Yet, like every other invention, this of Mr. Bessemer had long been
dreamt of, if not really made. We are informed in Warner's Tour
through the Northern. Counties of England, published at Bath in 1801,
that a Mr. Reed of Whitehaven had succeeded at that early period in
making steel direct from the ore; and Mr. Mushet clearly alludes to the
process in his "Papers on Iron and Steel." Nevertheless, Mr. Bessemer
is entitled to the merit of working out the idea, and bringing the
process to perfection, by his great skill and indomitable perseverance.
In the Heath process, carburet of manganese is employed to aid the
conversion of iron into steel, while it also confers on the metal the
property of welding and working more soundly under the hammer--a fact
discovered by Mr. Heath while residing in India. Mr. Mushet's process
is of a similar character. Another inventor, Major Uchatius, an
Austrian engineer, granulates crude iron while in a molten state by
pouring it into water, and then subjecting it to the process of
conversion. Some of the manufacturers still affect secrecy in their
operations; but as one of the Sanderson firm--famous for the excellence
of their steel--remarked to a visitor when showing him over their
works, "the great secret is to have the courage to be honest--a spirit
to purchase the best material, and the means and disposition to do
justice to it in the manufacture."
It remains to be added, that much of the success of the Sheffield
manufactures is attributable to the practical skill of the workmen, who
have profited by the accumulated experience treasured up by their class
through many generations. The results of the innumerable experiments
conducted before their eyes have issued in a most valuable though
unwritten code of practice, the details of which are known only to
themselves. They are also a most laborious class; and Le Play says of
them, when alluding to the fact of a single workman superintending the
operations of three steel-casting furnaces--"I have found nowhere in
Europe, except in England, workmen able for an entire day, without any
interval of rest, to undergo such toilsome and exhausting labour as
that performed by these Sheffield workmen."
[1] AGRICOLA, De Re Metallica. Basle, 1621.
[2] The Rev. JOSEPH HUNTER, History of Hallamshire.
[3] MUSHET, Papers On Iron and Steel.
[4] M. Le Play's two elaborate and admirable reports on the manufacture
of steel, published in the Annales des Mines, vols. iii. and ix., 4th
series, are unique of their kind, and have as yet no counterpart in
English literature. They are respectively entitled 'Memoire sur la
Fabrication de l'Acier en Yorkshire,' and 'Memoire sur le Fabrication
et le Commerce des Fers a Acier dans le Nord de l'Europe.'
[5] There are several clocks still in existence in the neighbourhood of
Doncaster made by Benjamin Huntsman; and there is one in the possession
of his grandson, with a pendulum made of cast-steel. The manufacture
of a pendulum of such a material at that early date is certainly
curious; its still perfect spring and elasticity showing the scrupulous
care with which it had been made.
[6] Annales des Mines, vols. iii. and ix., 4th Series.
[7] The Useful Metals and their Alloys (p. 348), an excellent little
work, in which the process of cast-steel making will be found fully
described.
[8] We are informed that a mirror is still preserved at Attercliffe,
made by Huntsman in the days of his early experiments.
[9] Annales des Mines, vol. ix., 4th Series, 266.
CHAPTER VII.
THE INVENTIONS OF HENRY CORT.
"I have always found it in mine own experience an easier matter to
devise manie and profitable inventions, than to dispose of one of them
to the good of the author himself."--Sir Hugh Platt, 1589.
Henry Cort was born in 1740 at Lancaster, where his father carried on
the trade of a builder and brickmaker. Nothing is known as to Henry's
early history; but he seems to have raised himself by his own efforts
to a respectable position. In 1765 we find him established in Surrey
Street, Strand, carrying on the business of a navy agent, in which he
is said to have realized considerable profits. It was while conducting
this business that he became aware of the inferiority of British iron
compared with that obtained from foreign countries. The English
wrought iron was considered so bad that it was prohibited from all
government supplies, while the cast iron was considered of too brittle
a nature to be suited for general use.[1] Indeed the Russian
government became so persuaded that the English nation could not carry
on their manufactures without Russian iron, that in 1770 they ordered
the price to be raised from 70 and 80 copecs per pood to 200 and 220
copecs per pood.[2]
Such being the case, Cort's attention became directed to the subject in
connection with the supply of iron to the Navy, and he entered on a
series of experiments with the object of improving the manufacture of
English iron. What the particular experiments were, and by what steps
he arrived at results of so much importance to the British iron trade,
no one can now tell. All that is known is, that about the year 1775 he
relinquished his business as a navy agent, and took a lease of certain
premises at Fontley, near Fareham, at the north-western corner of
Portsmouth Harbour, where he erected a forge and an iron mill. He was
afterwards joined in partnership by Samuel Jellicoe (son of Adam
Jellicoe, then Deputy-Paymaster of Seamen's Wages), which turned out,
as will shortly appear, a most unfortunate connection for Cort.
As in the case of other inventions, Cort took up the manufacture of
iron at the point to which his predecessors had brought it, carrying it
still further, and improving upon their processes. We may here briefly
recite the steps by which the manufacture of bar-iron by means of
pit-coal had up to this time been advanced. In 1747, Mr. Ford
succeeded at Coalbrookdale in smelting iron ore with pit-coal, after
which it was refined in the usual way by means of coke and charcoal.
