George & Robert Stephenson

[46]

[60]

CHAPTER II.

EARLY LOCOMOTIVE MODELS.

The application of steam-power to the driving of wheel-carriages
on common roads was in 1759 brought under the notice
of James Watt by his young friend John Robison, then a student
at the University of Glasgow. Robison prepared a rough sketch
of his suggested steam-carriage, in which he proposed to place
the cylinder with its open end downward, to avoid the necessity
for using a working beam. Watt was then only twenty-three
years old, and was very much occupied in conducting his business
of a mathematical instrument maker, which he had only recently
established. Nevertheless, he proceeded to construct a
model locomotive provided with two cylinders of tin-plate, intending
that the pistons and their connecting-rods should act alternately
on two pinions attached to the axles of the carriage-wheels.
But the model, when made, did not answer Watt’s expectations;
and when, shortly after, Robison left college to go to
sea, he laid the project aside, and did not resume it for many
years.

In the mean time, an ingenious French mechanic had taken up
the subject, and proceeded to make a self-moving road engine
worked by steam-power. It has been incidentally stated that a
M. Pouillet was the first to make a locomotive machine,[13] but no
particulars are given of the invention, which is more usually attributed
to Nicholas Joseph Cugnot, a native of Void, in Lorraine,
where he was born in 1729. Not much is known of Cugnot’s
early history beyond that he was an officer in the army, that he
published several works on military science, and that on leaving
the army he devoted himself to the invention of a steam-carriage
to be run on common roads.

It appears from documents collected by M. Morin that Cugnot[61]
constructed his first carriage at the Arsenal in 1769, at the cost
of the Comte de Saxe, by whom he was patronized and liberally
helped. It ran on three wheels, and was put in motion by an engine
composed of two single-acting cylinders, the pistons of which
acted alternately on the single front wheel. While this machine
was in course of construction, a Swiss officer, named Planta,
brought forward a similar project; but, on perceiving that Cugnot’s
carriage was superior to his own, he proceeded no farther
with it.

When Cugnot’s carriage was ready, it was tried in the presence
of the Duc de Choiseul, the Comte de Saxe, and other military
officers. On being first set in motion, it ran against a stone wall
which stood in its way, and threw it down. There was thus no
doubt about its power, though there were many doubts about its
manageableness. At length it was got out of the Arsenal and
put upon the road, when it was found that, though only loaded
with four persons, it could not travel faster than about two and a
quarter miles an hour; and that, the size of the boiler not being
sufficient, it would not continue at work for more than twelve or
fifteen minutes, when it was necessary to wait until sufficient
steam had been raised to enable it to proceed farther.

The experiment was looked upon with great interest, and admitted
to be of a very remarkable character; and, considering
that it was a first attempt, it was not by any means regarded as
unsuccessful. As it was believed that such a machine, if properly
proportioned, might be employed to drag cannon into the
field independent of horse-power, the Minister of War authorized
Cugnot to proceed with the construction of a new and improved
machine, which was finished and ready for trial in the
course of the following year. The new locomotive was composed
of two parts, one being a carriage supported on two wheels,
somewhat resembling a small brewer’s cart, furnished with a seat
for the driver, while the other contained the machinery, which
was supported on a single driving-wheel 4 ft. 2 in. in diameter.
The engine consisted of a round copper boiler with a furnace inside
provided with two small chimneys, two single-acting 13-in.
brass cylinders communicating with the boiler by a steam-pipe,
and the arrangements for communicating the motion of the pistons
to the driving-wheel, together with the steering-gear.

[62]

[73]

CHAPTER III.

THE CORNISH LOCOMOTIVE—MEMOIR OF RICHARD TREVITHICK.

While the discussion of steam-power as a means of locomotion
was proceeding in England, other projectors were advocating the
extension of wagon-ways and railroads. Mr. Thomas, of Denton,
near Newcastle-on-Tyne, read a paper before the Philosophical
Society of that town in 1800, in which he urged the laying down
of railways throughout the country, on the principle of the coal
wagon-ways, for the general carriage of goods and merchandise;
and Dr. James Anderson, of Edinburg, about the same time published
his “Recreations of Agriculture,” wherein he recommended
that railways should be laid along the principal turnpike-roads,
and worked by horse-power, which, he alleged, would have the
effect of greatly reducing the cost of transport, and thereby stimulating
all branches of industry.

Railways were indeed already becoming adopted in places
where the haulage of heavy loads was for short distances; and
in some cases lines were laid down of considerable length. One
of the first of such lines constructed under the powers of an Act
of Parliament was the Cardiff and Merthyr railway or tram-road,
about twenty-seven miles in length, for the accommodation of the
iron-works of Plymouth, Pen-y-darran, and Dowlais, all in South
Wales, the necessary Act for which was obtained in 1794. Another,
the Sirhoway railroad, about twenty-eight miles in length,
was constructed under the powers of an act obtained in 1801; it
accommodated the Tredegar and Sirhoway Iron-works and the
Trevill Lime-works, as well as the collieries along its route.

In the immediate neighborhood of London there was another
very early railroad, the Wandsworth and Croydon tram-way, about
ten miles long, which was afterward extended southward to Merstham,
in Surrey, for about eight miles more, making a total length[74]
of nearly eighteen miles. The first act for the purpose of authorizing
the construction of this road was obtained in 1800.

All these lines were, however, worked by horses, and in the case
of the Croydon and Merstham line, donkeys shared in the work,
which consisted chiefly in the haulage of stone, coal, and lime.
No proposal had yet been made to apply the power of steam as
a substitute for horses on railways, nor were the rails then laid
down of a strength sufficient to bear more than a loaded wagon
of the weight of three tons, or, at the very outside, of three and a
quarter tons.

It was, however, observed from the first that there was an immense
saving in the cost of haulage; and on the day of opening
the southern portion of the Merstham Railroad in 1805, a train
of twelve wagons laden with stone, weighing in all thirty-eight
tons, was drawn six miles in an hour by one horse, with apparent
ease, down an incline of 1 in 120; and this was bruited about as
an extraordinary feat, highly illustrative of the important uses of
the new iron-ways.

About the same time, the subject of road locomotion was again
brought into prominent notice by an important practical experiment
conducted in a remote corner of the kingdom. The experimenter
was a young man, then obscure, but afterward famous,
who may be fairly regarded as the inventor of the railway locomotive,
if any single individual be entitled to that appellation.
This was Richard Trevithick, a person of extraordinary mechanical
skill but of marvelous ill fortune, who, though the inventor
of many ingenious contrivances, and the founder of the fortunes
of many, himself died in cold obstruction and in extreme poverty,
leaving behind him nothing but his great inventions and the recollection
of his genius.

Richard Trevithick was born on the 13th of April, 1771, in the
parish of Illogan, a few miles west of Redruth, in Cornwall. In
the immediate neighborhood rises Castle-Carn-brea, a rocky eminence,
supposed by Borlase to have been the principal seat of
Druidic worship in the West of England. The hill commands
an extraordinary view over one of the richest mining fields of
Cornwall, from Chacewater and Redruth to Camborne.

Trevithick’s father acted as purser at several of the mines.
Though a man in good position and circumstances, he does not[75]
seem to have taken much pains with his son’s education. Being
an only child, he was very much indulged—among other things,
in his dislike for the restraints and discipline of school; and he
was left to wander about among the mines, spending his time in
the engine-rooms, picking up information about pumping-engines
and mining machinery.

His father, observing the boy’s strong bent toward mechanics,
placed him for a time as pupil with William Murdock, while the
latter lived at Redruth superintending the working and repairs
of Boulton and Watt’s pumping-engines in that neighborhood.
During his pupilage, young Trevithick doubtless learned much
from that able mechanic. It is probable that he got his first idea
of the high-pressure road locomotive which he afterward constructed
from Murdock’s ingenious little model above described,
the construction and action of which must have been quite familiar
to him, for no secret was ever made of it, and its performances
were often exhibited.

Many new pumping-engines being in course of erection in the
neighborhood about that time, there was an unusual demand for
engineers, which it was found difficult to supply; and young
Trevithick, whose skill was acknowledged, had no difficulty in
getting an appointment. The father was astonished at his boy’s
presumption (as he supposed it to be) in undertaking such a responsibility,
and he begged the mine agents to reconsider their
decision. But the result showed that they were justified in making
the appointment; for young Trevithick, though he had not
yet attained his majority, proved fully competent to perform the
duties devolving upon him as engineer.

So long as Boulton and Watt’s patent continued to run, constant
attempts were made in Cornwall and elsewhere to upset it.
Their engines had cleared the mines of water, and thereby rescued
the mine lords from ruin, but it was felt to be a great hardship
that they should have to pay for the right to use them. They
accordingly stimulated the ingenuity of the local engineers to
contrive an engine that should answer the same purpose, and enable
them to evade making any farther payments to Boulton and
Watt. The first to produce an engine that seemed likely to answer
the purpose was Jonathan Hornblower, who had been employed
in erecting Watt’s engines in Cornwall. After him one[76]
Edward Bull, who had been first a stoker and then an assistant-tender
of Watt’s engines, turned out another pumping-engine,
which promised to prove an equally safe evasion of the existing
patent. But Boulton and Watt having taken the necessary steps
to defend their right, several actions were tried, in which they
proved successful, and then the mine lords were compelled to disgorge.
When they found that Hornblower could be of no farther
use to them, they abandoned him—threw him away like a
sucked orange; and shortly after we find him a prisoner for debt
in the King’s Bench, almost in a state of starvation. Nor do we
hear any thing more of Edward Bull after the issue of the Boulton
and Watt trial.

