CHAT MOSS--CONSTRUCTION OF THE RAILWAY.
The appointment of principal engineer of the railway was taken into
consideration at the first meeting of the directors held at Liverpool
subsequent to the passing of the act of incorporation. The magnitude
of the proposed works, and the vast consequences involved in the
experiment, were deeply impressed on their minds, and they resolved to
secure the services of a resident engineer of proved experience and
ability. Their attention was naturally directed to George Stephenson;
at the same time, they desired to have the benefit of the Messrs.
Rennie's professional assistance in superintending the works. Mr.
George Rennie had an interview with the board on the subject, at which
he proposed to undertake the chief superintendence, making six visits
in each year, and stipulating that he should have the appointment
of the resident engineer. But the responsibility attaching to the
direction in the matter of the efficient carrying on of the works
would not admit of their being influenced by ordinary punctilios on
the occasion, and they accordingly declined Mr. Rennie's proposal, and
proceeded to appoint George Stephenson principal engineer at a salary
of £1000 per annum.
He at once removed his residence to Liverpool, and made arrangements to
commence the works. He began with the "impossible thing"--to do that
which some of the principal engineers of the day had declared that "no
man in his senses would undertake to do"--namely, to make the road
over Chat Moss! It was, indeed, a most formidable undertaking, and the
project of carrying a railway along, under, or over such a material as
that of which it consisted would certainly never have occurred to an
ordinary mind. Michael Drayton supposed the Moss to have had its origin
at the Deluge. Nothing more impassable could have been imagined than
that dreary waste; and Mr. Giles only spoke the popular feeling of the
day when he declared that no carriage could stand on it "short of the
bottom." In this bog, singular to say, Mr. Roscoe, the accomplished
historian of the Medicis, buried his fortune in the hopeless attempt to
cultivate a portion of it which he had bought.
Chat Moss is an immense peat-bog of about twelve square miles in
extent. Unlike the bogs or swamps of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, which
consist principally of soft mud or silt, this bog is a vast mass of
spongy vegetable pulp, the result of the growth and decay of ages.
Spagni, or bog-mosses, cover the entire area; one year's growth rising
over another, the older growths not entirely decaying, but remaining
partially preserved by the antiseptic properties peculiar to peat.
Hence the remarkable fact that, though a semifluid mass, the surface
of Chat Moss rises above the level of the surrounding country. Like a
turtle's back, it declines from the summit in every direction, having
from thirty to forty feet gradual slope to the solid land on all sides.
From the remains of trees, chiefly alder and birch, which have been dug
out of it, and which must have previously flourished on the surface of
the soil now deeply submerged, it is probable that the sand and clay
base on which the bog rests is saucer-shaped, and so retains the entire
mass in position. In rainy weather, such is its capacity for water that
it sensibly swells, and rises in those parts where the moss is the
deepest. This occurs through the capillary attraction of the fibres of
the submerged moss, which is from twenty to thirty feet in depth, while
the growing plants effectually check evaporation from the surface. This
peculiar character of the Moss has presented an insuperable difficulty
in the way of draining on any extensive system--such as by sinking
shafts in its substance, and pumping up the water by steam-power, as
has been proposed by some engineers. For, supposing a shaft of thirty
feet deep to be sunk, it has been calculated that this would only be
effectual for draining a circle of about one hundred yards, the water
running down an incline of about 5 to 1; indeed, it was found, in the
course of draining the bog, that a ditch three feet deep only served to
drain a space of less than five yards on either side, and two ditches
of this depth, ten feet apart, left a portion of the Moss between them
scarcely affected by the drains.