In 1762, Dr. Roebuck (hereafter to be referred to) took out a patent
for melting the cast or pig iron in a hearth heated with pit-coal by
the blast of bellows, and then working the iron until it was reduced to
nature, or metallized, as it was termed; after which it was exposed to
the action of a hollow pit-coal fire urged by a blast, until it was
reduced to a loop and drawn out into bar-iron under a common
forge-hammer. Then the brothers Cranege, in 1766, adopted the
reverberatory or air furnace, in which they placed the pig or cast
iron, and without blast or the addition of anything more than common
raw pit-coal, converted the same into good malleable iron, which being
taken red hot from the reverberatory furnace to the forge hammer, was
drawn into bars according to the will of the workman. Peter Onions of
Merthyr Tydvil, in 1783, carried the manufacture a stage further, as
described by him in his patent of that year. Having charged his
furnace ("bound with iron work and well annealed") with pig or fused
cast iron from the smelting furnace, it was closed up and the doors
were luted with sand. The fire was urged by a blast admitted
underneath, apparently for the purpose of keeping up the combustion of
the fuel on the grate. Thus Onions' furnace was of the nature of a
puddling furnace, the fire of which was urged by a blast. The fire was
to be kept up until the metal became less fluid, and "thickened into a
kind of froth, which the workman, by opening the door, must turn and
stir with a bar or other iron instrument, and then close the aperture
again, applying the blast and fire until there was a ferment in the
metal." The patent further describes that "as the workman stirs the
metal," the scoriae will separate, "and the particles of iron will
adhere, which particles the workman must collect or gather into a mass
or lump." This mass or lump was then to be raised to a white heat, and
forged into malleable iron at the forge-hammer.
Such was the stage of advance reached in the manufacture of bar-iron,
when Henry Cort published his patents in 1783 and 1784. In dispensing
with a blast, he had been anticipated by the Craneges, and in the
process of puddling by Onions; but he introduced so many improvements
of an original character, with which he combined the inventions of his
predecessors, as to establish quite a new era in the history of the
iron manufacture, and, in the course of a few years, to raise it to the
highest state of prosperity. As early as 1786, Lord Sheffield
recognised the great national importance of Cort's improvements in the
following words:--"If Mr. Cort's very ingenious and meritorious
improvements in the art of making and working iron, the steam-engine of
Boulton and Watt, and Lord Dundonald's discovery of making coke at half
the present price, should all succeed, it is not asserting too much to
say that the result will be more advantageous to Great Britain than the
possession of the thirteen colonies (of America); for it will give the
complete command of the iron trade to this country, with its vast
advantages to navigation." It is scarcely necessary here to point out
how completely the anticipations of Lord Sheffield have been fulfilled,
sanguine though they might appear to be when uttered some seventy-six
years ago.[3]
We will endeavour as briefly as possible to point out the important
character of Mr. Cort's improvements, as embodied in his two patents of
1783 and 1784. In the first he states that, after "great study,
labour, and expense, in trying a variety of experiments, and making
many discoveries, he had invented and brought to perfection a peculiar
method and process of preparing, welding, and working various sorts of
iron, and of reducing the same into uses by machinery: a furnace, and
other apparatus, adapted and applied to the said process." He first
describes his method of making iron for "large uses," such as shanks,
arms, rings, and palms of anchors, by the method of piling and
faggoting, since become generally practised, by laying bars of iron of
suitable lengths, forged on purpose, and tapering so as to be thinner
at one end than the other, laid over one another in the manner of
bricks in buildings, so that the ends should everywhere overlay each
other. The faggots so prepared, to the amount of half a ton more or
less, were then to be put into a common air or balling furnace, and
brought to a welding heat, which was accomplished by his method in a
much shorter time than in any hollow fire; and when the heat was
perfect, the faggots were then brought under a forge-hammer of great
size and weight, and welded into a solid mass. Mr. Cort alleges in the
specification that iron for "larger uses" thus finished, is in all
respect's possessed of the highest degree of perfection; and that the
fire in the balling furnace is better suited, from its regularity and
penetrating quality, to give the iron a perfect welding heat throughout
its whole mass, without fusing in any part, than any fire blown by a
blast. Another process employed by Mr. Cort for the purpose of
cleansing the iron and producing a metal of purer grain, was that of
working the faggots by passing them through rollers. "By this simple
process," said he, "all the earthy particles are pressed out and the
iron becomes at once free from dross, and what is usually called
cinder, and is compressed into a fibrous and tough state." The
objection has indeed been taken to the process of passing the iron
through rollers, that the cinder is not so effectually got rid of as by
passing it under a tilt hammer, and that much of it is squeezed into
the bar and remains there, interrupting its fibre and impairing its
strength.
It does not appear that there was any novelty in the use of rollers by
Cort; for in his first specification he speaks of them as already well
known.[4] His great merit consisted in apprehending the value of
certain processes, as tested by his own and others' experience, and
combining and applying them in a more effective practical form than had
ever been done before. This power of apprehending the best methods,
and embodying the details in one complete whole, marks the practical,
clear-sighted man, and in certain cases amounts almost to a genius.
The merit of combining the inventions of others in such forms as that
they shall work to advantage, is as great in its way as that of the man
who strikes out the inventions themselves, but who, for want of tact
and experience, cannot carry them into practical effect.
