Transcriber’s Notes
Hyphenation has been standardised.
The Transcriber has constructed a ‘List of Illustrations’, as none was
supplied.
Page 132 — changed possibilites to =possibilities=
[Illustration: THE TOWER BRIDGE, LONDON, SHOWING THE BASCULES
RAISED.]
ENGINEERS
AND
THEIR TRIUMPHS:
_THE STORY OF THE LOCOMOTIVE—THE STEAMSHIP—BRIDGE BUILDING—TUNNEL
MAKING._
BY
F. M. HOLMES,
AUTHOR OF “FOUR HEROES OF INDIA,” ETC.
[Illustration]
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
_Publishers of Evangelical Literature._
[Illustration]
PREFACE.
Without attempting to be exhaustive, this little book aims at
describing in a purely popular and non-technical manner some of
the great achievements of engineers, more particularly during the
nineteenth century.
The four departments chosen have been selected not in pursuance of any
comprehensive plan, but because they present some of the more striking
features of constructional effort. The term Engineering, however,
includes the design and supervision of numerous works, such as roads
and canals, docks and break-waters, machinery and mining, as well as
steam-engines and steamships, bridges and tunnels.
Information, in certain cases, has been gained at first-hand, and I
have to acknowledge the courtesy of the managers of the Cunard and
White Star Steamship Companies, Messrs. Maudslay, Sons & Field, and
others, in supplying various particulars.
The narrative concerning Henry Bell and the steamship _Comet_, and of
his connection with Fulton, is chiefly based on a letter from Bell
himself in the _Caledonian Mercury_ in 1816.
The statement that Mr. Macgregor Laird was so largely instrumental in
founding the British and American Steam Navigation Company is made on
the authority of his daughter, Miss Eleanor Bristow Laird. An article
on “The Genesis of the Steamship,” which I wrote in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_, brought a letter from that lady in which she declares
that her father was the prime mover in founding the Company. He had
had experience, in the Niger Expedition of 1832-33, of the behaviour
of steamships both at sea and in the river, and from the date of
his return to England she asserts he advocated the establishment of
steam communication between England and America, against the active
opposition of Dr. Lardner and others. “Macgregor Laird’s claim to the
foremost place amongst all those (not excepting Brunel) who worked for
the same object,” writes Miss Laird, “was clearly shown in a letter
from the late Mr. Archibald Hamilton of 17 St. Helen’s Place, E.C., to
the editor of the _Shipping and Mercantile Gazette_, in which paper it
was published on 15th May, 1873.”
It is not a little curious to note how, in many of these great
undertakings, several minds seem to have been working to the same end
at about the same time. It was so with George Stephenson and others
with regard to the locomotive, with Miller and Symington, Bell and
Fulton, with regard to the steamship, with Laird and Brunel as regards
transatlantic steam navigation, with Robert Stephenson and William
Fairbairn as regards the tubular bridge.
This volume does not seek to be the special advocate of any, or to
enter into any minute details, but simply endeavours to gather up the
more salient features and weave them into a connected and popular
narrative.
F. M. HOLMES.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
THE STORY OF THE LOCOMOTIVE.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FIRST STEPS, 9
II. GLANCING BACKWARDS AND STRUGGLING FORWARDS, 19
III. FIFTEEN MILES AN HOUR, 28
IV. A MARVEL OF MECHANISM, 36
V. A MILE A MINUTE, 46
THE STORY OF THE STEAMSHIP.
I. THE “COMET” APPEARS, 53
II. TO THE NARROW SEAS, 60
III. ON THE OPEN OCEAN, 68
IV. THE OCEAN RACE, 74
V. BEFORE THE FURNACE, 85
FAMOUS BRIDGES AND THEIR BUILDERS.
I. “THE BRIDGE BY THE EARTHEN HOUSE,” 101
II. A NEW IDEA—THE BRITANNIA TUBULAR, 108
III. LATTICE AND SUSPENSION BRIDGES, 119
IV. THE GREATEST BRIDGE IN THE WORLD, 125
V. THE TOWER BRIDGE, 133
REMARKABLE TUNNELS AND THEIR CONSTRUCTION.