The three resident engineers selected by Mr. Stephenson to superintend
the construction of the line were Mr. Joseph Locke, Mr. Allcard, and
Mr. John Dixon. The last was appointed to that portion which included
the proposed road across the Moss, the other two being any thing but
desirous of exchanging posts with him. On Mr. Dixon's arrival, about
the month of July, 1826, Mr. Locke proceeded to show him over the
length he was to take charge of, and to instal him in office. When
they reached Chat Moss, Mr. Dixon found that the line had already been
staked out and the levels taken in detail by the aid of planks laid
upon the bog. The cutting of the drains along each side of the proposed
road had also been commenced, but the soft pulpy stuff had up to this
time flowed into the drains and filled them up as fast as they were
cut. Proceeding across the Moss on his first day's inspection, the new
resident, when about half way over, slipped off the plank on which he
walked, and sank to his knees in the bog. Struggling only sent him the
deeper, and he might have disappeared altogether but for the workmen,
who hastened to his assistance upon planks, and rescued him from his
perilous position. Much disheartened, he desired to return, and even
for the moment thought of giving up the job; but Mr. Locke assured
him that the worst part was now past; so the new resident plucked up
heart again, and both floundered on until they reached the farther
edge of the Moss, wet and plastered over with bog sludge. Mr. Dixon's
assistants endeavored to comfort him by the assurance that he might
in future avoid similar perils by walking upon "pattens," or boards
fastened to the soles of his feet, as they had done when taking the
levels, and as the workmen did when engaged in making drains in the
softest parts of the Moss. Still the resident engineer could not help
being puzzled by the problem of how to construct a road for a heavy
locomotive, with a train of passengers or goods, upon a bog which he
had found to be incapable of supporting his own individual weight!
Stephenson's idea was that such a road might be made to _float_ upon
the bog simply by means of a sufficient extension of the bearing
surface. As a ship, or a raft capable of sustaining heavy loads,
floated in water, so, in his opinion, might a light road be floated
upon a bog which was of considerably greater consistency than water.
Long before the railway was thought of, Mr. Roscoe had adopted the
remarkable expedient of fitting his plow-horses with flat wooden
soles or pattens, to enable them to walk upon the Moss land which he
had brought into cultivation. These pattens were fitted on by means
of a screw apparatus, which met in front of the foot and was easily
fastened. The mode by which these pattens served to sustain the horse
is capable of easy explanation, and it will be observed that the
_rationale_ alike explains the floating of a railway. The foot of an
ordinary farm-horse presents a base of about five inches diameter, but
if this base be enlarged to seven inches--the circles being to each
other as the squares of the diameters--it will be found that, by this
slight enlargement of the base, a circle of nearly double the area has
been secured, and consequently the pressure of the foot upon every unit
of ground on which the horse stands has been reduced one half. In fact,
this contrivance has an effect tantamount to setting the horse upon
eight feet instead of four.
Apply the same reasoning to the ponderous locomotive, and it will be
found that even such a machine may be made to stand upon a bog by means
of a similar extension of the bearing surface. Suppose the engine to
be twenty feet long and five feet wide, thus covering a surface of a
hundred square feet, and, provided the bearing has been extended by
means of cross sleepers supported upon a matting of heath and branches
of trees covered with a few inches of gravel, the pressure of an engine
of twenty tons will be only equal to about three pounds per inch over
the whole surface on which it stands. Such was George Stephenson's
idea in contriving his floating road--something like an elongated
raft--across the Moss; and we shall see that he steadily kept it in
view in carrying the work into execution.
The first thing done was to form a footpath of ling or heather along
the proposed road, on which a man might walk without risk of sinking.
A single line of temporary railway was then laid down, formed of
ordinary cross-bars about three feet long and an inch square, with
holes punched through them at the end and nailed down to temporary
sleepers. Along this way ran the wagons in which were conveyed the
materials requisite to form the permanent road. These wagons carried
about a ton each, and they were propelled by boys running behind them
along the narrow bar of iron. The boys became so expert that they would
run the four miles across at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour
without missing a step; if they had done so, they would have sunk in
many places up to their middle.[62] The slight extension of the bearing
surface was sufficient to enable the bog to bear this temporary line,
and the circumstance was a source of increased confidence and hope to
our engineer in proceeding with the formation of the permanent road
alongside.
The digging of drains had been proceeding for some time along each
side of the intended railway, but they filled up almost as soon as
dug, the sides flowing in and the bottom rising up, and it was only in
some of the drier parts of the bog that a depth of three or four feet
could be reached. The surface-ground between the drains, containing
the intertwined roots of heather and long grass, was left untouched,
and upon this were spread branches of trees and hedge-cuttings; in
the softest places rude gates or hurdles, some eight or nine feet
long by four feet wide, interwoven with heather, were laid in double
thicknesses, their ends overlapping each other; and upon this floating
bed was spread a thin layer of gravel, on which the sleepers, chairs,
and rails were laid in the usual manner. Such was the mode in which the
road was formed upon the Moss.