It was the same with Cort's second patent, in which he described his
method of manufacturing bar-iron from the ore or from cast-iron. All
the several processes therein described had been practised before his
time; his merit chiefly consisting in the skilful manner in which he
combined and applied them. Thus, like the Craneges, he employed the
reverberatory or air furnace, without blast, and, like Onions, he
worked the fused metal with iron bars until it was brought into lumps,
when it was removed and forged into malleable iron. Cort, however,
carried the process further, and made it more effectual in all
respects. His method may be thus briefly described: the bottom of the
reverberatory furnace was hollow, so as to contain the fluid metal,
introduced into it by ladles; the heat being kept up by pit-coal or
other fuel. When the furnace was charged, the doors were closed until
the metal was sufficiently fused, when the workman opened an aperture
and worked or stirred about the metal with iron bars, when an
ebullition took place, during the continuance of which a bluish flame
was emitted, the carbon of the cast-iron was burned off, the metal
separated from the slag, and the iron, becoming reduced to nature, was
then collected into lumps or loops of sizes suited to their intended
uses, when they were drawn out of the doors of the furnace. They were
then stamped into plates, and piled or worked in an air furnace, heated
to a white or welding heat, shingled under a forge hammer, and passed
through the grooved rollers after the method described in the first
patent.
The processes described by Cort in his two patents have been followed
by iron manufacturers, with various modifications, the results of
enlarged experience, down to the present time. After the lapse of
seventy-eight years, the language employed by Cort continues on the
whole a faithful description of the processes still practised: the
same methods of manufacturing bar from cast-iron, and of puddling,
piling, welding, and working the bar-iron through grooved rollers--all
are nearly identical with the methods of manufacture perfected by Henry
Cort in 1784. It may be mentioned that the development of the powers
of the steam-engine by Watt had an extraordinary effect upon the
production of iron. It created a largely increased demand for the
article for the purposes of the shafting and machinery which it was
employed to drive; while at the same time it cleared pits of water
which before were unworkable, and by being extensively applied to the
blowing of iron-furnaces and the working of the rolling-mills, it thus
gave a still further impetus to the manufacture of the metal. It would
be beside our purpose to enter into any statistical detail on the
subject; but it will be sufficient to state that the production of
iron, which in the early part of last century amounted to little more
than 12,000 tons, about the middle of the century to about 18,000 tons,
and at the time of Cort's inventions to about 90,000 tons, was found,
in 1820, to have increased to 400,000 tons; and now the total quantity
produced is upwards of four millions of tons of pig-iron every year, or
more than the entire production of all other European countries. There
is little reason to doubt that this extraordinary development of the
iron manufacture has been in a great measure due to the inventions of
Henry Cort. It is said that at the present time there are not fewer
than 8200 of Cort's furnaces in operation in Great Britain alone.[5]
Practical men have regarded Cort's improvement of the process of
rolling the iron as the most valuable of his inventions. A competent
authority has spoken of Cort's grooved rollers as of "high
philosophical interest, being scarcely less than the discovery of a new
mechanical Power, in reversing the action of the wedge, by the
application of force to four surfaces, so as to elongate a mass,
instead of applying force to a mass to divide the four surfaces." One
of the best authorities in the iron trade of last century, Mr.
Alexander Raby of Llanelly, like many others, was at first entirely
sceptical as to the value of Cort's invention; but he had no sooner
witnessed the process than with manly candour he avowed his entire
conversion to his views.
We now return to the history of the chief author of this great branch
of national industry. As might naturally be expected, the principal
ironmasters, when they heard of Cort's success, and the rapidity and
economy with which he manufactured and forged bar-iron, visited his
foundry for the purpose of examining his process, and, if found
expedient, of employing it at their own works. Among the first to try
it were Richard Crawshay of Cyfartha, Samuel Homfray of Penydarran
(both in South Wales), and William Reynolds of Coalbrookdale. Richard
Crawshay was then (in 1787) forging only ten tons of bar-iron weekly
under the hammer; and when he saw the superior processes invented by
Cort he readily entered into a contract with him to work under his
patents at ten shillings a ton royalty, In 1812 a letter from Mr.
