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PREFACE
The object
of the following volumes is to give an account of some of the principal
men by whom the material development of England has been promoted,— the
men by whose skill and industry large tracts of fertile land have been
won from the sea, the bog, and the fen, and made available for human
habitation and sustenance; who have rendered the country accessible in
all directions by means of roads, bridges, canals, and railways; and
have built lighthouses, breakwaters, docks, and harbours, for the
protection and accommodation of our vast home and foreign commerce.
Notwithstanding the national interest which might be
supposed to belong to this branch of literature, it has hitherto
received but little attention. When the author first mentioned to the
late Mr. Robert Stephenson his intention of writing the Life of his
father, that gentleman expressed strong doubts as to the possibility of
rendering the subject sufficiently popular to attract the attention of
the reading public. “The building of bridges, the excavation of tunnels,
the making of roads and railways,” he observed, “are mere mechanical
matters, possessing no literary interest; ” and in proof of this he
referred to the ‘Life of Telford ’ as “a work got up at great expense,
but which had fallen still-born from the press.”
Besides the apparent unattractiveness of the subject, its
effective treatment involved the necessity of burrowing through a vast
amount of engineering reports, which, next to law papers, are about the
driest possible reading, except to those professionally interested in
them.
Circumstances such as these have probably concurred in
deterring literary men from entering upon this field of biography, which
has hitherto remained comparatively unexplored. Hence, most of the Lives
and Memoirs contained in the following series are here attempted for the
first time. All that has appeared relating to Brindley, Smeaton, and
Rennie, is comprised in the brief and unsatisfactory notices contained
in Encyclopedias and Biographical Dictionaries. What has been published
respecting Myddelton’s life is for the most part inaccurate, whilst of
Vermuyden no memoir of any kind exists. It is true, a ‘Life of Telford’
has appeared in quarto, but, though it contains most of that engineer’s
reports, the history of his private life as well as of his professional
career is almost entirely omitted.
Besides the Lives of these more distinguished men, the
following volumes will be found to contain memoirs of several
meritorious though now all but forgotten persons, who are entitled to
notice as amongst the pioneers of English engineering. Such were Captain
Perry, who repaired the breach in the Thames embankment at Dagenham;
blind John Metcalf, the Yorkshire road-maker ; William Edwards, the
Welsh bridge-builder; and Andrew Meikle, Rennie’s master, the inventor
of the thrashing-machine. Although the Duke of Bridgewater was not an
engineer, we have included a memoir of him in the Life of Brindley, with
whose early history he was so closely identified; and also because of
the important influence which he exercised on the extension of the canal
system and the development of modern English industry.
The subject, indeed, contains more attractive elements
than might at first sight appear. The events in the lives of the early
engineers were a succession of individual struggles, sometimes rising
almost to the heroic. In one case, the object of interest is a London
goldsmith, like Myddelton; in another, he is a retired sea-captain, like
Perry ; a wheelwright, like Brindley ; an attorney’s clerk, like Smeaton;
a millwright, like Rennie ; a working mason, like Telford; or an engine
brakesman, like Stephenson. These men were strong-minded, resolute, and
ingenious, impelled to their special pursuits by the force of their
constructive instincts. In most cases they had to make for themselves a
way; for there was none to point out the road, which until then had been
untravelled. To our mind, there is almost a dramatic interest in their
noble efforts, their defeats, and their triumphs; and their eventual
rise, in spite of manifold obstructions and difficulties, from obscurity
to fame.
It will be observed from the following pages that the
works of our engineers have exercised an important influence on the
progress of the English nation. But it may possibly excite the reader’s
surprise to learn how very modern England is in all that relates to
skilled industry, which appears to have been among the very youngest
outgrowths of our national life.
Most of the Continental nations had a long start of us in
art, in science, in mechanics, in navigation, and in engineering. Not
many centuries since, Italy, Spain, France, and Holland looked down
contemptuously on the poor but proud islanders, contending with nature
for a subsistence amidst their fogs and their mists. Though surrounded
by the sea, we had scarcely any navy until within the last three hundred
years. Even our fisheries were so unproductive, that our markets were
supplied by the Dutch, who sold us the herrings caught upon our own
coasts. England was then regarded principally as a magazine for the
supply of raw materials, which were carried away in foreign ships and
partly returned to us in manufactures worked up by foreign artisans. We
grew wool for Flanders, as America grows cotton for England now. Even
the little manufactured at home was sent to the Low Countries to be
dyed.
Most of our modern branches of industry were begun by
foreigners, many of whom were driven by religious persecution to seek an
asylum in England. Our first cloth-workers, silk-weavers, and
lace-makers were French and Flemish refugees. The brothers Elers,
Dutchmen, began the pottery manufacture; Spillman, a German, erected the
first paper-mill at Dartford; and Boomen, a Dutchman, brought the first
coach into England.
When we wanted any skilled work done, we almost
invariably sent for foreigners to do it. Our first ships were built by
Danes or Genoese. When the Mary
Rose sank
at Spithead in 1545, Venetians were hired to raise her. On that occasion
Peeter de Andreas was employed, assisted by his ship-carpenter and three
of his sailors, with “sixty English maryners to attend upon them.” When
an engine was required to pump water from the Thames for the supply of
London, Peter Morice, the Dutchman, was employed to erect it.
Our first lessons in mechanical and civil engineering
were principally obtained from Dutchmen, who supplied us with our first
wind-mills, water-mills, and pumpingengines. Holland even sent us the
necessary labourers to execute our first great works of drainage. The
Great Level of the Fens was drained by Vermuyden; and another Dutchman,
Freestone, was employed to reclaim the marsh near Wells, in Norfolk.