It was found, however, after the permanent road had been thus laid,
that there was a tendency to sinking at those parts where the bog was
the softest. In ordinary cases, where a bank subsides, the sleepers
are packed up with ballast or gravel, but in this case the ballast was
dug away and removed in order to lighten the road, and the sleepers
were packed instead with cakes of dry turf or bundles of heath. By
these expedients the subsided parts were again floated up to the level,
and an approach was made toward a satisfactory road. But the most
formidable difficulties were encountered at the centre and toward the
edges of the Moss, and it required no small degree of ingenuity and
perseverance on the part of the engineer successfully to overcome them.
The Moss, as has been already observed, was highest in the centre,
and it there presented a sort of hunchback with a rising and falling
gradient. At that point it was found necessary to cut deeper drains in
order to consolidate the ground between them on which the road was to
be formed. But, as at other parts of the Moss, the deeper the cutting
the more rapid was the flow of fluid bog into the drain, the bottom
rising up almost as fast as it was removed. To meet this emergency, a
quantity of empty tar-barrels was brought from Liverpool, and, as soon
as a few yards of drain were dug, the barrels were laid down end to
end, firmly fixed to each other by strong slabs laid over the joints,
and nailed; they were then covered over with clay, and thus formed an
underground sewer of wood instead of bricks. This expedient was found
to answer the purpose intended, and the road across the centre of the
Moss having thus been prepared, it was then laid with the permanent
materials.
The greatest difficulty was, however, experienced in forming an
embankment on the edge of the bog at the Manchester end. Moss, as dry
as it could be cut, was brought up in small wagons by men and boys, and
emptied so as to form an embankment; but the bank had scarcely been
raised three or four feet in height when the stuff broke through the
heathery surface of the bog and sunk overhead. More moss was brought up
and emptied in with no better result, and for many weeks the filling
was continued without any visible embankment having been made. It
was the duty of the resident engineer to proceed to Liverpool every
fortnight to obtain the wages for the workmen employed under him, and
on these occasions he was required to color up, on a section drawn to
a working scale suspended against the wall of the directors' room, the
amount of excavation, embankment, etc., executed from time to time. But
on many of these occasions Mr. Dixon had no progress whatever to show
for the money expended on the Chat Moss embankment. Sometimes, indeed,
the visible work done was _less_ than it had appeared a fortnight or a
month before!
The directors now became seriously alarmed, and feared that the evil
prognostications of the eminent engineers were about to be fulfilled.
The resident himself was greatly disheartened, and he was even called
upon to supply the directors with an estimate of the cost of filling up
the Moss with solid stuff from the bottom, as also the cost of piling
the roadway, and, in effect, constructing a four-mile viaduct of timber
across the Moss, from twenty to thirty feet high. But the expense
appalled the directors, and the question then arose whether the work
was to be proceeded with or _abandoned_!
Stephenson himself afterward described the alarming position of affairs
at a public dinner given at Birmingham on the 23d of December, 1837,
on the occasion of a piece of plate being presented to his son after
the completion of the London and Birmingham Railway. He related the
anecdote, he said, for the purpose of impressing upon the minds of
those who heard him the necessity of perseverance.
"After working for weeks and weeks," said he, "in filling in
materials to form the road, there did not yet appear to be the
least sign of our being able to raise the solid embankment one
single inch; in short, we went on filling in without the slightest
apparent effect. Even my assistants began to feel uneasy, and to
doubt of the success of the scheme. The directors, too, spoke of it
as a hopeless task; and at length they became seriously alarmed,
so much so, indeed, that a board meeting was held on Chat Moss to
decide whether I should proceed any farther. They had previously
taken the opinion of other engineers, who reported unfavorably.
There was no help for it, however, but to go on. An immense outlay
had been incurred, and great loss would have been occasioned had
the scheme been then abandoned, and the line taken by another
route. So the directors were _compelled_ to allow me to go on with
my plans, of the ultimate success of which I myself never for one
moment doubted."