Crawshay to the Secretary of Lord Sheffield was read to the House of
Commons, descriptive of his method of working iron, in which he said,
"I took it from a Mr. Cort, who had a little mill at Fontley in
Hampshire: I have thus acquainted you with my method, by which I am
now making more than ten thousand tons of bar-iron per annum." Samuel
Homfray was equally prompt in adopting the new process. He not only
obtained from Cort plans of the puddling-furnaces and patterns of the
rolls, but borrowed Cort's workmen to instruct his own in the necessary
operations; and he soon found the method so superior to that invented
by Onions that he entirely confined himself to manufacturing after
Cort's patent. We also find Mr. Reynolds inviting Cort to conduct a
trial of his process at Ketley, though it does not appear that it was
adopted by the firm at that time.[6]
The quality of the iron manufactured by the new process was found
satisfactory; and the Admiralty having, by the persons appointed by
them to test it in 1787, pronounced it to be superior to the best
Oregrounds iron, the use of the latter was thenceforward discontinued,
and Cort's iron only was directed to be used for the anchors and other
ironwork in the ships of the Royal Navy. The merits of the invention
seem to have been generally conceded, and numerous contracts for
licences were entered into with Cort and his partner by the
manufacturers of bar-iron throughout the country.[7] Cort himself made
arrangements for carrying on the manufacture on a large scale, and with
that object entered upon the possession of a wharf at Gosport,
belonging to Adam Jellicoe, his partner's father, where he succeeded in
obtaining considerable Government orders for iron made after his
patents. To all ordinary eyes the inventor now appeared to be on the
high road to fortune; but there was a fatal canker at the root of this
seeming prosperity, and in a few years the fabric which he had so
laboriously raised crumbled into ruins. On the death of Adam Jellicoe,
the father of Cort's partner, in August, 1789,[8] defalcations were
discovered in his public accounts to the extent of 39,676L, and his
books and papers were immediately taken possession of by the
Government. On examination it was found that the debts due to Jellicoe
amounted to 89,657L, included in which was a sum of not less than
54,853L. owing to him by the Cort partnership. In the public
investigation which afterwards took place, it appeared that the capital
possessed by Cort being insufficient to enable him to pursue his
experiments, which were of a very expensive character, Adam Jellicoe
had advanced money from time to time for the purpose, securing himself
by a deed of agreement entitling him to one-half the stock and profits
of all his contracts; and in further consideration of the capital
advanced by Jellicoe beyond his equal share, Cort subsequently assigned
to him all his patent rights as collateral security. As Jellicoe had
the reputation of being a rich man, Cort had not the slightest
suspicion of the source from which he obtained the advances made by him
to the firm, nor has any connivance whatever on the part of Cort been
suggested. At the same time it must be admitted that the connexion was
not free from suspicion, and, to say the least, it was a singularly
unfortunate one. It was found that among the moneys advanced by
Jellicoe to Cort there was a sum of 27,500L. entrusted to him for the
payment of seamen's and officers' wages. How his embarrassments had
tempted him to make use of the public funds for the purpose of carrying
on his speculations, appears from his own admissions. In a memorandum
dated the 11th November, 1782, found in his strong box after his death,
he set forth that he had always had much more than his proper balance
in hand, until his engagement, about two years before, with Mr. Cort,
"which by degrees has so reduced me, and employed so much more of my
money than I expected, that I have been obliged to turn most of my Navy
bills into cash, and at the same time, to my great concern, am very
deficient in my balance. This gives me great uneasiness, nor shall I
live or die in peace till the whole is restored." He had, however,
made the first false step, after which the downhill career of
dishonesty is rapid. His desperate attempts to set himself right only
involved him the deeper; his conscious breach of trust caused him a
degree of daily torment which he could not bear; and the discovery of
his defalcations, which was made only a few days before his death,
doubtless hastened his end.
The Government acted with promptitude, as they were bound to do in such
a case. The body of Jellicoe was worth nothing to them, but they could
secure the property in which he had fraudulently invested the public
moneys intrusted to him. With this object the them Paymaster of the
Navy proceeded to make an affidavit in the Exchequer that Henry Cort
was indebted to His Majesty in the sum of 27,500L. and upwards, in
respect of moneys belonging to the public treasury, which "Adam
Jellicoe had at different times lent and advanced to the said Henry
Cort, from whom the same now remains justly due and owing; and the
deponent saith he verily believes that the said Henry Cort is much
decayed in his credit and in very embarrassed circumstances; and
therefore the deponent verily believes that the aforesaid debt so due
and owing to His Majesty is in great danger of being lost if some more
speedy means be not taken for the recovery than by the ordinary process
of the Court." Extraordinary measures were therefore adopted. The
assignments of Cort's patents, which had been made to Jellicoe in
consideration of his advances, were taken possession of; but Samuel
Jellicoe, the son of the defaulter, singular to say, was put in
possession of the properties at Fontley and Gosport, and continued to
enjoy them, to Cort's exclusion, for a period of fourteen years. It
does not however appear that any patent right was ever levied by the
assignees, and the result of the proceeding was that the whole benefit
of Cort's inventions was thus made over to the ironmasters and to the
public. Had the estate been properly handled, and the patent rights
due under the contracts made by the ironmasters with Cort been duly
levied, there is little reason to doubt that the whole of the debt
owing to the Government would have been paid in the course of a few
years. "When we consider," says Mr. Webster, "how very simple was the
process of demanding of the contracting ironmasters the patent due
(which for the year 1789 amounted to 15,000L., in 1790 to 15,000L., and
in 1791 to 25,000L.), and which demand might have been enforced by the
same legal process used to ruin the inventor, it is not difficult to
surmise the motive for abstaining." The case, however, was not so
simple as Mr. Webster puts it; for there was such a contingency as that
of the ironmasters combining to dispute the patent right, and there is
every reason to believe that they were prepared to adopt that course.[9]
Although the Cort patents expired in 1796 and 1798 respectively, they
continued the subject of public discussion for some time after, more
particularly in connection with the defalcations of the deceased Adam
Jellicoe. It does not appear that more than 2654L. was realised by the
Government from the Cort estate towards the loss sustained by the
public, as a balance of 24,846L. was still found standing to the debit
of Jellicoe in 1800, when the deficiencies in the naval account's
became matter of public inquiry. A few years later, in 1805, the
subject was again revived in a remarkable manner. In that year, the
Whigs, Perceiving the bodily decay of Mr. Pitt, and being too eager to
wait for his removal by death, began their famous series of attacks
upon his administration. Fearing to tackle the popular statesman
himself, they inverted the ordinary tactics of an opposition, and fell
foul of Dundas, Lord Melville, then Treasurer of the Navy, who had
successfully carried the country through the great naval war with
revolutionary France. They scrupled not to tax him with gross
peculation, and exhibited articles of impeachment against him, which
became the subject of elaborate investigation, the result of which is
matter of history. In those articles, no reference whatever was made
to Lord Melville's supposed complicity with Jellicoe; nor, on the trial
that followed, was any reference made to the defalcations of that
official. But when Mr. Whitbread, on the 8th of April, 1805, spoke to
the "Resolutions" in the Commons for impeaching the Treasurer of the
Navy, he thought proper to intimate that he "had a strong suspicion
that Jellicoe was in the same partnership with Mark Sprott, Alexander
Trotter, and Lord Melville. He had been suffered to remain a public
debtor for a whole year after he was known to be in arrears upwards of
24,000L. During next year 11,000L. more had accrued. It would not
have been fair to have turned too short on an old companion. It would
perhaps, too, have been dangerous, since unpleasant discoveries might
have met the public eye. It looked very much as if, mutually conscious
of criminality, they had agreed to be silent, and keep their own
secrets."