Canvey Island, near the mouth of the Thames, was embanked by Joas
Croppenburgh and his company of Dutch workmen. When a new haven was
required at Yarmouth, Joas Johnson, the Dutch engineer, was employed to
plan and construct the works; and when a serious breach occurred in the
banks of the Witham, at Boston, Matthew Hake was sent for from
Gravelines in Flanders; and he brought with him not only the mechanics
but the manufactured iron required for the work. The art of
bridge-building had sunk so low in England about the middle of the last
century, that we were under the necessity of employing the Swiss
engineer Labelye to build Westminster Bridge.
In short, we depended for our engineering, even more 1 than
we did for our pictures and our music, upon ' foreigners. At a time when
Holland had completed its magnificent system of water communication, and
when France, Germany, and even Russia had opened up important lines of
inland navigation, England had not cut a single canal, whilst our roads
were about the worst in Europe. It was not until the year 1760 that
Brindley began his first canal for the Duke of Bridgewater.
After the lapse of a century, we find the state of things
has become entirely reversed. Instead of borrowing engineers from
abroad, we now send them to all parts of the world. British-built
steam-ships ply on every sea; we export machinery to all quarters, and
supply Holland itself with pumping engines. During that period our
engineers have completed a magnificent system of canals, turnpike-roads,
bridges, and railways, by which the internal communications of the
country have been completely opened up; they have built lighthouses
round our coasts, by which ships freighted with the produce of all
lands, when nearing our shores in the dark, are safely lighted along to
their destined havens; they have hewn out and built docks and harbours
for the accommodation of a gigantic commerce; whilst their inventive
genius
has rendered fire and water the most untiring workers in
all branches of industry, and the most effective agents in locomotion by
land and sea. Nearly all this has been accomplished during the last
century, much of it within the life of the present generation. How and
by whom these great achievements have been mainly effected— exercising
as they have done so large an influence upon society, and constituting
as they do so important an element in our national history—it is the
object of the following pages to relate.
It was the author’s original intention to have begun this
work with the Life of Brindley, the earliest of our canal engineers. But
on mentioning the subject to the late Mr. Robert Stephenson—after the
publication of his father’s Life had shown that this class of biography
was. not so unattractive to general readers as he had apprehended—the
author was urged by that gentleman to trace the history of English
engineering from the beginning, and to include the labours of Vermuyden,
and especially of Sir Hugh Myddelton, a person of great merit and
boldness, considering the times in which he lived, and whom Mr.
Stephenson considered entitled to special notice as being the First
English Engineer. Memoirs of these men have accordingly been included in
the series; and in preparing them the author has availed himself of the
information afforded by the collection of State Papers, and (in the case
of Myddelton) the Corporation Records of the City of London. He has also
to acknowledge the valuable assistance of W. C. Mylne, Esq., engineer to
the New River Company, and the Rev. H. T. Ellacombe, M.A., of Clyst St.
George, Devon, a lineal descendant of Sir Hugh Myddelton.
The Life of Brindley has been derived almost entirely
from original sources; amongst which may be mentioned the family papers
in the possession of Robert Williamson, Esq., of Ramsdell Hall, Cheshire
; the documents relating to the engineer in the possession of Lord
Ellesmere, proprietor of the Bridgewater Canal; and the valuable MS.
collection of Joseph Mayer, Esq., of Liverpool. The author has also to
acknowledge information obtained from Robert Rawlinson, Esq., engineer
to the Bridgewater Canal, relative to certain interesting details as to
the execution of the works of that undertaking.
The materials for the Life of John Rennie have been
mainly obtained from Sir John Rennie, C.E., who has kindly placed at the
author’s disposal the elaborate MSS. prepared by Sir John, descriptive
of his father’s great works ; of which no consecutive account has been
published until the present memoir.
The Life of Telford has been principally derived from a
large collection of that engineer’s confidential letters to his friends
in Eskdale, in the possession of Mr. Little, of Cariesgill, near
Langholm, containing Telford’s ow account of the early part of his
career; .whilst, in the later part, the author has had the assistance of
Joseph' Mitchell, Esq., and other gentlemen. In preparing this part of
the work, the author has reversed the process adopted in the ‘Life of
Telford’ already published : he has omitted the engineer’s reports, but
included the biography ; by which method he believes the narrative will
be found considerably improved.
The author’s principal labour has consisted in
compressing rather than in expanding the large mass of materials placed
at his disposal. It would indeed have been much easier to devote two
volumes to each of the following lives than it has been to comprise the
whole of them within a like compass; but lie believes that labour is
well bestowed in condensing biography up to a certain point, provided no
essential feature is omitted—the interest and readableness of such
narratives being very often in an inverse ratio to their length.
With the object of saving unnecessary verbal
descriptions, illustrations, in the shape of maps, plans, and sections,
have been introduced wherever practicable; and in those cases where a
representation is given of a bridge, lighthouse, aqueduct, or harbour,
it will be found set in its appropriate landscape. Although the
dimensions of the wood engravings are necessarily small, every attention
has been paid to accuracy of detail, most of them being drawn to scale.
The drawings by Mr. Percival Skelton—an excellent and
graceful artist—have been made in nearly every case on the spot, for the
express purpose of this work. Those by Mr. R. P. Leitch and Mr. Wimperis
are mostly after original sketches supplied by distant correspondents;
and it is hoped that the illustrations generally will be found to add to
the interest of the volumes. The whole of the cuts have been executed by
Mr. James Cooper, whose accuracy and carefulness in superintending the
illustrative department of the work, the author takes this opportunity
of acknowledging.
Volume 1 |
Volume 2 |
Volume 3 |