Like the other Cornish engineers, young Trevithick took an
active part from the first in opposing the Birmingham patent, and
he is said to have constructed several engines, with the assistance
of William Bull (formerly an erector of Watt’s machines), with
the object of evading it. These engines are said to have been
highly creditable to their makers, working to the entire satisfaction
of the mine-owners. The issue of the Watt trial, however,
which declared all such engines to be piracies, brought to an end
for a time a business which would otherwise have proved a very
profitable one, and Trevithick’s partnership with Bull then came
to an end.

While carrying on his business, Trevithick had frequent occasion
to visit Mr. Harvey’s iron foundery at Hayle, then a small
work, but now one of the largest in the West of England, the
Cornish pumping-engines turned out by Harvey and Co. being
the very best of their kind. During these visits Trevithick became
acquainted with the various members of Mr. Harvey’s family,
and in course of time he contracted an engagement with one
of his daughters, Miss Jane Harvey, to whom he was married in
November, 1797.

A few years later we find Trevithick engaged in partnership
with his cousin, Andrew Vivian, also an engineer. They carried
on their business of engine-making at Camborne, a mining town
situated in the midst of the mining district, a few miles south of
Redruth. Watt’s patent-right expired in 1800, and from that
time the Cornish engineers were free to make engines after their
own methods. Trevithick was not content to follow in the beaten[77]
paths, but, being of a highly speculative turn, he occupied himself
in contriving various new methods of employing steam with
the object of economizing fuel and increasing the effective power
of the engine.

From an early period he entertained the idea of making the
expansive force of steam act directly on both sides of the piston
on the high-pressure principle, and thus getting rid of the process
of condensation as in Watt’s engines. Although Cugnot had employed
high-pressure steam in his road locomotive, and Murdock
in his model, and although Watt had distinctly specified the action
of steam at high-pressure as well as low in his patents of
1769, 1782, and 1784, the idea was not embodied in any practicable
working engine until the subject was taken in hand by Trevithick.
The results of his long and careful study were embodied
in the patent which he took out in 1802, in his own and Vivian’s
name, for an improved steam-engine, and “the application thereof
for driving carriages and for other purposes.”

The arrangement of Trevithick’s engine was exceedingly ingenious.
It exhibited a beautiful simplicity of parts; the machinery
was arranged in a highly effective form, uniting strength
with solidity and portability, and enabling the power of steam to
be employed with very great rapidity, economy, and force. Watt’s
principal objection to using high-pressure steam consisted in the
danger to which the boiler was exposed of being burst by internal
pressure. In Trevithick’s engine, this was avoided by using
a cylindrical wrought-iron boiler, being the form capable of presenting
the greatest resistance to the expansive force of steam.
Boilers of this kind were not, however, new. Oliver Evans, of
Delaware, had made use of them in his high-pressure engines
prior to the date of Trevithick’s patent; and, as Evans did not
claim the cylindrical boiler, it is probable that the invention was
in use before his time. Nevertheless, Trevithick had the merit
of introducing the round boilers into Cornwall, where they are
still known as “Trevithick boilers.” The saving in fuel effected
by their use was such that in 1812 the Messrs. Williams, of Scorrier,
made Trevithick a present of £300, in acknowledgment of
the benefits arising to their mines from that source alone.

Trevithick’s steam-carriage was the most compact and handsome
vehicle of the kind that had yet been invented, and, indeed,[78]
as regards arrangement, it has scarcely to this day been surpassed.
It consisted of a carriage capable of accommodating some
half-dozen passengers, underneath which was the engine and machinery
inclosed, about the size of an orchestra drum, the whole
being supported on four wheels—two in front, by which it was
guided, and two behind, by which it was driven. The engine
had but one cylinder. The piston-rod outside the cylinder was
double, and drove a cross-piece, working in guides, on the opposite
side of the cranked axle to the cylinder, the crank of the
axle revolving between the double parts of the piston-rod.
Toothed wheels were attached to this axle, which worked into
other toothed wheels fixed on the axle of the driving-wheels.
The steam-cocks were opened and shut by a connection with the
crank-axle; and the force-pump, with which the boiler was supplied
with water, was also worked from it, as were the bellows to
blow the fire and thereby keep up the combustion in the furnace.

The specification clearly alludes to the use of the engine on
railroads as follows: “It is also to be noticed that we do occasionally,
or in certain cases, make the external periphery of the
wheels uneven by projecting heads of nails or bolts, or cross
grooves or fittings to railroads where required, and that in cases
of hard pull we cause a lever, belt, or claw to project through the
rim of one or both of the said wheels, so as to take hold of the
ground, but that, in general, the ordinary structure or figure of
the external surface of those wheels will be found to answer the
intended purpose.”

The specification also shows the application of the high-pressure
engine on the same principle to the driving of a sugar-mill,
or for other purposes where a fixed power is required, dispensing
with condenser, cistern, air-pump, and cold-water pump. In the
year 1803, a small engine of this kind was erected after Trevithick’s
plan at Marazion, which worked by steam of at least 30
lbs. on the inch above atmospheric pressure, and gave much satisfaction.

The first experimental steam-carriage was constructed by Trevithick
and Vivian in their workshops at Camborne in 1803, and
was tried by them on the public road adjoining the town, as well
as in the street of the town itself. John Petherick, a native of
Camborne, who was alive in 1858, stated in a letter to Mr. Edward[79]
Williams that he well remembered seeing the engine, worked
by Mr. Trevithick himself, come through the place, to the
great wonder of the inhabitants. He says, “The experiment was
satisfactory only as long as the steam pressure could be kept up.
During that continuance Trevithick called upon the people to
‘jump up,’ so as to create a load on the engine; and it soon became
covered with men, which did not seem to make any difference
to the power or speed so long as the steam was kept up.
This was sought to be done by the application of a cylindrical
horizontal bellows worked by the engine itself; but the attempt
to keep up the power of the steam for any considerable time
proved a failure.”

Trevithick, however, made several alterations in the engine
which had the effect of improving it, and its success was such
that he determined to take it to London and exhibit it there as
the most recent novelty in steam mechanism. It was successfully
run by road from Camborne to Plymouth, a distance of about
ninety miles. At Plymouth it was shipped for London, where
it shortly after arrived in safety, and excited considerable curiosity.
It was run on the waste ground in the vicinity of the
present Bethlehem Hospital, as well as on Lord’s cricket-ground.
There Sir Humphry Davy, Mr. Davies Gilbert, and other scientific
gentlemen inspected the machine and rode upon it. Several
of them took the steering of the carriage by turns, and they
expressed their satisfaction with the mechanism by which it was
directed. Sir Humphry, writing to a friend in Cornwall, said,
“I shall soon hope to hear that the roads of England are the
haunts of Captain Trevithick’s dragons—a characteristic name.”
After the experiment at Lord’s, the carriage was run along the
New-road, and down Gray’s-Inn Lane, to the premises of a carriage-builder
in Long Acre. To show the adaptability of the engine
for fixed uses, Trevithick had it taken from the carriage on
the day after this trial and removed to the shop of a cutler,
where he applied it with success to the driving of the machinery.

The steam-carriage shortly became the talk of the town, and
the public curiosity being on the increase, Trevithick resolved on
inclosing a piece of ground on the site of the present Euston station
of the London and Northwestern Railway, and admitting
persons to see the exhibition of his engine at so much a head.[80]
He had a tram-road laid down in an elliptical form within the
inclosure, and the carriage was run round it on the rails in the
sight of a great number of spectators. On the second day another
crowd collected to see the exhibition, but, for what reason is
not known, although it is said to have been through one of Trevithick’s
freaks of temper, the place was closed and the engine removed.
It is, however, not improbable that the inventor had
come to the conclusion that the state of the roads at that time
was such as to preclude its coming into general use for purposes
of ordinary traffic.

While the steam-carriage was being exhibited, a gentleman was
laying heavy wagers as to the weight which could be hauled by
a single horse on the Wandsworth and Croydon iron tram-way;
and the number and weight of wagons drawn by the horse were
something surprising. Trevithick very probably put the two
things together—the steam-horse and the iron-way—and kept the
performance in mind when he proceeded to construct his second
or railway locomotive. In the mean time, having dismantled his
steam-carriage, sent back the phaeton to the coach-builder to
whom it belonged, and sold the little engine which had worked
the machine, he returned to Camborne to carry on his business.
In the course of the year 1803 he went to Pen-y-darran, in South
Wales, to erect a forge engine for the iron-works there; and,
when it was finished, he began the erection of a railway locomotive—the
first ever constructed. There were already, as above
stated, several lines of rail laid down in the district for the accommodation
of the coal and iron works. That between Merthyr
Tydvil and Cardiff was the longest and most important, and
it had been at work for some years. It had probably occurred
to Trevithick that here was a fine opportunity for putting to practical
test the powers of the locomotive, and he proceeded to construct
one accordingly in the workshops at Pen-y-darran.

This first railway locomotive was finished and tried upon the
Merthyr tram-road on the 21st of February, 1804. It had a cylindrical
wrought-iron boiler with flat ends. The furnace and
flue were inside the boiler, the flue returning, having its exit at
the same end at which it entered, so as to increase the heating
surface. The cylinder, 4-3/4 in. in diameter, was placed horizontally
in the end of the boiler, and the waste steam was thrown into[81]
the stack. The wheels were worked in the same manner as in
the carriage engine already described; and a fly-wheel was added
on one side, to secure a continuous rotary motion at the end
of each stroke of the piston. The pressure of the steam was
about 40 lbs. on the inch. The engine ran upon four wheels,
coupled by cog-wheels, and those who remember the engine say
that the four wheels were smooth.