In making these offensive observations Whitbread was manifestly
actuated by political enmity. They were utterly unwarrantable. In the
first place, Melville had been formally acquitted of Jellicoe's
deficiency by a writ of Privy Seal, dated 31st May, 1800; and secondly,
the committee appointed in that very year (1805) to reinvestigate the
naval accounts, had again exonerated him, but intimated that they were
of opinion there was remissness on his part in allowing Jellicoe to
remain in his office after the discovery of his defalcations.
the report made by the commissioners to the Houses of Parliament in
1805,[10] the value of Corts patents was estimated at only 100L.
Referring to the schedule of Jellicoe's alleged assets, they say "Many
of the debts are marked as bad; and we apprehend that the debt from Mr.
Henry Cort, not so marked, of 54,000L. and upwards, is of that
description." As for poor bankrupt Henry Cort, these discussions
availed nothing. On the death of Jellicoe, he left his iron works,
feeling himself a ruined man. He made many appeals to the Government
of the day for restoral of his patents, and offered to find security
for payment of the debt due by his firm to the Crown, but in vain. In
1794, an appeal was made to Mr. Pitt by a number of influential members
of Parliament, on behalf of the inventor and his destitute family of
twelve children, when a pension of 200L. a-year was granted him. This
Mr. Cort enjoyed until the year 1800, when he died, broken in health
and spirit, in his sixtieth year. He was buried in Hampstead
Churchyard, where a stone marking the date of his death is still to be
seen. A few years since it was illegible, but it has recently been
restored by his surviving son.
Though Cort thus died in comparative poverty, he laid the foundations
of many gigantic fortunes. He may be said to have been in a great
measure the author of our modern iron aristocracy, who still
manufacture after the processes which he invented or perfected, but for
which they never paid him a shilling of royalty. These men of gigantic
fortunes have owed much--we might almost say everything--to the ruined
projector of "the little mill at Fontley." Their wealth has enriched
many families of the older aristocracy, and has been the foundation of
several modern peerages. Yet Henry Cort, the rock from which they were
hewn, is already all but forgotten; and his surviving children, now
aged and infirm, are dependent for their support upon the slender
pittance wrung by repeated entreaty and expostulation from the state.
The career of Richard Crawshay, the first of the great ironmasters who
had the sense to appreciate and adopt the methods of manufacturing iron
invented by Henry Cort, is a not unfitting commentary on the sad
history we have thus briefly described. It shows how, as respects mere
money-making, shrewdness is more potent than invention, and business
faculty than manufacturing skill. Richard Crawshay was born at
Normanton near Leeds, the son of a small Yorkshire farmer. When a
youth, he worked on his father's farm, and looked forward to occupying
the same condition in life; but a difference with his father unsettled
his mind, and at the age of fifteen he determined to leave his home,
and seek his fortune elsewhere. Like most unsettled and enterprising
lads, he first made for London, riding to town on a pony of his own,
which, with the clothes on his back, formed his entire fortune. It
took him a fortnight to make the journey, in consequence of the badness
of the roads. Arrived in London, he sold his pony for fifteen pounds,
and the money kept him until he succeeded in finding employment. He
was so fortunate as to be taken upon trial by a Mr. Bicklewith, who
kept an ironmonger's shop in York Yard, Upper Thames Street; and his
first duty there was to clean out the office, put the stools and desks
in order for the other clerks, run errands, and act as porter when
occasion required. Young Crawshay was very attentive, industrious, and
shrewd; and became known in the office as "The Yorkshire Boy." Chiefly
because of his "cuteness," his master appointed him to the department
of selling flat irons. The London washerwomen of that day were very
sharp and not very honest, and it used to be said of them that where
they bought one flat iron they generally contrived to steal two. Mr.