During the progress of this part of the works, the Worsley and
Trafford men, who lived near the Moss, and plumed themselves upon
their practical knowledge of bog-work, declared the completion of the
road to be utterly impracticable. "If you knew as much about Chat Moss
as we do," they said, "you would never have entered on so rash an
undertaking; and depend upon it, all you have done and are doing will
prove abortive. You must give up altogether the idea of a floating
railway, and either fill the Moss up with hard material from the
bottom, or else deviate the line so as to avoid it altogether." Such
were the conclusions of science and experience.
In the midst of all these alarms and prophecies of failure, Stephenson
never lost heart, but held to his purpose. His motto was "Persevere!"
"You must go on filling in," he said; "there is no other help for it.
The stuff emptied in is doing its work out of sight, and if you will
but have patience, it will soon begin to show." And so the filling
in went on; several hundreds of men and boys were employed to skin
the Moss all round for many thousand yards, by means of sharp spades,
called by the turf-cutters "tommy-spades;" and the dried cakes of
turf were afterward used to form the embankment, until at length, as
the stuff sank and rested upon the bottom, the bank gradually rose
above the surface, and slowly advanced onward, declining in height and
consequently in weight, until it became joined to the floating road
already laid upon the Moss. In the course of forming the embankment,
the pressure of the bog turf tipped out of the wagons caused a copious
stream of bog-water to flow from the end of it, in color resembling
Barclay's double stout; and when completed, the bank looked like a long
ridge of tightly-pressed tobacco-leaf. The compression of the turf may
be understood from the fact that 670,000 cubic yards of raw moss formed
only 277,000 cubic yards of embankment at the completion of the work.
At the western, or Liverpool end of the Chat Moss, there was a like
embankment; but, as the ground there was solid, little difficulty was
experienced in forming it, beyond the loss of substance caused by the
oozing out of the water held by the moss-earth.
At another part of the Liverpool and Manchester line, Parr Moss was
crossed by an embankment about a mile and a half in extent. In the
immediate neighborhood was found a large excess of cutting, which it
would have been necessary to "put out in spoil-banks" (according to the
technical phrase) but for the convenience of Parr Moss, into which the
surplus clay, stone, and shale were tipped, wagon after wagon, until a
solid but congealed embankment, from fifteen to twenty feet high, was
formed, although to the eye it appears to be laid upon the level of the
adjoining surface, as at Chat Moss.
The road across Chat Moss was finished by the 1st of January, 1830,
when the first experimental train of passengers passed over it, drawn
by the "Rocket;" and it turned out that, instead of being the most
expensive part of the line, it was about the cheapest. The total cost
of forming the line over the Moss was £28,000, whereas Mr. Giles's
estimate was £270,000! It also proved to be one of the best portions
of the railway. Being a floating road, it was as smooth and easy to
run upon as Dr. Arnott's water-bed is soft and easy to lie upon--the
pressure being equal at all points. There was, and still is, a sort of
springiness in the road over the Moss, such as is felt when passing
along a suspended bridge; and those who looked along the Moss as a
train passed over it said they could observe a waviness, such as
precedes and follows a skater upon ice.
During the progress of the works the most ridiculous rumors were set
afloat. The drivers of the stage-coaches, who feared for their calling,
brought the alarming intelligence into Manchester from time to time
that "Chat Moss was blown up!" "Hundreds of men and horses had sunk
in the bog; and the works were completely abandoned!" The engineer
himself was declared to have been swallowed up in the Serbonian bog;
and "railways were at an end forever!"
In the construction of the railway, George Stephenson's capacity for
organizing and directing the labors of a large number of workmen of all
kinds eminently displayed itself. A vast quantity of ballast-wagons
had to be constructed for the purposes of the work, and implements and
materials had to be collected, before the mass of labor to be employed
could be efficiently set in motion at the various points of the line.
There were not at that time, as there are now, large contractors,
possessed of railway plant, capable of executing earthworks on a large
scale. Our engineer had, therefore, not only to contrive the plant,
but to organize the labor, and direct it in person. The very laborers
themselves had to be trained to their work by him; and it was on the
Liverpool and Manchester line that Mr. Stephenson organized the staff
of that formidable band of railway navvies, whose handiworks will be
the wonder and admiration of succeeding generations. Looking at their
gigantic traces, the men of some future age may be found to declare, of
the engineer and of his workmen, that "there were giants in those days."