I. HOW BRUNEL MADE A BORING-SHIELD, 137
II. UNDER THE RIVER, 141
III. THROUGH THE ALPS, 147
IV. UNDER WATER AGAIN, 153
[Illustration]
List of Illustrations
The Tower Bridge, London, showing the bascules raised. iii
George Stephenson. 11
“Puffing Billy,” the oldest locomotive engine in existence. 13
James Watt. 21
Edward Pease. 27
The compound locomotive “Greater Britain.” 41
Back and front view of the locomotive “Greater Britain.” 44
The “Flying Dutchman.” 50
Bell’s “Comet.” 55
Robert Fulton. 59
The ice-bound “Britannia” at Boston. 77
Isambard Kingdom Brunel. 80
The “Great Eastern.” 83
High and low pressure cylinders of the “Campania’s” engines. 87
The “Campania.” 89
Stoke Hole. 93
Promenade deck of the “Paris.” 99
Pontypridd Bridge. 102
The Post Bridge, Dartmoor. 105
Robert Stephenson. 111
The Britannia Tubular Bridge. 115
Victoria Tubular Bridge, Montreal. 117
The Clifton Bridge. 122
The Brooklyn Bridge. 123
The Forth Bridge. 129
The Thames Tunnel. 143
Boring machine used for the Mont Cenis Tunnel. 149
The entrance to the air-lock. 155
The boring machine used in the preliminary construction of the English
Channel Tunnel. 159
[Illustration]
ENGINEERS AND THEIR TRIUMPHS.
THE STORY OF THE LOCOMOTIVE.
CHAPTER I.
FIRST STEPS.
“I think I could make a better engine than that.”
“Do you? Well, some’ing’s wanted; hauling coal by horses is very
expensive.”
“Ay, it is, and I think an engine could do it better.”
“Mr. Blackett’s second engine burst all to pieces; d’ye mind that?”
“How came that about?”
“Tommy Waters, who put it together, could not make it go, so he got
a bit fractious and said she should move. He did some’ing to the
safety-valve and she did begin to work, but then she burst all to
pieces.”
“Ay, ay, but this one is an improvement.”
“It had need be. Even the third was a perfect plague.”
“What! you mean Mr. Blackett’s third engine?”
“Ay. It used to draw eight or nine truck loads at about a mile an hour,
or a little less; but it often got cranky and stood still.”
“Stood still!”
“Ay; we thought she would never stick to the road, so we had a cogged
wheel to work into a rack-work rail laid along the track, and somehow
she was always getting off the rack-rail.”
“And now you find that the engine is heavy enough herself to grip the
rail.”
“Ay, that was Will Hedley’s notion; he’s a viewer at the colliery. And
it is a great improvement. Why, that third engine, I say, was a perfect
nuisance. Chaps used to sing out to the driver: ‘How do you get on?’”
“‘Get on,’ sez he, ‘I don’t get on; I on’y get off!’”
“It was always goin’ wrong, and horses was always having to be got out
to drag it along.”
“How did Hedley find out that a rack-rail was not needful?”
“Well, he had a framework put upon wheels and worked by windlasses
which were geared to the wheels. Men were put to work these windlasses
which set the wheels going; and, lo and behold, she moved! The wheels,
though smooth, kept to the rails, though they were smooth also, and
the framework went along without slipping. ‘Crikey!’ says Hedley, ‘no
cogged wheels, no chains, no legs for me! We can do without ’em all.
Smooth wheels will grip smooth rails.’ And he proved it too by several
experiments.”
“Then Mr. Blackett had this engine built?”
“Ay, and it be, as you say, a great improvement. But that steam blowing
off there, after it have done its work, frights the horses on the Wylam
Road ter’ble, and makes it a perfect nuisance.”
“Has nothing been done to alter it?”
“Mr. Blackett has given orders to stop the engine when any horses comes
along, and the men don’t like that because it loses time. He thinks he
is going to let the steam escape gradual like, by blowing it off into
a cask first.”
“Umph! very wasteful.”
“Oh, ay; it be wasteful; and many a one about here sez of Mr. Blackett
that a fool and his money are soon parted.”
“No,” said the first speaker, shaking his head thoughtfully, “Mr.
Blackett is no fool. But I think I could build a better engine than
that.”