Bicklewith thought he could not do better than set the Yorkshireman to
watch the washerwomen, and, by way of inducement to him to be vigilant,
he gave young Crawshay an interest in that branch of the business,
which was soon found to prosper under his charge. After a few more
years, Mr. Bicklewith retired, and left to Crawshay the cast-iron
business in York Yard. This he still further increased, There was not
at that time much enterprise in the iron trade, but Crawshay
endeavoured to connect himself with what there was of it. The price of
iron was then very high, and the best sorts were still imported from
abroad; a good deal of the foreign iron and steel being still landed at
the Steelyard on the Thames, in the immediate neighbourhood of
Crawshay's ironmongery store.
It seems to have occurred to some London capitalists that money was
then to be made in the iron trade, and that South Wales was a good
field for an experiment. The soil there was known to be full of coal
and ironstone, and several small iron works had for some time been
carried on, which were supposed to be doing well. Merthyr Tydvil was
one of the places at which operations had been begun, but the place
being situated in a hill district, of difficult access, and the
manufacture being still in a very imperfect state, the progress made
was for some time very slow. Land containing coal and iron was deemed
of very little value, as maybe inferred from the fact that in the year
1765, Mr. Anthony Bacon, a man of much foresight, took a lease from
Lord Talbot, for 99 years, of the minerals under forty square miles of
country surrounding the then insignificant hamlet of Merthyr Tydvil, at
the trifling rental of 200L. a-year. There he erected iron works, and
supplied the Government with considerable quantities of cannon and iron
for different purposes; and having earned a competency, he retired from
business in 1782, subletting his mineral tract in four divisions--the
Dowlais, the Penydarran, the Cyfartha, and the Plymouth Works, north,
east, west, and south, of Merthyr Tydvil.
Mr. Richard Crawshay became the lessee of what Mr. Mushet has called
"the Cyfartha flitch of the great Bacon domain." There he proceeded to
carry on the works established by Mr. Bacon with increased spirit; his
son William, whom he left in charge of the ironmongery store in London,
supplying him with capital to put into the iron works as fast as he
could earn it by the retail trade. In 1787, we find Richard Crawshay
manufacturing with difficulty ten tons of bar-iron weekly, and it was
of a very inferior character,[11]--the means not having yet been
devised at Cyfartha for malleableizing the pit-coal cast-iron with
economy or good effect. Yet Crawshay found a ready market for all the
iron he could make, and he is said to have counted the gains of the
forge-hammer close by his house at the rate of a penny a stroke. In
course of time he found it necessary to erect new furnaces, and, having
adopted the processes invented by Henry Cort, he was thereby enabled
greatly to increase the production of his forges, until in 1812 we find
him stating to a committee of the House of Commons that he was making
ten thousand tons of bar-iron yearly, or an average produce of two
hundred tons a week. But this quantity, great though it was, has since
been largely increased, the total produce of the Crawshay furnaces of
Cyfartha, Ynysfach, and Kirwan, being upwards of 50,000 tons of
bar-iron yearly.
The distance of Merthyr from Cardiff, the nearest port, being
considerable, and the cost of carriage being very great by reason of
the badness of the roads, Mr. Crawshay set himself to overcome this
great impediment to the prosperity of the Merthyr Tydvil district; and,
in conjunction with Mr. Homfray of the Penydarran Works, he planned and
constructed the canal[12] to Cardiff, the opening of which, in 1795,
gave an immense impetus to the iron trade of the neighbourhood.
Numerous other extensive iron works became established there, until
Merthyr Tydvil attained the reputation of being at once the richest and
the dirtiest district in all Britain. Mr. Crawshay became known in the
west of England as the "Iron King," and was quoted as the highest
authority in all questions relating to the trade. Mr. George Crawshay,
recently describing the founder of the family at a social meeting at
Newcastle, said,--"In these days a name like ours is lost in the
infinity of great manufacturing firms which exist through out the land;
but in those early times the man who opened out the iron district of
Wales stood upon an eminence seen by all the world. It is preserved in
the traditions of the family that when the 'Iron King' used to drive
from home in his coach-and-four into Wales, all the country turned out
to see him, and quite a commotion took place when he passed through
Bristol on his way to the works. My great grandfather was succeeded by
his son, and by his grandson; the Crawshays have followed one another
for four generations in the iron trade in Wales, and there they still
stand at the head of the trade." The occasion on which these words
were uttered was at a Christmas party, given to the men, about 1300 in
number, employed at the iron works of Messrs. Hawks, Crawshay, and Co.,
at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. These works were founded in 1754 by William
Hawks, a blacksmith, whose principal trade consisted in making
claw-hammers for joiners. He became a thriving man, and eventually a
large manufacturer of bar-iron. Partners joined him, and in the course
of the changes wrought by time, one of the Crawshays, in 1842, became a
principal partner in the firm.
Illustrations of a like kind might be multiplied to any extent, showing
the growth in our own time of an iron aristocracy of great wealth and
influence, the result mainly of the successful working of the
inventions of the unfortunate and unrequited Henry Cort. He has been
the very Tubal Cain of England--one of the principal founders of our
iron age. To him we mainly owe the abundance of wrought-iron for
machinery, for steam-engines, and for railways, at one-third the price
we were before accustomed to pay to the foreigner. We have by his
invention, not only ceased to be dependent upon other nations for our
supply of iron for tools, implements, and arms, but we have become the
greatest exporters of iron, producing more than all other European
countries combined. In the opinion of Mr. Fairbairn of Manchester, the
inventions of Henry Cort have already added six hundred millions
sterling to the wealth of the kingdom, while they have given employment
to some six hundred thousand working people during three generations.