On the first trial, this engine drew for a distance of nine miles
ten tons of bar iron, together with the necessary carriages, water,
and fuel, at the rate of five and a half miles an hour. Rees Jones,
an old engine-fitter, who helped to erect the engine, and was alive
in 1858, gave Mr. Menelaus the following account of its performances:
“When the engine was finished, she was used for bringing
down metal from the old forge. She worked very well; but
frequently, from her weight, broke the tram-plates, and also the
hooks between the trams. After working for some time in this
way, she took a journey of iron from Pen-y-darran down the
Basin Road, upon which road she was intended to work. On the
journey she broke a great many of the tram-plates; and, before
reaching the Basin, she ran off the road, and was brought back to
Pen-y-darran by horses. The engine was never used as a locomotive
after this; but she was used as a stationary engine, and
worked in this way for several years.”

[82]

So far as the locomotive was concerned it was a remarkable
success. The defect lay not in the engine so much as in the road.
This was formed of plate-rails of cast iron, with a guiding flange
upon the rail instead of on the engine wheels, as in the modern
locomotive. The rails were also of a very weak form, considering
the quantity of iron in them; and, though they were sufficient
to bear the loaded wagons mounted upon small wheels, as
ordinarily drawn along them by horses, they were found quite
insufficient to bear the weight of Trevithick’s engine. To relay
the road of sufficient strength would have involved a heavy outlay,
which the owners were unwilling to incur, not yet perceiving
the advantage, in an economical point of view, of employing engine
in lieu of horse power. The locomotive was accordingly
taken off the road, and the experiment, successful though it had
been, was brought to an end.

Trevithick had, however, by means of his Pen-y-darran engine,
in a great measure solved the problem of steam locomotion on
railways. He had produced a compact engine, working on the
high-pressure principle, capable of carrying fuel and water sufficient
for a journey of considerable length, and of drawing loaded
wagons at five and a half miles an hour. He had shown by his
smooth-wheeled locomotive that the weight of the engine had
given sufficient adhesion for the haulage of the load. He had
discharged the steam into the chimney, though not for the purpose
of increasing the draught, as he employed bellows for that
purpose. It appears, however, that Trevithick’s friend, Mr. Davies
Gilbert, afterward President of the Royal Society, especially
noticed the effect of discharging the waste steam into the chimney
of the Pen-y-darran engine. He observed that when the engine
moved, at each puff the fire brightened, while scarcely any
visible steam or smoke came from the chimney.

Mr. Gilbert published the result of his observations in “Nicholson’s
Journal” for September, 1805, and the attention of Mr.
Nicholson, the editor, having thereby been called to the subject,
he proceeded to make a series of experiments, the result of which
was that in 1806 he took out a patent for a steam-blasting apparatus,
by which he proposed to apply high-pressure steam to force
along currents of air for various useful purposes, including the
urging of furnace and other fires. It is thus obvious that the[83]
principle of the blast-pipe was known to both Gilbert and Nicholson
at this early period; but it is somewhat remarkable that
Trevithick himself should have remained skeptical as to its use,
for as late as 1815 we find him taking out a patent, in which,
among other improvements, he included a method of urging his
fire by fanners, similar to a winnowing machine.

In the mean time Trevithick occupied himself in carrying on
the various business of a general engineer, and was ready to embark
in any enterprise likely to give scope for his inventive skill.
In whatever work he was employed, he was sure to introduce new
methods and arrangements, if not new inventions. He was full
of speculative enthusiasm, a great theorist, and yet an indefatigable
experimenter. At the beginning of 1806—the year after the
locomotive had been taken off the Merthyr Tydvil tram-road—he
made arrangements for entering into a contract for ballasting all
the shipping in the Thames. At the end of a letter written by
him on the 18th of February in that year to Davies Gilbert, respecting
a puffer engine, he said, “I am about to enter into a contract
with the Trinity Board for lifting up ballast out of the bottom
of the Thames for all the shipping. The first quantity stated
was 300,000 tons a year, but now they state 500,000 tons. I am
to do nothing but wind up the chain for 6d. per ton, which is now
done by men. They never lift it above twenty-five feet high—a
man will now get up ten tons for 7s. My engine at Dalcoath
has lifted about 100 tons that height with one bushel of coals. I
have two engines already finished for the purpose, and shall be
in town in about fifteen days for to set them to work. They propose
to engage with me for twenty-one years.”[16] The contract was
not, however, entered into. Trevithick quarreled with the capitalists
who had found the money for the trials, and the “Blazer” and
“Plymouth,” the vessels in which his engines and machinery had
been fitted, fell into other hands.

Trevithick, nevertheless, seems to have been on the highway to
fortune, for, at the beginning of 1806, he had received orders for
nine engines in one month, all for Cornwall; and he expected
orders for four others. He had also in view the construction of
a railway; but nothing came of this project. More hopeful still,
as regarded immediate returns, was the Cornish engine business,[84]
which presented a very wide field. Now that the trade had been
thrown open by the expiry of Boulton and Watt’s patent, competition
had sprung up, and many new makers and inventors of engines
were ready to supply the demand.

Among the most prominent of these were Trevithick and Woolf.
Trevithick was the most original and speculative, Woolf the most
plodding and practical, and the most successful. Trevithick’s ingenuity
exhibited itself in his schemes for working Boulton and
Watt’s pumping-engine by high-pressure steam, by means of his
cylindrical wrought-iron boiler. He proposed to expand the
steam down to low pressure previous to condensation, thereby anticipating
by many years the Cornish engine now in use. The
suggestion was not, however, then acted on, and he fell back on
his original design of a simple non-condensing high-pressure engine.
One of these was erected at Dalcoath mine to draw the
ores there. It was called “the puffer” by the mining people, from
its puffing the steam direct into the air; but its performances did
not compare favorably with those of the ordinary condensing
engines of Boulton and Watt, and the engine did not come into
general use.

Trevithick was not satisfied to carry on a prosperous engine
business in Cornwall. Camborne was too small for him, and the
Cornish mining districts presented too limited a field for his ambitious
spirit. So he came to London, the Patent-office drawing
him as the loadstone does the needle. In 1808 he took out two
patents, one for “certain machinery for towing, driving, or forcing
and discharging ships and other vessels of their cargoes,” and the
other for “a new method of stowing cargoes of ships.” In 1809
he took out another patent for constructing docks, ships, etc., and
propelling vessels.

In these patents, Trevithick was associated with one Robert
Dickinson, of Great Queen Street, but his name stands first in
the specification, wherein he describes himself as “of Rotherhithe,
in the county of Surrey, engineer.” By the first of these
patents he proposed to tow vessels by means of a rowing wheel
shaped like an undershot water-wheel furnished with floats placed
vertically in a box, and worked by a steam-engine, which he also
proposed to employ in the loading and unloading of the vessel,
but it is not known that the plan was ever introduced into practical[85]
use. The patent of 1809 included a floating dock or caisson
made of wrought-iron plates, in which a ship might be docked
while afloat, and, after the water had been pumped out of the
caisson, repaired without moving her stores, masts, or furniture.
This invention has since been carried out in practice by the
Messrs. Rennie in the floating iron dock which they have recently
constructed for the Spanish government. Another invention
included in the specification was the construction of merchant
and war ships of wrought-iron plates strongly riveted together,
with their decks supported by wrought-iron beams, and the masts,
bowsprits, and booms also of tubular wrought iron, thereby anticipating
by many years the form and structure of vessels now
in common use.

While Trevithick lived at Rotherhithe, he entered upon a remarkable
enterprise—no less than the construction of a tunnel
under the Thames—a work which was carried out with so much
difficulty by Sir Isambard Brunel some twenty years later. Several
schemes had been proposed at different times for connecting
the two banks of the river by an underground communication.
As early as 1798, Ralph Dodd suggested a tunnel under
the Thames between Gravesend and Tilbury, and in 1802 Mr.
Vazie projected a tunnel from Rotherhithe to Limehouse. A
company was formed to carry out the latter scheme, and a shaft
was sunk, at considerable expense, to a depth of 76 feet below
high water. The works were from time to time suspended, and
it was not until the year 1807, when Trevithick was appointed
engineer of the work, that arrangements were made for proceeding
with the driftway under the bed of the Thames. After about
five months’ working, the drift was driven for a length of 953
feet, when the roof gave way and the water burst in. The opening
was, however, plugged by clay in bags thrown into the river,
and the work proceeded until 1028 feet had been accomplished.
Then the water burst in again, and the process of plugging and
pumping the water out of the drift was repeated. After seventy
more feet had been added to the excavation, there was another
irruption, which completely flooded the driftway, and the water
rose nearly to the top of the shaft. This difficulty was, however,
again overcome, and with great danger twenty more feet were
accomplished; but the bursts of water became so frequent and[86]
unmanageable that at length the face of the drift was timbered
up and the work abandoned. Trevithick, who had been promised
a reward of £1000 if the tunnel succeeded, thus lost both
his labor and his reward. The only remuneration he received
from the Company was a hundred guineas, which were paid to
him according to agreement, provided he carried the excavation
to the extent of 1000 yards, which he did.

Trevithick returned to Camborne in 1809, where we find him
busily occupied with new projects, and introducing his new engine
worked by water-power, the first of which was put up at the
Druid mine, as well as in perfecting his high-pressure engine and
its working by expansion. One of the first of such engines was
erected at the Huel Prosper mine, of which he was engineer;
and this, as well as others subsequently constructed on the same
principle, proved quite successful.

In 1815 Trevithick took out a farther patent, embodying several
important applications of steam-power. One of these consisted
in “causing steam of a high pressure to spout out against
the atmosphere, and by its recoiling force to produce motion in a
direction contrary to the issuing steam, similar to the motion produced
in a rocket, or to the recoil of a gun.” This was, however,
but a revival of the ancient Œolipile described by Hero, and
known as “Hero’s engine.”