Although the works of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway are of
a much less formidable character than those of many lines that have
since been constructed, they were then regarded as of a stupendous
kind. Indeed, few works of such magnitude had before been executed in
England. It had been the engineer's original intention to carry the
railway from the north end of Liverpool round the red sandstone ridge
on which the upper part of the town is built, and also round the higher
rise of the coal formation at Rainhill, by following the natural levels
to the north of Knowsley. But the opposition of the land-owners having
forced the line more to the south, it was rendered necessary to cut
through the hills, and go over the high grounds instead of round them.
The first consequence of this alteration in the plans was the necessity
for constructing a tunnel under the town of Liverpool a mile and a
half in length, from the docks at Wapping to the top of Edgehill; the
second was the necessity for forming a long and deep cutting through
the red sandstone rock at Olive Mount; and the third and worst of all
was the necessity for ascending and descending the Whiston and Sutton
hills by means of inclined planes of 1 in 96. The line was also, by
the same forced deviation, prevented passing through the Lancashire
coal-field, and the engineer was compelled to carry the works across
the Sankey valley at a point where the waters of the brook had dug out
an excessively deep channel through the marl-beds of the district.
The principal difficulty was experienced in pushing on the works
connected with the formation of the tunnel under Liverpool, 2200
yards in length. The blasting and hewing of the rock were vigorously
carried on night and day; and the engineer's practical experience in
the collieries here proved of great use to him. Many obstacles had to
be encountered and overcome in the formation of the tunnel, the rock
varying in hardness and texture at different parts. In some places
the miners were deluged by water, which surged from the soft blue
shale found at the lowest level of the tunnel. In other places beds
of wet sand were cut through, and there careful propping and pinning
were necessary to prevent the roof from tumbling in until the masonry
to support it could be erected. On one occasion, while Stephenson
was absent from Liverpool, a mass of loose moss-earth and sand fell
from the roof, which had been insufficiently propped. The miners
withdrew from the work; and on the engineer's return he found them in
a refractory state, refusing to re-enter the tunnel. He induced them,
however, by his example, to return to their labors; and when the roof
had been secured, the work went on again as before. When there was
danger, he was always ready to share it with the men; and, gathering
confidence from his fearlessness, they proceeded vigorously with the
undertaking, boring and mining their way toward the light.
[Illustration: OLIVE MOUNT CUTTING. [By Percival Skelton.]]
The Olive Mount cutting was the first extensive stone cutting executed
on any railway, and to this day it is one of the most formidable. It is
about two miles long, and in some parts more than a hundred feet deep.
It is a narrow ravine or defile cut out of the solid rock, and not less
than four hundred and eighty thousand cubic yards of stone were removed
from it. Mr. Vignolles, afterward describing it, said it looked as if
it had been dug out by giants.
[Illustration: SANKEY VIADUCT. [By Percival Skelton.]]
The crossing of so many roads and streams involved the necessity
for constructing an unusual number of bridges. There were not fewer
than sixty-three, under or over the railway, on the thirty miles
between Liverpool and Manchester. Up to this time bridges had been
applied generally to high roads, where inclined approaches were of
comparatively small importance, and in determining the rise of his
arch the engineer selected any headway he thought proper. Every
consideration was indeed made subsidiary to constructing the bridge
itself, and the completion of one large structure of this sort was
regarded as an epoch in engineering history. Yet here, in the course
of a few years, no fewer than sixty-three bridges were constructed
on one line of railway! Mr. Stephenson early found that the ordinary
arch was inapplicable in certain cases, where the headway was limited,
and yet the level of the railway must be preserved. In such cases he
employed simple cast-iron beams, by which he safely bridged gaps of
moderate width, economizing headway, and introducing the use of a new
material of the greatest possible value to the engineer. The bridges
of masonry upon the line were of many kinds; several of them were skew
bridges, while others, such as those at Newton and over the Irwell
at Manchester, were straight and of considerable dimensions. But the
principal piece of masonry on the line was the Sankey viaduct.
This fine work is principally of brick, with stone facings. It consists
of nine arches of fifty feet span each. The massive piers are supported
on two hundred piles driven deep into the soil; and they rise to a
great height--the coping of the parapet being seventy feet above the
level of the valley, in which flow the Sankey brook and Canal. Its
total cost was about £45,000.