And while the great ironmasters, by freely availing themselves of his
inventions, have been adding estate to estate, the only estate secured
by Henry Cort was the little domain of six feet by two in which he lies
interred in Hampstead Churchyard.
[1] Life of Brunel, p. 60.
[2] SCRIVENOR, History of the Iron Trade, 169.
[3] Although the iron manufacture had gradually been increasing since
the middle of the century, it was as yet comparatively insignificant in
amount. Thus we find, from a statement by W. Wilkinson, dated Dec. 25,
1791, contained in the memorandum-book of Wm. Reynolds of
Coalbrookdale, that the produce in England and Scotland was then
estimated to be
Coke Furnaces. Charcoal Furnaces.
In England ......73 producing 67,548 tons 20 producing 8500 tons
In Scotland......12 " 12,480 " 2 " 1000 "
---- ------ -- ----
85 " 80,028 " 22 " 9500 "
At the same time the annual import of Oregrounds iron from Sweden
amounted to about 20,000 tons, and of bars and slabs from Russia about
50,000 tons, at an average cost of 35L. a ton!
[4] "It is material to observe", says Mr. Webster, "that Cort, in this
specification, speaks of the rollers, furnaces, and separate processes,
as well known. There is no claim to any of them separately; the claim
is to the reducing of the faggots of piled iron into bars, and the
welding of such bars by rollers instead of by forge-hammers."--Memoir
of Henry Cort, in Mechanic's Magazine, 15 July, 1859, by Thomas
Webster, M.A., F.R.S.
[5] Letter by Mr. Truran in Mechanic's Magazine.
[6] In the memorandum-book of Wm. Reynolds appears the following entry
on the subject:--
"Copy of a paper given to H. Cort, Esq.
"W. Reynolds saw H. C. in a trial which he made at Ketley, Dec. 17,
1784, produce from the same pig both cold short and tough iron by a
variation of the process used in reducing them from the state of
cast-iron to that of malleable or bar-iron; and in point of yield his
processes were quite equal to those at Pitchford, which did not exceed
the proportion of 31 cwt. to the ton of bars. The experiment was made
by stamping and potting the blooms or loops made in his furnace, which
then produced a cold short iron; but when they were immediately
shingled and drawn, the iron was of a black tough."
The Coalbrookdale ironmasters are said to have been deterred from
adopting the process because of what was considered an excessive waste
of the metal--about 25 per cent,--though, with greater experience, this
waste was very much diminished.
[7] Mr. Webster, in the 'Case of Henry Cort,' published in the
Mechanic's Magazine (2 Dec. 1859), states that "licences were taken at
royalties estimated to yield 27,500L. to the owners of the patents."
[8] In the 'Case of Henry Cort,' by Mr. Webster, above referred to
(Mechanic's Magazine, 2 Dec. 1859), it is stated that Adam Jellicoe
"committed suicide under the pressure of dread of exposure," but this
does not appear to be confirmed by the accounts in the newspapers of
the day. He died at his private dwelling-house, No. 14, Highbury
Place, Islingtonn, on the 30th August, 1789, after a fortnight's
illness.
[9] This is confirmed by the report of a House of Commons Committee on
the subject Mr. Davies Gilbert chairman, in which they say, "Your
committee have not been able to satisfy themselves that either of the
two inventions, one for subjecting cast-iron to an operation termed
puddling during its conversion to malleable iron, and the other for
passing it through fluted or grooved rollers, were so novel in their
principle or their application as fairly to entitle the petitioners
[Mr. Cort's survivors] to a parliamentary reward." It is, however,
stated by Mr. Mushet that the evidence was not fairly taken by the
committee--that they were overborne by the audacity of Mr. Samuel
Homfray, one of the great Welsh ironmasters, whose statements were
altogether at variance with known facts--and that it was under his
influence that Mr. Gilbert drew up the fallacious report of the
committee. The illustrious James Watt, writing to Dr. Black in 1784,
as to the iron produced by Cort's process, said, "Though I cannot
perfectly agree with you as to its goodness, yet there is much
ingenuity in the idea of forming the bars in that manner, which is the
only part of his process which has any pretensions to novelty.... Mr.
Cort has, as you observe, been most illiberally treated by the trade:
they are ignorant brutes; but he exposed himself to it by showing them
the process before it was perfect, and seeing his ignorance of the
common operations of making iron, laughed at and despised him; yet they
will contrive by some dirty evasion to use his process, or such parts
as they like, without acknowledging him in it. I shall be glad to be
able to be of any use to him. Watts fellow-feeling was naturally
excited in favour of the plundered inventor, he himself having all his
life been exposed to the attacks of like piratical assailants.
[10] Tenth Report of the Commissioners of Naval Inquiry. See also
Report of Select Committee on the 10th Naval Report. May, 1805.
[11] Mr. Mushet says of the early manufacture of iron at Merthyr Tydvil
that "A modification of the charcoal refinery, a hollow fire, was
worked with coke as a substitute for charcoal, but the bar-iron
hammered from the produce was very inferior." The pit-coal cast-iron
was nevertheless found of a superior quality for castings, being more
fusible and more homogeneous than charcoal-iron. Hence it was well
adapted for cannon, which was for some time the principal article of
manufacture at the Welsh works.