In another part of his specification Trevithick described the
screw-propeller as “a screw or a number of leaves placed obliquely
round an axis similar to the vanes of a smoke-jack, which
shall be made to revolve with great speed in a line with the required
motion of the ship, or parallel to the same line of motion.”
In a second part of the specification, he described a plunger or
pole-engine in which the steam worked at high-pressure. The
first engine of this kind was erected by Trevithick at Herland in
1815, but the result was not equal to his expectations, though the
principle was afterward successfully applied by Mr. William Sims,
who purchased the patent-right.

In this specification Trevithick also described a tubular boiler
of a new construction for the purpose of more rapidly producing
high-pressure steam, the heating surface being extended by constructing
the boiler of a number of small perpendicular tubes,
closed at the bottom, but all opening at the top into a common[87]
reservoir, from whence they received their water, and into which
the steam of all the tubes was united.

While Trevithick was engaged in these ingenious projects, an
event occurred which, though it promised to issue in the most
splendid results, proved the greatest misfortune of his life. We
refer to his adventures in connection with the gold mines of Peru.
Many of the richest of them had been drowned out, the pumping
machinery of the country being incapable of clearing them of
water. The districts in which they were situated were almost inaccessible
to ordinary traffic, all transport being conducted on the
backs of men or of mules. The parts of an ordinary condensing
engine were too ponderous to be carried up these mountain
heights, and it was evident that, unless some lighter sort of engine
could be employed, the mines in question must be abandoned.

Mr. Uvillé, a Swiss gentleman interested in South American
mining, came over from Peru to England in 1811 for the purpose
of making inquiries about such an engine, but he received no encouragement.
He was about to return to Lima, in despair of accomplishing
his object, when, one day, accidentally passing a shop-window
in Fitzroy Square, he caught sight of an engine exposed
for sale which immediately attracted his attention. It was the
engine constructed by Trevithick for his first locomotive, which
he had sold some years before, on the sudden abandonment of
the exhibition of its performances in London. Mr. Uvillé was
so much pleased with its construction and mode of action that
he at once purchased it and took it out with him to South America.
Arrived there, he had the engine transported across the
mountains to the rich mining district of Pasco, about a hundred
miles north of Lima, to try its effects on the highest mountain
ridges.

The experiment was so satisfactory that an association of influential
gentlemen was immediately formed to introduce the engine
on a large scale, and enter into contracts with the mine-owners
for clearing their shafts of the water which drowned them.
The Viceroy of Peru approved the plan, and the association dispatched
Mr. Uvillé to England to purchase the requisite engines.
He took ship for Falmouth about the end of 1812 for the purpose
of finding out Trevithick. He only knew of Trevithick by name,[88]
and that he lived in Cornwall, but nothing farther. Being full
of his subject, however, he could not refrain from conversing on
the subject with the passengers on board the ship by which he
sailed, and it so happened that one of them—a Mr. Teague—was
a relative of Trevithick, who promised, shortly after their landing,
to introduce him to the inventor.

Mr. Teague was as good as his word, and in the course of a few
days Uvillé was enabled to discuss the scheme with Trevithick at
his own house at Camborne, where he still resided. The result
was an order for a number of high-pressure pumping-engines,
which were put in hand at once; and on the 1st of September,
1814, nine of them were shipped at Portsmouth for Lima, accompanied
by Uvillé and three Cornish engineers, one of whom was
William Bull, of Chasewater, Trevithick’s first partner.

The engines reached Lima in safety, and were welcomed by a
royal salute and with public rejoicings. Such, however, was the
difficulty of transporting the materials across the mountains, that
it was not until the middle of the year 1816 that the first engine
was erected and set to work to pump out the Santa Rosa mine,
in the royal mineral territory of Yaüricocha. The association of
gentlemen to whom the engines belonged had entered into a contract
to drain this among other mines, on condition of sharing in
the gross produce of the ores to the extent of about 25 per cent.
of the whole amount raised. The result of the first working of
the engine was so satisfactory that the projectors were filled with
no less astonishment than delight, and they characterized the undertaking
as one from which they “anticipated a torrent of silver
that would fill surrounding nations with astonishment.”

In the mean time Trevithick was proceeding at home with the
manufacture of the remaining engines, as well as new coining apparatus
for the Peruvian mint, and furnaces for purifying silver
ore by fusion; and with these engines and apparatus he set sail
for America in October, 1816, reaching Lima in safety in the following
February. He was received with almost royal honors.
The government “Gazette” officially announced “the arrival of
Don Ricardo Trevithick, an eminent professor of mechanics, machinery,
and mineralogy, inventor and constructor of the engines
of the last patent, and who directed in England the execution of
the machinery now at work in Pasco.” The lord warden was ordered[89]
by the viceroy to escort Trevithick to the mines accompanied
by a guard of honor. The news of his expected arrival there
occasioned great rejoicings, and the chief men of the district came
down the mountains to meet and welcome him. Uvillé wrote to
his associates that Trevithick had been sent out “by heaven for
the prosperity of the mines, and that the lord warden proposed to
erect his statue in solid silver.” Trevithick himself wrote home
to his friends in Cornwall that he had before him the prospect of
almost boundless wealth, having, in addition to his emoluments as
patentee, obtained a fifth share in the Lima Company, which, he
expected, on a moderate computation, would yield him about
£100,000 a year!

But these brilliant prospects were suddenly blasted by the Peruvian
revolution which broke out in the following year. While
Mr. Boaze was reading his paper[17] before the Royal Geological
Society of Cornwall, in which these anticipations of Trevithick’s
fame and fortune were so glowingly described, Lord Cochrane
was on his way to South America to take the command of the
Chilian fleet in its attack of the ports of Peru, still in the possession
of the Spaniards.

Toward the end of 1818, Lord Cochrane hoisted his flag, and
shortly after proceeded to assail the Spanish fleet in Callao Harbor.
This proved the signal for a general insurrection, during
the continuance of which the commercial and industrial affairs
of the province were completely paralyzed. The pumping-engines
of Trevithick were now of comparatively little use in
pumping water out of mines in which the miners would no longer
work. Although Lima was abandoned by the Spaniards toward
the end of 1821, the civil war continued to rage for several
years longer, until at length the independence of Peru was
achieved; but it was long before the population were content to
settle down as before, and follow the ordinary pursuits of industry
and commerce.

The result to Trevithick was, that he and his partners in the
Mining Company were consigned to ruin. It has been said that
the engineer joined the patriotic party, and invented for Lord[90]
Cochrane an ingenious gun-carriage centred and equally balanced
on pivots, and easily worked by machinery; but of this no mention
is made by Lord Cochrane in his “Memoirs.” The Patriots
kept Trevithick on the mountains as a sort of patron and protector
of their interests; but for this very reason he became proportionately
obnoxious to the Royalists, who, looking upon him as
the agent through whom the patriotic party obtained the sinews
of war, destroyed his engines, and broke up his machinery wherever
they could. At length he determined to escape from Peru,
and fled northward across the mountains, accompanied by a single
friend, making for the Isthmus of Panamá. In the course of
this long, toilsome, and dangerous journey, he encountered great
privations; he slept in the forest at night, traveled on foot by day,
and crossed the streams by swimming. At length, his clothes torn,
worn, and hanging almost in shreds, and his baggage all lost, he
succeeded in reaching the port of Cartagena, on the Gulf of Darien,
almost destitute.

Here he encountered Robert Stephenson, who was waiting at
the one inn of the place until a ship was ready to set sail for England.
Stephenson had finished his engagement with the Colombian
Mining Company for which he had been working, and was
eager to return home. When Trevithick entered the room in
which he was sitting, Stephenson at once saw that he was an Englishman.
He stood some six feet in height, and, though well
proportioned when in ordinary health, he was now gaunt and hollow,
the picture of privation and misery.

Stephenson made up to the stranger, and was not a little surprised
to find that he was no other than the famous engineer,
Trevithick, the builder of the first patent locomotive, and who,
when he last heard of him, was accumulating so gigantic a fortune
in Peru. Though now penniless, Trevithick was as full of
speculation as ever, and related to Stephenson that he was on his
way home for the purpose of organizing another gold-mining
company, which should make the fortunes of all who took part
in it. He was, however, in the mean time, unable to pay for his
passage, and Stephenson lent him the requisite money for the
purpose of reaching his home in Cornwall.

As there was no vessel likely to sail for England for some time,
Stephenson and Trevithick took the first ship bound for New[91]
York. After a stormy passage, full of adventure and peril, the
vessel was driven on a lee-shore, and the passengers and crew
barely escaped with their lives. On reaching New York, Trevithick
immediately set sail for England, and he landed safe at Falmouth
in October, 1827, bringing back with him a pair of silver
spurs, the only remnant which he had preserved of those “torrents
of silver” which his engines were to raise from the mines
of Peru.

Immediately on his return home, Trevithick memorialized the
government for some remuneration adequate to the great benefit
which the country had derived from his invention of the high-pressure
steam-engine, and his introduction of the cylindrical
boiler. The petition was prepared in December, 1827, and was
cheerfully signed by the leading mine-owners and engineers in
Cornwall; but there their efforts on his behalf ended.

He took out two more patents—one in 1831, for a new method
of heating apartments, and another in 1832, for improvements in
the steam-engine, and the application of steam-power to navigation
and locomotion; but neither of them seems to have proved
of any service to him. His new improvement in the steam-engine
was neither more nor less than the invention of an apparatus similar
to that which has quite recently come into use for employing
superheated steam as a means of working the engine more effectively
and economically. The patent also included a method of
propelling ships by ejecting water through a tube with great force
and speed in a direction opposite to the course of the vessel, a
method since reinvented in many forms, though not yet successfully
introduced in practice.