[Illustration: GEORGE STEPHENSON.]
The tone in which these words were uttered was not boastful, but quiet
and thoughtful.
“You are Geordie Stephenson, the engine-wright of the Killingworth
Collieries, ’beant you?”
“Ay; and we have to haul coal some miles to the Tyne where it can be
shipped. So you do away with all rack-work rails and all cogged wheels,
do you?”
“Ay, ay, Geordie, that’s so—smooth wheels on smooth rails.”
This conversation, imaginary though to some extent it be, yet embodies
some important facts. Jonathan Foster, Mr. Blackett’s engine-wright,
informed Mr. Samuel Smiles, who mentions the circumstance in his “Lives
of the Engineers,” that George Stephenson “declared his conviction
that a much more effective engine might be made, that should work more
steadily and draw the load more effectively.”
Geordie had studied the steam-engine most diligently. Born at
Wylam—some eight miles distant from Newcastle, about thirty years
previously—he had become a fireman of a steam-engine and had been wont
to take it to pieces in his leisure. He was now thinking over the
subject of building a locomotive engine, and he decided to see what
had already been accomplished. He would profit by the failures and
successes of others. So he went over to Wylam to see Mr. Blackett’s
engines, and to Coxlodge Colliery to see Mr. Blenkinsop’s from Leeds;
and here again it is said, that after watching the machine haul
sixteen locomotive waggons at a speed of about three miles an hour, he
expressed the opinion that “he thought he could make a better engine
than that, to go upon legs.”
A man named Brunton did actually take out a patent in 1813 for doing
this. The legs were to work alternately, like a living creature’s.
The idea which seems to have troubled the early inventors of the
locomotive, was that smooth wheels would not grip smooth rails to haul
along a load. And it was Blenkinsop of Leeds who took out a patent in
1811 for a rack-work rail into which a cog-wheel from his engine should
work.
Thus William Hedley’s idea of trusting to the weight of the engine to
grip the rails, and abolishing all the toothed wheels and legs and
rack-work for this purpose on a fairly level rail, was the first great
step toward making the locomotive a practicable success.
[Illustration: “PUFFING BILLY,” THE OLDEST LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE IN
EXISTENCE.
(_At present in South Kensington Museum._)]
The idea that Stephenson invented the locomotive is a mistake. But
just as James Watt improved the crude steam pumps and engines he found
in existence, so George Stephenson of immortal memory developed and
made practicable the locomotive. For, in spite of Hedley’s discovery or
invention, all locomotives were partial failures until Stephenson took
the matter in hand.
Nevertheless, William Hedley’s “Puffing Billy” must be regarded as one
of the first practicable railway engines ever built. It is still to be
seen in the South Kensington Museum, London. Patented in 1813, it began
regular work at Wylam in that year, and continued in use until 1872. It
was probably this engine which Stephenson saw when he said to Jonathan
Foster that he could make a better, and it was no doubt the first to
work by smooth wheels on smooth rails. Altogether it has been looked
upon as the “father” of the enormous number of locomotives which have
followed.
Mr. Blackett was a friend of Richard Trevithick; and among the various
inventors and improvers of the locomotive engine Richard Trevithick, a
tin-miner in Cornwall, must have a high place.
Trevithick was a pupil of Murdock, who was assistant of James Watt.
Murdock had made a model successfully of a locomotive engine at
Redruth. Others also had attempted the same thing. Savery had suggested
something of the kind; Cugnot, a French engineer, built one in Paris
about 1763; Oliver Evans, an American, made a steam carriage in 1772;
William Symington, who did so much for the steamboat, constructed
a model of one in 1784. So that many minds had been at work on the
problem.
But Richard Trevithick was really the first Englishman who used a
steam-engine on a railway. He had not much money and he persuaded his
cousin, Andrew Vivian, to join him in the enterprise. In 1802 they took
out a patent for a steam-engine to propel carriages.
But before this he had made a locomotive to travel along roads, and on
Christmas Eve, 1801, the wonderful sight could have been seen of this
machine carrying passengers for the first time. It is indeed believed
to have been the first occasion on which passengers were conveyed by
the agency of steam—the pioneer indeed of a mighty traffic.
The machine was taken to London and exhibited in certain streets, and
at length, in 1808, it was shown on ground where now, curiously enough,
the Euston Station of the London and North-Western Railway stands. Did
any prevision of the extraordinary success of the locomotive flash
across the engineer’s brain? Before the infant century had run its
course what wonderful developments of the strange new machine were to
be seen on that very spot!
Much interest was aroused by the exhibition of this machine, and Sir
Humphrey Davy, a fellow Cornishman, is reported to have written to a
friend—“I shall soon hope to hear that the roads of England are the
haunts of Captain Trevithick’s dragons—a characteristic name.”
His letter tends to show that the idea then was that the engine should
run on the public roads, and not on a specially prepared track like
a railway. Had not this idea been modified, and the principle of a
railroad adopted, it is hardly too much to say that the extraordinary
development of the locomotive would not have followed.
Trevithick’s first engine appears to have burst. At all events, in the
year 1803 or 1804, he built, and began to run, a locomotive on a horse
tramway in South Wales. It appears that he had been employed to build a
forge-engine here, and thus the opportunity was presented for the trial
of a machine to haul along minerals. This, it is believed, was the
first railway locomotive, and its builder was Richard Trevithick.
The trial, however, was not very successful. Trevithick’s engine was
too heavy for the tramway on which it ran, and the proprietors were
not prepared to put down a stronger road. Furthermore, it once alarmed
the good folk, unused then to railway accidents, by actually running
off its rail, though only travelling at about four or five miles an
hour. It had to be ignominiously brought home by horses. That settled
the matter. It became a pumping engine, and as such answered very well.
In this locomotive, however, it should be noted Trevithick employed a
device which, a quarter of a century later, Stephenson made so valuable
that we might call it the very life-blood of the Locomotive. We mean
the device of turning the waste steam into the funnel (after it has
done its work by driving the piston), and thus forcing a furnace
draught and increasing the fire. Stephenson, however, sent the steam
through a small nozzled pipe which made of it a veritable steam-blast,
while Trevithick, apparently, simply discharged the steam into the
chimney.
Disgusted it would seem by the failure, the inventor turned his
attention to other things. Trevithick appears to have lingered on the
very brink of success, and then turned aside. Another effort and he
might have burst the barrier. But it was not to be; though if any one
man deserve the title, Inventor of the Locomotive, that man is the
Cornish genius Trevithick. Readers who may desire fuller information
of Trevithick and his inventions will find it in his “Life” by Francis
Trevithick, C.E., published in 1872.
It must be borne in mind that Stephenson found the imaginary hindrance
that smooth wheels would not grip smooth rails, cleared away for him
by Hedley’s experiment, whereas Trevithick had to contend against this
difficulty. He strove to conquer it by roughing the circumference of
his wheels by projecting bolts, so that they might grip in that way.
That is, his patent provided for it, if he did not actually carry out
the plan.
It is very significant that this imaginary fear should have hindered
the development of the locomotive. The idea seems to have prevailed
that, no matter how powerful the engine, it could not haul along very
heavy loads unless special provision were made for its “bite” or grip
of the rails. Another difficulty with which Trevithick had to contend
was one of cost. It is said that one of his experiments failed in
London for that reason. This was apparently the locomotive for roads,
as distinct from the locomotive for rails. A machine may be an academic
triumph, but the question of cost must be met if the machine is to
become a commercial and industrial success.
Mr. Blenkinsop of Leeds then took out his patent in 1811 for a
rack-work rail and cogged wheel; but before this Mr. Blackett of Wylam
had obtained a plan of Trevithick’s engine and had one constructed.
He had met Trevithick at London, and it was as early as 1804 that
he obtained the plan. The engines, therefore, of Mr. Blackett which
Stephenson saw, came, so to speak, in direct line from Trevithick,
except that Mr. Blackett’s second engine was a combination of
Blenkinsop’s and Trevithick’s.
Some progress was made, but when on that memorable day George
Stephenson, the engine-wright of Killingworth, said, “I think I could
build a better engine than that,” no very effective or economical
working locomotive was in existence.
Back therefore went George Stephenson to his home. He had seen what
others had done, and with his knowledge of machinery and his love for
engine work he would now try what he could do.
Would he succeed?