By the end of 1828 the directors found they had expended £460,000 on
the works, and that they were still far from completion. They looked
at the loss of interest on this large investment, and began to grumble
at the delay. They desired to see their capital becoming productive;
and in the spring of 1829 they urged the engineer, to push on the works
with increased vigor. Mr. Cropper, one of the directors, who took an
active interest in their progress, said to Stephenson one day, "Now,
George, thou must get on with the railway, and have it finished without
farther delay: thou must really have it ready for opening by the first
day of January next." "Consider the heavy character of the works,
sir, and how much we have been delayed by the want of money, not to
speak of the wetness of the weather: it is impossible." "Impossible!"
rejoined Cropper; "I wish I could get Napoleon to thee--he would tell
thee there is no such word as 'impossible' in the vocabulary." "Tush!"
exclaimed Stephenson, with warmth, "don't speak to me about Napoleon!
Give me men, money, and materials, and I will do what Napoleon couldn't
do--drive a railroad from Liverpool to Manchester over Chat Moss!"
And truly the formation of a high road over that bottomless bog was
apparently a more difficult task than the making even of Napoleon's
far-famed road across the Simplon.
The directors had more than once been embarrassed by want of funds to
meet the heavy expenditure. The country had scarcely yet recovered
from the general panic and crash of 1825, and it was with difficulty
that the calls could be raised from the shareholders. A loan of
£100,000 was obtained from the Exchequer Loan Commissioners in 1826;
and in 1829 an act was passed enabling the company to raise farther
capital, to provide working plant for the railway. Two acts were also
obtained during the progress of the undertaking, enabling deviations
and alterations to be made; one to improve the curves and shorten the
line near Rainhill, and the other to carry the line across the Irwell
into the town of Manchester. Thanks to the energy of the engineer,
the industry of his laborers, and the improved supply of money by the
directors, the railway made rapid progress in the course of the year
1829. Double sets of laborers were employed on Chat Moss and at other
places in carrying on the works by night and day, the night shifts
working by torch and fire light; and at length, the work advancing at
all points, the directors saw their way to the satisfactory completion
of the undertaking.
It may well be supposed that Stephenson's time was fully occupied
in superintending the extensive and for the most part novel works
connected with the railway, and that even his extraordinary powers of
labor and endurance were taxed to the utmost during the four years that
they were in progress. Almost every detail in the plans was directed
and arranged by himself. Every bridge, from the simplest to the most
complicated, including the then novel structure of the "skew bridge,"
iron girders, siphons, fixed engines, and the machinery for working
the tunnel at the Liverpool end, had all to be thought out by his
own head, and reduced to definite plans under his own eyes. Besides
all this, he had to design the working plant in anticipation of the
opening of the railway. He must be prepared with wagons, trucks, and
carriages, himself superintending their manufacture. The permanent
road, turn-tables, switches, and crossings--in short, the entire
structure and machinery of the line, from the turning of the first
sod to the running of the first train of carriages on the railway,
went on under his immediate supervision. And it was in the midst of
this vast accumulation of work and responsibility that the battle of
the locomotive engine had to be fought--a battle not merely against
material difficulties, but against the still more trying obstructions
of deeply-rooted mistrust and prejudice on the part of a considerable
minority of the directors.
He had no staff of experienced assistants--not even a staff of
draughtsmen in his office--but only a few pupils learning their
business, and he was frequently without even their help. The time
of his engineering inspectors was fully occupied in the actual
superintendence of the works at different parts of the line, and he
took care to direct all their important operations in person. The
principal draughtsman was Mr. Thomas Gooch, a pupil he had brought
with him from Newcastle. "I may say," writes Mr. Gooch, "that nearly
the whole of the working and other drawings, as well as the various
land-plans for the railway, were drawn by my own hand. They were
done at the company's office in Clayton Square during the day, from
instructions supplied in the evenings by Mr. Stephenson, either by
word of mouth, or by little rough hand sketches on letter-paper. The
evenings were also generally devoted to my duties as secretary, in
writing (mostly from his own dictation) his letters and reports, or
in making calculations and estimates. The mornings before breakfast
were not unfrequently spent by me in visiting and lending a helping
hand in the tunnel and other works near Liverpool--the untiring zeal
and perseverance of George Stephenson never for an instant flagging,
and inspiring with a like enthusiasm all who were engaged under him in
carrying forward the works."[63]
[Illustration: STEPHENSON'S BAITING-PLACE AT SANKEY.]