Strange to say, though Trevithick had been so intimately connected
with the practical introduction of the Locomotive, he
seems to have taken but little interest in its introduction upon
railways, but confined himself to advocating its employment on
common roads as its most useful application.[18] Though in many
things he was before his age, here he was unquestionably behind[92]
it. But Trevithick was now an old man; his constitution was
broken, and his energy worked out. Younger men were in the
field, less ingenious and speculative, but more practical and energetic;
and in the blaze of their fame the Cornish engineer was
forgotten.

During the last year of his life Trevithick resided at Dartford,
in Kent. He had induced the Messrs. Hall, the engineers of that
place, to give him an opportunity of testing the value of his last invention—that
of a vessel driven by the ejection of water through
a tube—and he went there to superintend the construction of the
necessary engine and apparatus. The vessel was duly fitted up,
and several experiments were made with it in the adjoining creek,
but it did not realize a speed of more than four miles an hour.
Trevithick, being of opinion that the engine-power was insufficient,
proceeded to have a new engine constructed, to the boiler
of which, within the furnace, numerous tubes were attached,
round which the fire played. So much steam was raised by this
arrangement that the piston “blew;” but still the result of the
experiments was unsatisfactory. While laboring at these inventions,
and planning new arrangements never to be carried out, the
engineer was seized by the illness of which he died, on the 22d of
April, 1833, in the 62d year of his age.

As Trevithick was entirely without means at his death, besides
being some sixty pounds in debt to the landlord of the Bull Inn,
where he had been lodging for nearly a year, he would probably
have been buried at the expense of the parish but for the Messrs.
Hall and their workmen, who raised a sum sufficient to give the
“great inventor” a decent burial; and they followed his remains
to the grave in Deptford Church-yard, where he lies without a
stone to mark his resting-place.

There can be no doubt as to the great mechanical ability of
Trevithick. He was a man of original and intuitive genius in
invention. Every mechanical arrangement which he undertook
to study issued from his hands transformed and improved. But
there he rested. He struck out many inventions, and left them
to take care of themselves. His great failing was the want of[93]
perseverance. His mind was always full of projects; but his very
genius led him astray in search of new things, while his imagination
often outran his judgment. Hence his life was but a series
of beginnings.

Look at the extraordinary things that Trevithick began. He
made the first railway locomotive, and cast the invention aside,
leaving it to others to take it up and prosecute it to a successful
issue. He introduced, if he did not invent, the cylindrical boiler
and the high-pressure engine, which increased so enormously the
steam-power of the world; but he reaped the profits of neither.
He invented an oscillating engine and a screw propeller; he took
out a patent for using superheated steam, as well as for wrought-iron
ships and wrought-iron floating docks; but he left it to others
to introduce these several inventions.

Never was there such a series of splendid mechanical beginnings.
He began a Thames Tunnel and abandoned it. He went
to South America with the prospect of making a gigantic fortune,
but he had scarcely begun to gather in his gold than he was
forced to fly, and returned home destitute. This last event, however,
was a misfortune which no efforts on his part could have
prevented. But even when he had the best chances, Trevithick
threw them away. When he had brought his road locomotive to
London to exhibit, and was beginning to excite the curiosity of
the public respecting it, he suddenly closed the exhibition in a fit
of caprice, removed the engine, and returned to Cornwall in a
tiff. The failure, also, of the railroad on which his locomotive
traveled so provoked him that he at once abandoned the enterprise
in disgust.

There may have been some moral twist in the engineer’s character,
into which we do not seek to pry; but it seems clear that
he was wanting in that resolute perseverance, that power of fighting
an up-hill battle, without which no great enterprise can be
conducted to a successful issue. In this respect the character of
Richard Trevithick presents a remarkable contrast to that of
George Stephenson, who took up only one of the many projects
which the other had cast aside, and by dint of application, industry,
and perseverance, carried into effect one of the most remarkable
but peaceful revolutions which has ever been accomplished
in any age or country.

[94]

We now proceed to describe the history of this revolution in
connection with the Life of George Stephenson, and to trace the
locomotive through its several stages of development until we
find it recognized as one of the most vigorous and untiring workers
in the entire world of industry.

[95]

LIVES
OF

GEORGE AND ROBERT STEPHENSON.

[96]

[97]

LIFE OF GEORGE STEPHENSON, Etc.

CHAPTER I.

THE NEWCASTLE COAL-FIELD—GEORGE STEPHENSON’S EARLY YEARS.

In no quarter of England have greater changes been wrought
by the successive advances made in the practical science of engineering
than in the extensive colliery districts of the North, of
which Newcastle-upon-Tyne is the centre and the capital.

In ancient times the Romans planted a colony at Newcastle,
throwing a bridge across the Tyne near the site of the low-level
bridge shown in the prefixed engraving, and erecting a strong
fortification above it on the high ground now occupied by the
Central Railway Station. North and northwest lay a wild country,
abounding in moors, mountains, and morasses, but occupied
to a certain extent by fierce and barbarous tribes. To defend
the young colony against their ravages, a strong wall was built
by the Romans, extending from Wallsend on the north bank of
the Tyne, a few miles below Newcastle, across the country to
Burgh-upon-Sands on the Solway Firth. The remains of the
wall are still to be traced in the less populous hill-districts of
Northumberland. In the neighborhood of Newcastle they have
been gradually effaced by the works of succeeding generations,
though the “Wallsend” coal consumed in our household fires still
serves to remind us of the great Roman work.

After the withdrawal of the Romans, Northumbria became
planted by immigrant Saxons from North Germany and Norsemen
from Scandinavia, whose eorls or earls made Newcastle their
principal seat. Then came the Normans, from whose New Castle,
built some eight hundred years since, the town derives its
present name. The keep of this venerable structure, black with
age and smoke, still stands entire at the northern end of the noble[98]
high-level bridge—the utilitarian work of modern times thus
confronting the warlike relic of the older civilization.

MAP OF NEWCASTLE DISTRICT.

The nearness of Newcastle to the Scotch Border was a great
hinderance to its security and progress in the middle ages of English
history. Indeed, the district between it and Berwick continued
to be ravaged by moss-troopers long after the union of the
crowns. The gentry lived in their strong Peel castles; even the
larger farm-houses were fortified; and blood-hounds were trained
for the purpose of tracking the cattle-reavers to their retreats in
the hills. The judges of Assize rode from Carlisle to Newcastle
guarded by an escort armed to the teeth. A tribute called “dagger
and protection money” was annually paid by the sheriff of
Newcastle for the purpose of providing daggers and other weapons
for the escort; and, though the need of such protection has
long since ceased, the tribute continues to be paid in broad gold
pieces of the time of Charles the First.

Until about the middle of last century the roads across Northumberland
were little better than horse-tracks, and not many
years since the primitive agricultural cart with solid wooden
wheels was almost as common in the western parts of the county
as it is in Spain now. The track of the old Roman road long
continued to be the most practicable route between Newcastle
and Carlisle, the traffic between the two towns having been carried
on pack-horses until within a comparatively recent period.

Since that time great changes have taken place on the Tyne.
When wood for firing became scarce and dear, and the forests of[99]
the South of England were found inadequate to supply the increasing
demand for fuel, attention was turned to the rich stores
of coal lying underground in the neighborhood of Newcastle and
Durham. It then became an article of increasing export, and
“sea-coal” fires gradually superseded those of wood. Hence an
old writer describes Newcastle as “the Eye of the North, and the
Hearth that warmeth the South parts of this kingdom with Fire.”
Fuel became the staple product of the district, the quantity exported
increasing from year to year, until the coal raised from
these northern mines amounts to upward of sixteen millions of
tons a year, of which not less than nine millions are annually conveyed
away by sea.

Newcastle has in the mean time spread in all directions far beyond
its ancient boundaries. From a walled mediæval town of
monks and merchants, it has been converted into a busy centre
of commerce and manufactures inhabited by nearly 100,000 people.
It is no longer a Border fortress—a “shield and defense
against the invasions and frequent insults of the Scots,” as described
in ancient charters—but a busy centre of peaceful industry,
and the outlet for a vast amount of steam-power, which is exported
in the form of coal to all parts of the world. Newcastle
is in many respects a town of singular and curious interest, especially
in its older parts, which are full of crooked lanes and narrow
streets, wynds, and chares, formed by tall, antique houses,
rising tier above tier along the steep northern bank of the Tyne,
as the similarly precipitous streets of Gateshead crowd the opposite
shore.

All over the coal region, which extends from the Coquet to the
Tees, about fifty miles from north to south, the surface of the soil
exhibits the signs of extensive underground workings. As you
pass through the country at night, the earth looks as if it were
bursting with fire at many points, the blaze of coke-ovens, iron-furnaces,
and coal-heaps reddening the sky to such a distance that
the horizon seems like a glowing belt of fire.

Among the upper-ground workmen employed at the coal-pits,
the principal are the firemen, engine-men, and brakesmen, who
fire and work the engines, and superintend the machinery by
means of which the collieries are worked. Previous to the introduction
of the steam-engine, the usual machine employed for the[100]
purpose was what is called a “gin.” The gin consists of a large
drum placed horizontally, round which ropes attached to buckets
and corves are wound, which are thus drawn up or sent down the
shafts by a horse traveling in a circular track or “gin race.”
This method was employed for drawing up both coals and water,
and it is still used for the same purpose in small collieries; but
where the quantity of water to be raised is great, pumps worked
by steam-power are called into requisition.

