machinery for the mines
of Peru (capable of being transported in mountainous districts), by
which he succeeded in restoring the Peruvian mines to prosperity;
also of coining-machinery for the Peruvian mint, and of furnaces for
purifying silver ore by fusion; also inventor of other improvements in
steam-engines, impelling-carriages, hydraulic engines, propelling and
towing vessels, discharging and towing ships' cargoes, floating-docks,
construction of vessels, iron buoys, steam-boilers, cooking, obtaining
fresh water, heating apartments, etc.'
The following is a list of his patents: