2599 (1802) Steam Engines for Propelling Carriages.
3148 (1808) Ship Propeller.
3172 (1808) Iron Tanks for Ships.
3231 (1809) Iron Docks, Ships, Masts and Spars, Buoys,
Steam-arm, etc.
3922 (1815) Screw-propeller.[151]
6082 (1831) Surface Condenser.
6083 (1831) Heating Apparatus for Rooms.
6308 (1832) Superheating Steam.
But this list by no means exhausts the whole of his inventions, for he
was so fond of talking of them before they were matured that many were
found sharp enough to seize Trevithick's ideas, and then to reduce them
into some practical and remunerative form for themselves.
Sorry reward this for such incessant industry and varied inventive
skill as induced Hyde Clarke to write as follows:
'In the establishment of the locomotive, in the development of the
powers of the Cornish engines, and in increasing the capabilities of
the marine engine, there can be no doubt that Trevithick's exertions
have given a far wider range to the dominion of the steam-engine than
even the great and masterly improvements of James Watt effected in his
day.'
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.
'Every engine that _was_ erecting is stopped, and the whole county
thinks of no other engine,' wrote its engineer; and that Trevithick had
'the courage of his convictions' may be judged from his saying: 'I have
offered to deposit £1,000 to £500 as a bet against Woolf's best engine,
and give him 20,000,000 (lbs. "duty"), but that party refuses to accept
the challenge.' Indeed, Mr. Francis Trevithick claims that '_This
engine performed the same work as the Watt engine, with less than half
of the daily coal_.'
It would, in fact, be difficult to exaggerate the importance of Richard
Trevithick's contributions to this branch of applied mechanics; and
had he been as prudent in his management of his business affairs, and
as sharp in looking after his pecuniary interests as he was brimful of
talent in his scientific inventions, it would never have been necessary
for the late Mr. Michael Williams, M.P.,[154] to write of him that 'he
was at the same time the greatest and the worst-used man in the county.'
Such was Trevithick's position when he had reached the age of
forty-five. Sanguine, impetuous, and brilliant--no sooner finishing
one invention than commencing another (nay, sometimes before he had
thoroughly completed the first)--a benefactor of incalculable extent
to the prosperity of his native county, but so unsuspecting and so
indifferent to his own, that he turned at length to the New World for
the appreciation and reward that he had failed to secure in the Old.
The circumstances which led to this determination are somewhat curious.
A desire having been felt amongst several wealthy Spaniards in Peru
to rework certain of the old gold and silver mines which required
draining, Don Francisco de Uville, of Lima, a Swiss gentleman, was
sent to England to search for the best steam pumping-engines for
their purpose. The names of Messrs. Boulton and Watt were so famous,
that, almost as a matter of course, he first consulted them; but
they discouraged the project, mainly on the grounds that the rare
atmosphere of the Cordilleras would interfere with the efficiency of
the steam-engine. Thus rebuffed, and much dejected, he chanced to see
in the window of a shop, near the spot where the 'Catch-me-who-can'
had been exhibited, a small model of one of Richard Trevithick's
engines, which he at once secured for £20, and hastened back with it
to Peru. Arriving there, he at once put its powers to the test, and
was delighted to find that Boulton and Watt's doleful prophecies were
not fulfilled. Accordingly he forthwith returned to England with the
model, which bore Trevithick's name engraved on it, in search of the
engineer who had constructed the wonderful machine, and had the good
luck to find on board the same ship as that in which he made the voyage
a cousin of Trevithick's--a Mr. Teague--who at once put the Don on the
right track. Satisfactory interviews ensued, large orders for engines
were put in hand--pumping-engines, winding-engines, sugar-rolling
engines, and crushing-engines, to the tune of some £16,000. The
anticipated profits were £50,000 a year, and Trevithick was to be paid,
not in money, unluckily for him, but in shares, which were to secure to
him an income of £10,000 per annum.
At length the engines duly arrived at Lima, and were landed under a
salute from the guns of the batteries. But things did not work well.
The men sent out were unaccustomed to the use of wood-fires, and
they failed to carry out all Trevithick's instructions, whereupon he
himself resolved upon going to the rescue; and accordingly he sailed
from Penzance in a South Sea whaler, the _Asp_, on 20th October, 1816,
intending to land at Buenos Ayres and work his way across the South
American continent--an undertaking which, in those days, it need
scarcely be added, was of a most formidable character, and no doubt,
therefore, was all the more attractive to the remarkable man whose
career we have been considering.
On his arrival in Peru, he was received with almost royal honours,
and, at once getting to work, soon set matters to rights; for by the
early part of 1817 there were four engines at work, including that
used for coining at the Mint. An immediate collapse of the whole
undertaking would probably have been the result but for the timely
arrival of 'Don Ricardo,' as he was styled by the natives. Amongst the
difficulties to be overcome in this enterprise may be mentioned those
of transit, and these may be estimated from the facts that the Cerro
de Pasco Mines were 170 miles from Lima, that the roads were for the
most part mule-tracks only, and that the site was 13,400 feet above
the sea! No wonder that, on his eventually triumphing over all these
difficulties, thoughts were seriously entertained of erecting a statue
to him in solid silver, and that, according to Mr. Walker's memoir,
he was made a Marquis and Grandee of Spain. But the whole scheme was
unhappily doomed to failure. Deaths and dissensions took place amongst
the shareholders; Uville died in August, 1818, and the whole brunt of
the management fell upon Trevithick. He now, too, foolishly engaged in
other undertakings whilst his hands were already sufficiently full, and
lost large sums of money in a speculative process for extracting silver
by smelting instead of by amalgamation. Then a war of independence
broke out, and poor Trevithick had the mortification of learning that
the Royalists had actually destroyed his machinery, and flung it--where
he had so often before threatened to fling _his_ enemies--'down into
the shafts.'[155]
This was the death-blow of the affair, and he immediately set to work
on a fresh venture, namely, the raising of the cannon from a Russian
ship which had been sunk near Callao. By this he readily made no less
than £2,500, but--will it be believed?--he forthwith lost it all by
an imprudent speculation in a pearl-fishery at Panama! Some of the
money would have been particularly acceptable to poor Mrs. Trevithick,
whom her thriftless husband had left at Penzance unprovided for; in
fact, he omitted (doubtless from sheer thoughtlessness) to pay, as he
had promised to do, the house-rent a year in advance for her. Another
curious instance of Trevithick's utter incapacity for understanding
business matters appears in the following anecdote. Being very hardly
pressed for payment of some account due from him, he snatched the bill
from his creditor, and writing, 'Received--Richard Trevithick,' at the
foot of it, handed it back to the poor man with an angry exclamation,
in his strong Cornish dialect, of 'There! will that satisfy you?'
A strange episode in his career now occurs. Bolivar actually pressed
him as a soldier; but Trevithick soon 'tir'd of war's alarms,'
and the President readily allowed him to return to more congenial
pursuits, sending him on some special mission to Bogota--yet not
before Trevithick had signalized his connexion with the army by
inventing a most ingenious carbine with an explosive bullet. Whilst in
South America he also became, for the nonce, a surgeon, and actually
amputated both legs of a poor fellow crushed by the fall of some of
Trevithick's heavy machinery. The man was very proud of what he had
undergone, and used to boast of his capital stumps.
Having previously paid a short visit to Chili, Trevithick (who had now
lost all his property) finally left Peru in 1822, on the above-named
special mission; but, distrustful of Bolivar's promises and hearing
of something more to his advantage, as he considered, he made his way
to certain rich mines that he had heard of in Costa Rica instead.
Thither--to that region of snakes, miasma, and earth-quakes--we must
now follow him.
There were known to be rich mines of the precious metals near
Quebradahonda, in the interior of the little tract of mountainous
country which forms part of the narrow belt of land connecting North
and South America; but the difficulties of access in 1826-27 rendered
them almost valueless, and Trevithick and his party conceived the idea
of approaching them from the Atlantic side, by a route which should
be practicable for steam conveyances--namely, by way of San Juan (now
Greytown) and the rivers San Juan de Nicaragua and Serapique. Rafts
and boats were constructed for the descent of those streams, and
fearful hardships and dangers befell the explorers--who were bent upon
accomplishing a somewhat similar task in Central America to that which
Lander had performed a few years before in Western Africa. Three weeks
were spent in accomplishing their object--during which the little party
subsisted on monkeys and wild fruits; and more than once Trevithick,
an indifferent swimmer, but who managed to buoy himself up by bundles
of sticks which he placed under his arms, was nearly drowned. He had
however, at length the gratification of reaching San Juan--the first
European who had made the voyage from Lake Nicaragua to the sea.
By some means or other he contrived to reach Cartagena (de las Indias)
on his homeward journey, disconsolate enough no doubt; but what befell
him on his way is best told in the following letter:
'Stanwick, Cumberland, 27th November, 1864.
'SIR,
'I read in the public prints that in a speech made by you in Belle
Vue Gardens you referred to the meeting of Robert Stephenson with
Trevithick at Carthagena, which, if your speech be correctly reported,
you attribute to accident. The meeting was not an accident, although
an accident led to it, and that accident nearly cost Mr. Trevithick
his life; and he was taken to Carthagena by the gentleman that saved
him, that he might be restored. When Mr. Stephenson saw him he was so
recovering; and if he looked, as you say, in a sombre and silent mood,
it was not surprising, after being, as he said, "half drowned and half
hanged, and the rest devoured by alligators," which was too near the
fact to be pleasant. Mr. Trevithick had been upset at the mouth of the
river Magdalena by a black man he had in some way offended, and who
capsized the boat in revenge. An officer in the Venezuelan and the
Peruvian services (Mr. Bruce Napier) was fortunately nigh the banks
of the river shooting wild pigs. He heard Mr. Trevithick's cries for
help, and seeing a large alligator approaching him, shot the reptile
in the eye, and then, as he had no boat, lassoed Mr. Trevithick, and
by his lasso drew him ashore much exhausted and all but dead. After
doing all he could to restore him, he took him on to Carthagena, and
thus it was he fell in with Mr. Stephenson, who, like most Englishmen,
was reserved, and took no notice of Mr. Trevithick, until an officer
said to him, meeting Mr. Stephenson at the door, "I suppose the old
proverb of two of a trade cannot agree is true, by the way you keep
aloof from your brother chip. It was not thus your father would have
treated that worthy man, and it is not creditable to your father's son
that he and you should be here day after day like two strange cats
in a garret; it would not sound well at home." "Who is it?" said Mr.
Stephenson. "_The inventor of the locomotive_, your father's friend
and fellow-worker; his name is Trevithick--you may have heard it,"
said the officer; and then Mr. Stephenson went up to Trevithick.
That Mr. Trevithick felt the previous neglect was clear. He had sat
with Robert Stephenson on his knee many a night while talking to
his father, and it was through him Robert was made an engineer. My
informant states that there was not that cordiality between them he
would have wished to see at Carthagena.
'The officer that rescued Mr. Trevithick is now living. I am sure
he will confirm what I say if needful. A letter will find him if
addressed to No. 4, Earl Street, Carlisle, Cumberland.
'There are more details, but I cannot state them in a letter, and you
might not wish to hear them if I could.
'I am, sir,
'Your very obedient servant,
'JAMES FAIRBAIRN,
who writes as well as rheumatic gout will let him.
'P.S.--I forgot to say the name of the officer is Hall.
'To E. W. Watkin, Esq., M.P.'
On recognising Stephenson, Trevithick is said to have exclaimed, 'Is
that Bobby!--I've nursed him many a time.' The younger engineer had
£100 in his pocket, and generously gave his senior half of it to
facilitate his return to England, which Trevithick shortly afterwards
accomplished, by way of Jamaica, in the autumn of 1827, landing at
Falmouth on the 9th October, after a weary, anxious absence of eleven
years. His health does not seem to have been much injured; but his
belongings were simply the clothes he stood upright in, a gold watch, a
pair of dividers, a magnetic needle, and a pair of spurs. A friend had
to pay his passage-money before he could leave the ship which brought
him home.
But he had the happiness of finding his wife and their family of four
sons and two daughters all well. The Church bells rang out a merry
peal of welcome; and he was entertained at the houses of all the
principal people in the county. A great deal was said of the handsome
remuneration which was due to him for having been the means, through
his many inventions, of saving Cornwall half a million of money,--but
little or nothing seems to have come of all the talk; and when he
claimed £1,000 from each of the leading mines which had adopted his
machinery, they seem--so far as I can ascertain, with one exception
only--to have repudiated them. The exception to which I refer was a
compromise of his claims by the Messrs. Williams, of Scorrier, in
respect of certain mines in which they were interested, for the sum of
£150. Nor was his petition to Parliament, dated 27th February, 1828,
setting forth his many truly _national_ claims for consideration, and
containing an interesting summary of his inventions (but unfortunately
too long to reproduce here), more successful.
Trevithick was now verging upon sixty years of age, and found that
he had to begin life anew. His first endeavour was to form a company
to work his mines in Costa Rica, but neither he nor his friend
Gerard could succeed in doing this either in England, in France, or
in Holland; and, if the report be true that he refused a cheque for
£8,000 for his share in the mine-grants, he must have lived to repent
it bitterly. However, his busy brain was soon at work again with
inventions. First an iron ship and a gun with friction-slides; then a
recoil gun-carriage, in which he utilized the recoil somewhat after
the manner since so effectually accomplished by Moncrieff; then we
find him suggesting a mode of making ice by steam. Next he invents a
chain-and-ball pump for draining the Dutch marshes; and, soon after,
we hear of his being employed by the Government of that country to
examine into sundry important engineering works which they had in hand,
whilst poor Trevithick had to borrow £2 from a friend to enable him to
get over to Holland for the purpose. It may be mentioned, to show what
a good-natured fellow he was, that he at once gave 5s. out of this to a
poor neighbour who had had the misfortune to lose his pig.
During a great part of this period of his life Trevithick was at Hayle
Foundry, engaged in the construction of the great draining engines
for Holland; but he, nevertheless, found time for further inventions,
notably for applying tubular boilers, a superheating system, and
surface-condensers to marine engines, to say nothing of his proposals
to make the same water act over and over again by alternate expansion
and contraction, so as to avoid the objectionable necessity for using
salt water in the boilers. By his method marine engines occupied only
half their former space; were half the weight; and consumed half the
fuel that they formerly did: and it would scarcely be too much to
say that his genius rendered the first voyage across the Atlantic
practicable. In connexion with this subject, he took out his eighth and
last patent in 1832.
Perhaps his latest project was as original--not to say Utopian--as
any that even his fertile brain ever conceived. It was to erect a
perforated, gilt, cast-iron column, 1,000 feet high, to commemorate
the passing of the Reform Bill. One novel feature in it was the
air-elevator, which worked in a tube in the centre of the column, and
shot the traveller from the base to the summit, on arriving at which
he was to secure a glorious bird's-eye view of London.
But the end was approaching. He had been in indifferent health in
the spring of 1830; and, although his son does not state the causes
of his father's death, there is too much ground to fear that poverty
and misery at least accelerated it. He was at work in April, 1833,
in Messrs. Hall's factory, at Dartford, Kent, probably on one of his
marine engines, when, on the 22nd of that month, somewhat suddenly--for
his relations knew nothing of his illness--the great engineer died. He
was penniless, and was indebted to charity for his grave, and to the
mechanics of Messrs. Hall's factory for becoming the bearers and the
only mourners at his simple funeral.
Unless a tombstone has lately been erected, Richard Trevithick
furnishes another example of one of Cornwall's most illustrious sons
being without a monument to mark where he lies. Is this creditable to
the county, or the country, in which he was born, or to the age which
he so much enriched by the versatile power of his genius?
Since the above was written,--and also since the date of a letter which
I sent to the Cornish papers in June, 1881, calling attention to the
facts above referred to,--endeavours have been made to procure some
fitting record in Cornwall in honour of Trevithick's memory; and an
influential meeting on the subject was held in London on 20th April,
1883.