Newcomen’s atmospheric engine was first made use of to work
the pumps, and it continued to be so employed long after the
more powerful and economical condensing engine of Watt had
been invented. In the Newcomen or “fire-engine,” as it was
called, the power is produced by the pressure of the atmosphere
forcing down the piston in the cylinder, on a vacuum being produced
within it by condensation of the contained steam by means
of cold-water injection. The piston-rod is attached to one end
of a lever, while the pump-rod works in connection with the other,
the hydraulic action employed to raise the water being exactly
similar to that of a common sucking-pump.

The working of a Newcomen engine was a clumsy and apparently
a very painful process, accompanied by an extraordinary
amount of wheezing, sighing, creaking, and bumping. When the
pump descended, there was heard a plunge, a heavy sigh, and a
loud bump; then, as it rose, and the sucker began to act, there
was heard a creak, a wheeze, another bump, and then a rush of
water as it was lifted and poured out. Where engines of a more
powerful and improved description were used, as is now the case,
the quantity of water raised is enormous—as much as a million
and a half gallons in the twenty-four hours.

The pitmen, or “the lads belaw,” who work out the coal below
ground, are a peculiar class, quite distinct from the workmen on
the surface. They are a people with peculiar habits, manners,
and character, as much so as fishermen and sailors, to whom, indeed,
they bear, in some respects, a considerable resemblance.
Some fifty years since, they were a much rougher and worse educated
class than they are now; hard workers, but very wild and
uncouth; much given to “steeks,” or strikes; and distinguished,
in their hours of leisure and on pay-nights, for their love of cock-fighting,
dog-fighting, hard drinking, and cuddy races. The pay-night[101]
was a fortnightly saturnalia, in which the pitman’s character
was fully brought out, especially when the “yel” was good.
Though earning much higher wages than the ordinary laboring
population of the upper soil, the latter did not mix nor intermarry
with them, so that they were left to form their own communities,
and hence their marked peculiarities as a class. Indeed, a
sort of traditional disrepute seems long to have clung to the pitmen,
arising perhaps from the nature of their employment, and
from the circumstance that the colliers were among the last classes
enfranchised in England, as they were certainly the last in
Scotland, where they continued bondmen down to the end of last
century. The last thirty years, however, have worked a great
improvement in the moral condition of the Northumbrian pitmen;
the abolition of the twelve months’ bond to the mine, and
the substitution of a month’s notice previous to leaving, having
given them greater freedom and opportunity for obtaining employment;
and day-schools and Sunday-schools, together with the
important influences of railways, have brought them fully up to
a level with the other classes of the laboring population.

The coals, when raised from the pits, are emptied into the wagons
placed alongside, from whence they are sent along the rails
to the staiths erected by the river-side, the wagons sometimes descending
by their own gravity along inclined planes, the wagoner
standing behind to check the speed by means of a convoy or
wooden brake bearing upon the rims of the wheels. Arrived at
the staiths, the wagons are emptied at once into the ships waiting
alongside for cargo. Any one who has sailed down the Tyne
from Newcastle Bridge can not but have been struck with the
appearance of the immense staiths, constructed of timber, which
are erected at short distances from each other on both sides of
the river.

But a great deal of the coal shipped from the Tyne comes from
above-bridge, where sea-going craft can not reach, and is floated
down the river in “keels,” in which the coals are sometimes piled
up according to convenience when large, or, when the coal is
small or tender, it is conveyed in tubs to prevent breakage. These
keels are of a very ancient model—perhaps the oldest extant in
England: they are even said to be of the same build as those in
which the Norsemen navigated the Tyne centuries ago. The[102]
keel is a tubby, grimy-looking craft, rounded fore and aft, with a
single large square sail, which the keel-bullies, as the Tyne watermen
are called, manage with great dexterity; the vessel being
guided by the aid of the “swape,” or great oar, which is used as
a kind of rudder at the stern of the vessel. These keelmen are an
exceedingly hardy class of workmen, not by any means so quarrelsome
as their designation of “bully” would imply—the word
being merely derived from the obsolete term “boolie,” or beloved,
an appellation still in familiar use among brother workers in the
coal districts. One of the most curious sights on the Tyne is the
fleet of hundreds of these black-sailed, black-hulled keels, bringing
down at each tide their black cargoes for the ships at anchor
in the deep water at Shields and other parts of the river below
Newcastle.

These preliminary observations will perhaps be sufficient to explain
the meaning of many of the occupations alluded to, and
the phrases employed, in the course of the following narrative,
some of which might otherwise have been comparatively unintelligible
to the reader.

The colliery village of Wylam is situated on the north bank of
the Tyne, about eight miles west of Newcastle. The Newcastle
and Carlisle Railway runs along the opposite bank; and the traveler
by that line sees the usual signs of a colliery in the unsightly
pumping-engines surrounded by heaps of ashes, coal-dust, and
slag, while a neighboring iron-furnace in full blast throws out
dense smoke and loud jets of steam by day and lurid flames at
night. These works form the nucleus of the village, which is almost
entirely occupied by coal-miners and iron-furnace-men.
The place is remarkable for its large population, but not for its
cleanness or neatness as a village; the houses, as in most colliery
villages, being the property of the owners or lessees, who employ
them in temporarily accommodating the work-people, against
whose earnings there is a weekly set-off for house and coals.
About the end of last century, the estate of which Wylam forms
part belonged to Mr. Blackett, a gentleman of considerable celebrity
in coal-mining, then more generally known as the proprietor
of the “Globe” newspaper.

There is nothing to interest one in the village itself. But a[103]
few hundred yards from its eastern extremity stands a humble
detached dwelling, which will be interesting to many as the birthplace
of one of the most remarkable men of our times—George
Stephenson, the Railway Engineer. It is a common, two-storied,
red-tiled, rubble house, portioned off into four laborers’ apartments.
It is known by the name of High-street House, and was
originally so called because it stands by the side of what used to
be the old riding post-road or street between Newcastle and Hexham,
along which the post was carried on horseback within the
memory of persons living.

The lower room in the west end of this house was the home of
the Stephenson family, and there George Stephenson was born,
the second of a family of six children, on the 9th of June, 1781.
The apartment is now, what it was then, an ordinary laborer’s
dwelling; its walls are unplastered, its floor is of clay, and the
bare rafters are exposed overhead.

Robert Stephenson, or “Old Bob,” as the neighbors familiarly
called him, and his wife Mabel, were a respectable couple, careful
and hard-working. Robert Stephenson’s father was a Scotchman,[104]
who came into England in the capacity of a gentleman’s
servant.[19] Mabel, his wife, was the second daughter of Robert
Carr, a dyer at Ovingham. The Carrs were for several generations
the owners of a house in that village adjoining the church-yard;
and the family tomb-stone may still be seen standing
against the east end of the chancel of the parish church, underneath
the centre lancet window, as the tomb-stone of Thomas
Bewick, the wood-engraver, occupies the western gable. Mabel
Stephenson was a woman of somewhat delicate constitution, and
troubled occasionally, as her neighbors said, with “the vapors.”
But those who remembered her concurred in describing her as
“a real canny body;” and a woman of whom this is said by
general consent in the Newcastle district may be pronounced a
worthy person indeed, for it is about the highest praise of a woman
which Northumbrians can express.

[105]

For some time after their marriage, Robert resided with his
wife at Walbottle, a village situated between Wylam and Newcastle,
where he was employed as a laborer at the colliery; after
which the family removed to Wylam, where he found employment
as fireman of the old pumping-engine at that colliery.

George Stephenson was the second of a family of six children.[20]

It does not appear that the birth of any of the children was
registered in the parish books, the author having made an unsuccessful
search in the registers of Ovingham and Heddon-on-the-Wall
to ascertain the fact.

An old Wylam collier, who remembered George Stephenson’s
father, thus described him: “Geordie’s fayther war like a peer o’
deals nailed thegither, an’ a bit o’ flesh i’ th’ inside; he war as
queer as Dick’s hatband—went thrice aboot, an’ wudn’t tie. His
wife Mabel war a delicat’ boddie, an’ varry flighty. They war
an honest family, but sair hadden doon i’ th’ world.” Indeed,
the earnings of old Robert did not amount to more than twelve
shillings a week; and, as there were six children to maintain,
the family, during their stay at Wylam, were necessarily in very
straitened circumstances. The father’s wages being barely sufficient,
even with the most rigid economy, for the sustenance of
the household, there was little to spare for clothing, and nothing
for education, so that none of the children were sent to school.

Old Robert was a general favorite in the village, especially
among the children, whom he was accustomed to draw about him
while tending the engine-fire, and feast their young imaginations
with tales of Sinbad the Sailor and Robinson Crusoe, besides others[106]
of his own invention; so that “Bob’s engine-fire” came to be
the most popular resort in the village. Another feature in his
character, by which he was long remembered, was his affection
for birds and animals; and he had many tame favorites of both
sorts, which were as fond of resorting to his engine-fire as the
boys and girls themselves. In the winter time he had usually a
flock of tame robins about him; and they would come hopping
familiarly to his feet to pick up the crumbs which he had saved
for them out of his humble dinner. At his cottage he was rarely
without one or more tame blackbirds, which flew about the house,
or in and out at the door. In summer time he would go bird-nesting
with his children; and one day he took his little boy
George to see a blackbird’s nest for the first time. Holding him
up in his arms, he let the wondering boy peep down, through the
branches held aside for the purpose, into a nest full of young
birds—a sight which the boy never forgot, but used to speak of
with delight to his intimate friends when he himself had grown
an old man.