The usual routine of his life at this time--if routine it could be
called--was to rise early, by sunrise in summer and before it in
winter, and "break the back of the day's work" by midday. While the
tunnel under Liverpool was in progress, one of his first duties in
the morning before breakfast was to go over the various shafts,
clothed in a suitable dress, and inspect the progress of the work at
different points; on other days he would visit the extensive workshops
at Edgehill, where most of the "plant" for the line was manufactured.
Then, returning to his house in Upper Parliament Street, Windsor, after
a hurried breakfast, he would ride along the works to inspect their
progress, and push them on with greater energy where needful. On other
days he would prepare for the much less congenial engagement of meeting
the board, which was often a cause of great anxiety and pain to him;
for it was difficult to satisfy men of all tempers, some of which were
not of the most generous kind. On such occasions he might be seen with
his right-hand thumb thrust through the topmost button-hole of his
coat-breast, vehemently hitching his right shoulder, as was his habit
when laboring under any considerable excitement. Occasionally he would
take an early ride before breakfast, to inspect the progress of the
Sankey viaduct. He had a favorite horse, brought by him from Newcastle,
called "Bobby"--so tractable that, with his rider on his back, he would
walk up to a locomotive with the steam blowing off, and put his nose
against it without shying. "Bobby," saddled and bridled, was brought
to Stephenson's door betimes in the morning, and, mounting him, he
would ride the fifteen miles to Sankey, putting up at a little public
house which then stood upon the banks of the canal. There he had his
breakfast of "crowdie," which he made with his own hands. It consisted
of oatmeal stirred into a basin of hot water--a sort of porridge--which
was supped with cold sweet milk. After this frugal breakfast he would
go upon the works, and remain there, riding from point to point for the
greater part of the day. If he returned home before midday it would be
to examine the pay-sheets in the different departments sent in by the
assistant engineers, or by the foremen of the workshops; all this he
did himself with the greatest care, requiring a full explanation of
every item.
After a late dinner, which occupied very short time and was always of
a plain and frugal description,[64] he would proceed to dispose of his
correspondence, or prepare sketches of drawings, and give instructions
as to their completion. He would occasionally refresh himself for this
evening work by a short doze, which, however, he would never admit had
exceeded the limits of "winking," to use his own term. Mr. Frederick
Swanwick, who officiated as his secretary after the appointment of
Mr. Gooch as resident engineer to the Bolton and Leigh Railway, has
informed us that he then remarked--what in after years he could better
appreciate--the clear, terse, and vigorous style of Stephenson's
dictation; there was nothing superfluous in it, but it was close,
direct, and to the point--in short, thoroughly business-like. And if,
in passing through the pen of the amanuensis, his meaning happened in
any way to be distorted or modified, it did not fail to escape his
detection, though he was always tolerant of any liberties taken with
his own form of expression, so long as the words written down conveyed
his real meaning. His strong natural acumen showed itself even in
such matters as grammar and composition--a department of knowledge in
which, it might be supposed, he could scarcely have had either time
or opportunity to acquire much information. But here, as in all other
things, his shrewd common sense came to his help, and his simple,
vigorous English might almost be cited as a model of composition.
His letters and reports written, and his sketches of drawings made
and explained, the remainder of the evening was usually devoted to
conversation with his wife and those of his pupils who lived under
his roof, and constituted, as it were, part of the family. He then
delighted to test the knowledge of his young companions, and to
question them upon the principles of mechanics. If they were not quite
"up to the mark" on any point, there was no escaping detection by
evasive or specious explanations on their part. These always met with
the verdict of, "Ah! you know naught about it now; but think it over
again, and tell me the answer when you understand it." If there was
even partial success in the reply, it would at once be acknowledged,
and a full explanation was given, to which the master would add
illustrative examples for the purpose of impressing the principle more
deeply upon the pupil's mind.