[12] It may be worthy of note that the first locomotive run upon a
railroad was that constructed by Trevithick for Mr. Homfray in 1803,
which was employed to bring down metal from the furnaces to the Old
Forge. The engine was taken off the road because the tram-plates were
found too weak to bear its weight without breaking.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SCOTCH IRON MANUFACTURE--DR. ROEBUCK DAVID MUSHET.
"Were public benefactors to be allowed to pass away, like hewers of
wood and drawers of water, without commemoration, genius and enterprise
would be deprived of their most coveted distinction."--Sir Henry
Englefield.
The account given of Dr. Roebuck in a Cyclopedia of Biography, recently
published in Glasgow, runs as follows:--"Roebuck, John, a physician and
experimental chemist, born at Sheffield, 1718; died, after ruining
himself by his projects, 1794." Such is the short shrift which the man
receives who fails. Had Dr. Roebuck wholly succeeded in his projects,
he would probably have been esteemed as among the greatest of
Scotland's benefactors. Yet his life was not altogether a failure, as
we think will sufficiently appear from the following brief account of
his labours:--
At the beginning of last century, John Roebuck's father carried on the
manufacture of cutlery at Sheffield,[1] in the course of which he
realized a competency. He intended his son to follow his own business,
but the youth was irresistibly attracted to scientific pursuits, in
which his father liberally encouraged him; and he was placed first
under the care of Dr. Doddridge, at Northampton, and afterwards at the
University of Edinburgh, where he applied himself to the study of
medicine, and especially of chemistry, which was then attracting
considerable attention at the principal seats of learning in Scotland.
While residing at Edinburgh young Roebuck contracted many intimate
friendships with men who afterwards became eminent in literature, such
as Hume and Robertson the historians, and the circumstance is supposed
to have contributed not a little to his partiality in favour of
Scotland, and his afterwards selecting it as the field for his
industrial operations.
After graduating as a physician at Leyden, Roebuck returned to England,
and settled at Birmingham in the year 1745 for the purpose of
practising his profession. Birmingham was then a principal seat of the
metal manufacture, and its mechanics were reputed to be among the most
skilled in Britain. Dr. Roebuck's attention was early drawn to the
scarcity and dearness of the material in which the mechanics worked,
and he sought by experiment to devise some method of smelting iron
otherwise than by means of charcoal. He had a laboratory fitted up in
his house for the purpose of prosecuting his inquiries, and there he
spent every minute that he could spare from his professional labours.
It was thus that he invented the process of smelting iron by means of
pit-coal which he afterwards embodied in the patent hereafter to be
referred to. At the same time he invented new methods of refining gold
and silver, and of employing them in the arts, which proved of great
practical value to the Birmingham trades-men, who made extensive use of
them in their various processes of manufacture.
Dr. Roebuck's inquiries had an almost exclusively practical direction,
and in pursuing them his main object was to render them subservient to
the improvement of the industrial arts. Thus he sought to devise more
economical methods of producing the various chemicals used in the
Birmingham trade, such as ammonia, sublimate, and several of the acids;
and his success was such as to induce him to erect a large laboratory
for their manufacture, which was conducted with complete success by his
friend Mr. Garbett. Among his inventions of this character, was the
modern process of manufacturing vitriolic acid in leaden vessels in
large quantities, instead of in glass vessels in small quantities as
formerly practised. His success led him to consider the project of
establishing a manufactory for the purpose of producing oil of vitriol
on a large scale; and, having given up his practice as a physician, he
resolved, with his partner Mr. Garbett, to establish the proposed works
in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. He removed to Scotland with that
object, and began the manufacture of vitriol at Prestonpans in the year
1749. The enterprise proved eminently lucrative, and, encouraged by
his success, Roebuck proceeded to strike out new branches of
manufacture. He started a pottery for making white and brown ware,
which eventually became established, and the manufacture exists in the
same neighbourhood to this day.
The next enterprise in which he became engaged was one of still greater
importance, though it proved eminently unfortunate in its results as
concerned himself. While living at Prestonpans, he made the friendship
of Mr. William Cadell, of Cockenzie, a gentleman who had for some time
been earnestly intent on developing the industry of Scotland, then in a
very backward condition. Mr. Cadell had tried, without success, to
establish a manufactory of iron; and, though he had heretofore failed,
he hoped that with the aid of Dr. Roebuck he might yet succeed. The
Doctor listened to his suggestions with interest, and embraced the
proposed enterprise with zeal. He immediately proceeded to organize a
company, in which he was joined by a number of his friends and
relatives. His next step was to select a site for the intended works,
and make the necessary arrangements for beginning the manufacture of
iron. After carefully examining the country on both sides of the
Forth, he at length made choice of a site on the banks of the river
Carron, in Stirlingshire, where there was an abundant supply of wafer,
and an inexhaustible supply of iron, coal, and limestone in the
immediate neighbourhood, and there Dr. Roebuck planted the first
ironworks in Scotland.
In order to carry them on with the best chances of success, he brought
a large number of skilled workmen from England, who formed a nucleus of
industry at Carron, where their example and improved methods of working
served to train the native labourers in their art. At a subsequent
period, Mr. Cadell, of Carronpark, also brought a number of skilled
English nail-makers into Scotland, and settled them in the village of
Camelon, where, by teaching others, the business has become handed down
to the present day.