The boy George led the ordinary life of working people’s children.
He played about the doors; went bird-nesting when he
could; and ran errands to the village. He was also an eager listener,
with the other children, to his father’s curious tales, and he
early imbibed from him his affection for birds and animals. In
course of time he was promoted to the office of carrying his father’s
dinner to him while at work, and at home he helped to
nurse his younger brothers and sisters. One of his earliest duties
was to see that the other children were kept out of the way
of the chaldron wagons, which were then dragged by horses
along the wooden tram-road immediately in front of the cottage
door.

This wagon-way was the first in the northern district on which
the experiment of a locomotive engine was tried. But, at the
time of which we speak, the locomotive had scarcely been dreamt
of in England as a practicable working power; horses only were
used to haul the coal; and one of the first sights with which the
boy was familiar was the coal-wagons dragged by them along the
wooden railway at Wylam.

Thus eight years passed; after which, the coal having been
worked out on the north side, the old engine, which had grown[107]
“dismal to look at,” as an old workman described it, was pulled
down; and then old Robert, having obtained employment as a
fireman at the Dewley Burn Colliery, removed with his family to
that place.

Dewley Burn, at this day, consists of a few old-fashioned, low-roofed
cottages standing on either side of a babbling little stream.
They are connected by a rustic wooden bridge, which spans the
rift in front of the doors. In the central one-roomed cottage of
this group, on the right bank, Robert Stephenson lived for a time
with his family, the pit at which he worked standing in the rear
of the cottages.

Young though he was, George was now of an age to be able to
contribute something toward the family maintenance; for, in a
poor man’s house, every child is a burden until his little hands
can be turned to profitable account. That the boy was shrewd
and active, and possessed of a ready mother-wit, will be evident
enough from the following incident. One day his sister Nell
went into Newcastle to buy a bonnet, and Geordie went with her
“for company.” At a draper’s shop in the Bigg Market Nell
found a “chip” quite to her mind, but on pricing it, alas! it was
found to be fifteen pence beyond her means. Girl-like, she had
set her mind upon that bonnet, and no other would please her.
She accordingly left the shop very much dejected. But Geordie
said, “Never heed, Nell; come wi’ me, and I’ll see if I canna win
siller enough to buy the bonnet; stand ye there till I come back.”
Away ran the boy, and disappeared amid the throng of the market,
leaving the girl to wait his return. Long and long she waited,
until it grew dusk, and the market-people had nearly all left.
She had begun to despair, and fears crossed her mind that Geordie
must have been run over and killed, when at last up he came
running, almost breathless. “I’ve gotten the siller for the bonnet,
Nell!” cried he. “Eh, Geordie!” she said, “but hoo hae ye
gotten it?” “Hauddin the gentlemen’s horses!” was the exultant
reply. The bonnet was forthwith bought, and the two returned
to Dewley in triumph.

George’s first regular employment was of a very humble sort.
A widow, named Grace Ainslie, then occupied the neighboring
farm-house of Dewley. She kept a number of cows, and had the
privilege of grazing them along the wagon-ways. She needed a[108]
boy to herd the cows, to keep them out of the way of the wagons,
and prevent their straying or trespassing on the neighbors’ “liberties;”
the boy’s duty was also to bar the gates at night after all
the wagons had passed. George petitioned for this post, and, to
his great joy, he was appointed, at the wage of twopence a day.

It was light employment, and he had plenty of spare time on
his hands, which he spent in bird-nesting, making whistles out of
reeds and scrannel straws, and erecting Liliputian mills in the little
water-streams that ran into the Dewley bog. But his favorite
amusement at this early age was erecting clay engines in conjunction
with his playmate, Bill Thirlwall. The place is still
pointed out where the future engineers made their first essays in
modeling. The boys found the clay for their engines in the adjoining
bog, and the hemlocks which grew about supplied them
with imaginary steam-pipes. They even proceeded to make a
miniature winding-machine in connection with their engine, and
the apparatus was erected upon a bench in front of the Thirlwalls’
cottage. Their corves were made out of hollowed corks;
their ropes were supplied by twine; and a few bits of wood
gleaned from the refuse of the carpenters’ shop completed their
materials. With this apparatus the boys made a show of sending
the corves down the pit and drawing them up again, much to
the marvel of the pitmen. But some mischievous person about
the place seized the opportunity early one morning of smashing
the fragile machinery, greatly to the grief of the young engineers.
We may mention, in passing, that George’s companion
afterward became a workman of repute, and creditably held the
office of engineer at Shilbottle, near Alnwick, for a period of
nearly thirty years.

As Stephenson grew older and abler to work, he was set to
lead the horses when plowing, though scarce big enough to stride
across the furrows; and he used afterward to say that he rode to
his work in the mornings at an hour when most other children of
his age were asleep in their beds. He was also employed to hoe
turnips, and do similar farm-work, for which he was paid the advanced
wage of fourpence a day. But his highest ambition was
to be taken on at the colliery where his father worked; and he
shortly joined his elder brother James there as a “corf-bitter,” or
“picker,” to clear the coal of stones, bats, and dross. His wages[109]
were then advanced to sixpence a day, and afterward to eightpence
when he was sent to drive the gin-horse.

Shortly after, George went to Black Callerton Colliery to drive
the gin there; and, as that colliery lies about two miles across the
fields from Dewley Burn, the boy walked that distance early in
the morning to his work, returning home late in the evening. One
of the old residents at Black Callerton, who remembered him at
that time, described him to the author as “a grit growing lad,
with bare legs an’ feet;” adding that he was “very quick-witted,
and full of fun and tricks: indeed, there was nothing under the
sun but he tried to imitate.” He was usually foremost also in
the sports and pastimes of youth.

Among his first strongly developed tastes was the love of birds
and animals, which he inherited from his father. Blackbirds
were his special favorites. The hedges between Dewley and
Black Callerton were capital bird-nesting places, and there was
not a nest there that he did not know of. When the young birds
were old enough, he would bring them home with him, feed
them, and teach them to fly about the cottage unconfined by
cages. One of his blackbirds became so tame that, after flying
about the doors all day, and in and out of the cottage, it would
take up its roost upon the bed-head at night. And, most singular
of all, the bird would disappear in the spring and summer
months, when it was supposed to go into the woods to pair and
rear its young, after which it would reappear at the cottage, and
resume its social habits during the winter. This went on for
several years. George had also a stock of tame rabbits, for
which he built a little house behind the cottage, and for many
years he continued to pride himself upon the superiority of his
breed.

After he had driven the gin for some time at Dewley and
Black Callerton, he was taken on as assistant to his father in firing
the engine at Dewley. This was a step of promotion which
he had anxiously desired, his only fear being lest he should be
found too young for the work. Indeed, he afterward used to relate
how he was wont to hide himself when the owner of the colliery
went round, in case he should be thought too little a boy to
earn the wages paid him. Since he had modeled his clay engines
in the bog, his young ambition was to be an engine-man;[110]
and to be an assistant fireman was the first step toward this position.
Great, therefore, was his joy when, at about fourteen years
of age, he was appointed assistant fireman, at the wage of a shilling
a day.

But the coal at Dewley Burn being at length worked out, the
pit was ordered to be “laid in,” and old Robert and his family
were again under the necessity of shifting their home; for, to use
the common phrase, they must “follow the wark.”

[111]

CHAPTER II.

NEWBURN AND CALLERTON—GEORGE STEPHENSON LEARNS TO BE
AN ENGINE-MAN.

On quitting their humble home at Dewley Burn, the Stephenson
family removed to a place called Jolly’s Close, a few miles to
the south, close behind the village of Newburn, where another
coal-mine belonging to the Duke of Northumberland, called “the
Duke’s Winnin,” had recently been opened out.

One of the old persons in the neighborhood, who knew the
family well, describes the dwelling in which they lived as a poor
cottage of only one room, in which the father, mother, four sons,
and two daughters lived and slept. It was crowded with three
low-poled beds. The one apartment served for parlor, kitchen,
sleeping-room, and all.

The children of the Stephenson family were now growing
apace, and several of them were old enough to be able to earn
money at various kinds of colliery work. James and George,[112]
the two eldest sons, worked as assistant firemen; and the younger
boys worked as wheelers or pickers on the bank-tops; while the
two girls helped their mother with the household work.

Other workings of the coal were opened out in the neighborhood,
and to one of these George was removed as fireman on his
own account. This was called the “Mid Mill Winnin,” where
he had for his mate a young man named Coe. They worked together
there for about two years, by twelve-hour shifts, George
firing the engine at the wage of a shilling a day. He was now
fifteen years old. His ambition was as yet limited to attaining
the standing of a full workman, at a man’s wages, and with that
view he endeavored to attain such a knowledge of his engine as
would eventually lead to his employment as engine-man, with its
accompanying advantage of higher pay. He was a steady, sober,
hard-working young man, but nothing more in the estimation of
his fellow-workmen.

One of his favorite pastimes in by-hours was trying feats of
strength with his companions. Although in frame he was not
particularly robust, yet he was big and bony, and considered very
strong for his age. At throwing the hammer George had no
compeer. At lifting heavy weights off the ground from between
his feet, by means of a bar of iron passed through them—placing
the bar against his knees as a fulcrum, and then straightening his
spine and lifting them sheer up—he was also very successful.
On one occasion he lifted as much as sixty stones’ weight—a
striking indication of his strength of bone and muscle.

When the pit at Mid Mill was closed, George and his companion
Coe were sent to work another pumping-engine erected near
Throckley Bridge, where they continued for some months. It
was while working at this place that his wages were raised to 12s.
a week—an event to him of great importance. On coming out
of the foreman’s office that Saturday evening on which he received
the advance, he announced the fact to his fellow-workmen,
adding triumphantly, “I am now a made man for life!”