It was not so much his object and purpose to "cram" the minds of the
young men committed to his charge with the _results_ of knowledge as to
stimulate them to educate themselves--to induce them to develop their
mental and moral powers by the exercise of their own free energies, and
thus acquire that habit of self-thinking and self-reliance which is the
spring of all true manly action. In a word, he sought to bring out and
invigorate the _character_ of his pupils. He felt that he himself had
been made stronger and better through his encounters with difficulty,
and he would not have the road of knowledge made too smooth and easy
for them. "Learn for yourselves--think for yourselves," he would say:
"make yourselves masters of principles--persevere--be industrious--and
there is then no fear of you." And not the least emphatic proof of
the soundness of this system of education, as conducted by George
Stephenson, was afforded by the after history of the pupils themselves.
There was not one of those trained under his eye who did not rise to
eminent usefulness and distinction as an engineer. He sent them forth
into the world braced with the spirit of self-help--inspired by his own
noble example; and they repeated in their after career the lessons of
earnest effort and persistent industry which his daily life had taught
them.
Mr. Stephenson's evenings at home were not, however, exclusively
devoted either to business or to the graver exercises above referred
to. He would often indulge in cheerful conversation and anecdote,
falling back from time to time upon the struggles and difficulties of
his early life. The not unfrequent winding up of his story, addressed
to those about him, was, "Ah! ye young fellows don't know what _wark_
is in these days!" Mr. Swanwick delights recalling to mind how seldom,
if ever, a cross or captious word, or an angry look, marred the
enjoyment of those evenings. The presence of Mrs. Stephenson gave them
an additional charm: amiable, kind-hearted, and intelligent, she shared
quietly in the pleasure of the party; and the atmosphere of comfort
which always pervaded her home contributed in no small degree to render
it a centre of cheerful, hopeful intercourse, and of earnest, honest
industry.
[Illustration: CHAT MOSS--WORKS IN PROGRESS.]
When Stephenson retired for the night, it was not always that he
permitted himself to sink into slumber. Like Brindley, he worked out
many a difficult problem in bed; and for hours he would turn over in
his mind and study how to overcome some obstacle, or to mature some
project, on which his thoughts were bent. Some remark inadvertently
dropped by him at the breakfast-table in the morning served to show
that he had been stealing some hours from the night in reflection and
study. Yet he would rise at his accustomed early hour, and there was no
abatement of his usual energy in carrying on the business of the day.
FOOTNOTES:
[62] When the Liverpool directors went to inspect the works in progress
on the Moss, they were run along the temporary rails in the little
three-feet gauge wagons used for forming the road. They were being thus
impelled one day at considerable speed when the wagon suddenly ran off
the road, and Mr. Moss, one of the directors, was thrown out in a soft
place, from which, however, he was speedily extricated, not without
leaving a deep mark. George used afterward laughingly to refer to the
circumstance as "the meeting of the Mosses."
[63] Mr. Gooch's letter to the author, December 13th, 1861. Referring
to the preparation of the plans and drawings, Mr. Gooch adds, "When
we consider the extensive sets of drawings which most engineers have
since found it right to adopt in carrying out similar works, it is not
the least surprising feature in George Stephenson's early professional
career that he should have been able to confine himself to so limited
a number as that which could be supplied by the hands of one person in
carrying out the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway;
and this may still be said, after full allowance is made for the
alteration of system involved by the adoption of the large contract
system."
[64] While at Liverpool Stephenson had very little time for "company;"
but on one particular occasion he invited his friend Mr. Sandars to
dinner, and, as that gentleman was a connoisseur in port wine, his
host determined to give him a special treat of that drink. Stephenson
accordingly went to the small merchant with whom he usually dealt, and
ordered "half a dozen of his very best port wine," which was promised
of first-rate quality. After dinner the wine was produced; and when
Mr. Sandars had sipped a glass, George, after waiting a little for the
expected eulogium, at length asked, "Well, Sandars, how d'ye like the
port?" "Poor stuff!" said the guest, "poor stuff!" George was very much
shocked, and with difficulty recovered his good humor. But he lived to
be able to treat Mr. Sandars to a better article at Tapton House, when
he used to laugh over his first futile attempt at Liverpool to gain a
reputation for his port.