The pit opened at Newburn, at which old Robert Stephenson
worked, proving a failure, it was closed, and a new pit was sunk
at Water-row, on a strip of land lying between the Wylam wagon-way
and the River Tyne, about half a mile west of Newburn
Church. A pumping-engine was erected there by Robert Hawthorn,[113]
the duke’s engineer, and old Stephenson went to work it
as fireman, his son George acting as the engine-man or plugman.
At that time he was about seventeen years old—a very youthful
age at which to fill so responsible a post. He had thus already
got ahead of his father in his station as a workman; for the plugman
holds a higher grade than the fireman, requiring more practical
knowledge and skill, and usually receiving higher wages.

George’s duties as plugman were to watch the engine, to see
that it kept well in work, and that the pumps were efficient in
drawing the water. When the water-level in the pit was lowered,
and the suction became incomplete through the exposure of
the suction-holes, it was then his duty to proceed to the bottom
of the shaft and plug the tube so that the pump should draw:
hence the designation of “plugman.” If a stoppage in the engine
took place through any defect which he was incapable of
remedying, it was his duty to call in the aid of the chief engineer
to set it to rights.

But from the time that George Stephenson was appointed fireman,
and more particularly afterward as engine-man, he applied
himself so assiduously and successfully to the study of the engine
and its gearing—taking the machine to pieces in his leisure hours
for the purpose of cleaning it and understanding its various parts—that
he soon acquired a thorough practical knowledge of its
construction and mode of working, and very rarely needed to call
the engineer of the colliery to his aid. His engine became a sort
of pet with him, and he was never wearied of watching and inspecting
it with admiration.

There is, indeed, a peculiar fascination about an engine to the
person whose duty it is to watch and work it. It is almost sublime
in its untiring industry and quiet power; capable of performing
the most gigantic work, yet so docile that a child’s hand
may guide it. No wonder, therefore, that the workman who is
the daily companion of this life-like machine, and is constantly
watching it with anxious care, at length comes to regard it with
a degree of personal interest and regard. This daily contemplation
of the steam-engine, and the sight of its steady action, is an
education of itself to an ingenious and thoughtful man. And it
is a remarkable fact, that nearly all that has been done for the
improvement of this machine has been accomplished, not by philosophers[114]
and scientific men, but by laborers, mechanics, and engine-men.
Indeed, it would appear as if this were one of the departments
of practical science in which the higher powers of the
human mind must bend to mechanical instinct.

Stephenson was now in his eighteenth year, but, like many of
his fellow-workmen, he had not yet learned to read. All that he
could do was to get some one to read for him by his engine-fire,
out of any book or stray newspaper which found its way into the
neighborhood. Bonaparte was then overrunning Italy, and astounding
Europe by his brilliant succession of victories; and there
was no more eager auditor of his exploits, as read from the newspaper
accounts, than the young engine-man at the Water-row Pit.

There were also numerous stray bits of information and intelligence
contained in these papers which excited Stephenson’s interest.
One of them related to the Egyptian method of hatching
birds’ eggs by means of artificial heat. Curious about every thing
relating to birds, he determined to test it by experiment. It was
spring time, and he forthwith went bird-nesting in the adjoining
woods and hedges. He gathered a collection of eggs of various
sorts, set them in flour in a warm place in the engine-house, covered
the whole with wool, and waited the issue. The heat was
kept as steady as possible, and the eggs were carefully turned every
twelve hours; but, though they chipped, and some of them
exhibited well-grown chicks, they never hatched. The experiment
failed, but the incident shows that the inquiring mind of
the youth was fairly at work.

Modeling of engines in clay continued to be another of his favorite
occupations. He made models of engines which he had
seen, and of others which were described to him. These attempts
were an improvement upon his first trials at Dewley Burn bog,
when occupied there as a herd-boy. He was, however, anxious to
know something of the wonderful engines of Boulton and Watt,
and was told that they were to be found fully described in books,
which he must search for information as to their construction, action,
and uses. But, alas! Stephenson could not read; he had not
yet learned even his letters.

Thus he shortly found, when gazing wistfully in the direction
of knowledge, that to advance farther as a skilled workman, he
must master this wonderful art of reading—the key to so many[115]
other arts. Only thus could he gain an access to books, the depositories
of the wisdom and experience of the past. Although
a grown man, and doing the work of a man, he was not ashamed
to confess his ignorance, and go to school, big as he was, to learn
his letters. Perhaps, too, he foresaw that, in laying out a little of
his spare earnings for this purpose, he was investing money judiciously,
and that, in every hour he spent at school, he was really
working for better wages.

His first schoolmaster was Robin Cowens, a poor teacher in the
village of Walbottle. He kept a night-school, which was attended
by a few of the colliers’ and laborers’ sons in the neighborhood.
George took lessons in spelling and reading three nights
in the week. Robin Cowens’s teaching cost threepence a week;
and though it was not very good, yet George, being hungry for
knowledge and eager to acquire it, soon learned to read. He also
practiced “pot-hooks,” and at the age of nineteen he was proud
to be able to write his own name.

A Scotch dominie, named Andrew Robertson, set up a night-school
in the village of Newburn in the winter of 1799. It was
more convenient for George to attend this school, as it was nearer
his work, being only a few minutes’ walk from Jolly’s Close.
Besides, Andrew had the reputation of being a good arithmetician,
and this was a branch of knowledge that Stephenson was
very desirous of acquiring. He accordingly began taking lessons
from him, paying fourpence a week. Robert Gray, junior fireman
at the Water-row Pit, began arithmetic at the same time;
and Gray afterward told the author that George learned “figuring”
so much faster than he did, that he could not make out how
it was—”he took to figures so wonderful.” Although the two
started together from the same point, at the end of the winter
George had mastered “reduction,” while Robert Gray was still
struggling with the difficulties of simple division. But George’s
secret was his perseverance. He worked out the sums in his by-hours,
improving every minute of his spare time by the engine-fire,
there studying the arithmetical problems set for him upon
his slate by the master. In the evenings he took to Robertson
the sums which he had “worked,” and new ones were “set” for
him to study out the following day. Thus his progress was rapid,
and, with a willing heart and mind, he soon became well advanced[116]
in arithmetic. Indeed, Andrew Robertson became very
proud of his scholar; and shortly after, when the Water-row Pit
was closed, and George removed to Black Callerton to work there,
the poor schoolmaster, not having a very extensive connection in
Newburn, went with his pupils, and set up his night-school at
Black Callerton, where he continued his lessons.

George still found time to attend to his favorite animals while
working at the Water-row Pit. Like his father, he used to tempt
the robin-redbreasts to hop and fly about him at the engine-fire
by the bait of bread-crumbs saved from his dinner. But his chief
favorite was his dog—so sagacious that he almost daily carried
George’s dinner to him at the pit. The tin containing the meal
was suspended from the dog’s neck, and, thus laden, he proceeded
faithfully from Jolly’s Close to Water-row Pit, quite through
the village of Newburn. He turned neither to left nor right, nor
heeded the barking of curs at his heels. But his course was not
unattended with perils. One day the big, strange dog of a passing
butcher, espying the engine-man’s messenger with the tin can
about his neck, ran after and fell upon him. There was a terrible
tussle and worrying, which lasted for a brief while, and, shortly
after, the dog’s master, anxious for his dinner, saw his faithful
servant approaching, bleeding but triumphant. The tin can was
still round his neck, but the dinner had been spilled in the struggle.
Though George went without his dinner that day, he was
prouder of his dog than ever when the circumstances of the combat
were related to him by the villagers who had seen it.

It was while working at the Water-row Pit that Stephenson
learned the art of brakeing an engine. This being one of the
higher departments of colliery labor, and among the best paid,
George was very anxious to learn it. A small winding-engine
having been put up for the purpose of drawing the coals from
the pit, Bill Coe, his friend and fellow-workman, was appointed the
brakesman. He frequently allowed George to try his hand
at the machine, and instructed him how to proceed. Coe was,
however, opposed in this by several of the other workmen, one of
whom, a banksman named William Locke,[21] went so far as to
stop the working of the pit because Stephenson had been called[117]
in to the brake. But one day, as Mr. Charles Nixon, the manager
of the pit, was observed approaching, Coe adopted an expedient
which put a stop to the opposition. He called upon Stephenson
to “come into the brake-house and take hold of the machine.”
Locke, as usual, sat down, and the working of the pit was stopped.
When requested by the manager to give an explanation, he said
that “young Stephenson couldn’t brake, and, what was more, never
would learn, he was so clumsy.” Mr. Nixon, however, ordered
Locke to go on with the work, which he did; and Stephenson,
after some farther practice, acquired the art of brakeing.

After working at the Water-row Pit and at other engines near
Newburn for about three years, George and Coe went to Black
Callerton early in 1810. Though only twenty years of age, his
employers thought so well of him that they appointed him to the
responsible office of brakesman at the Dolly Pit. For convenience’
sake, he took lodgings at a small farmer’s in the village,
finding his own victuals, and paying so much a week for lodging
and attendance. In the locality this was called “picklin in his
awn poke neuk.” It not unfrequently happens that the young
workman about the collieries, when selecting a lodging, contrives
to pitch his tent where the daughter of the house ultimately becomes
his wife. This is often the real attraction that draws
the youth from home, though a very different one may be pretended.

George Stephenson’s duties as brakesman may be briefly described.
The work was somewhat monotonous, and consisted in
superintending the working of the engine and machinery by
means of which the coals were drawn out of the pit. Brakesmen
are almost invariably selected from those who have had considerable
experience as engine-firemen, and borne a good character
for steadiness, punctuality, watchfulness, and “mother wit.”
In George Stephenson’s day the coals were drawn out of the
pit in corves, or large baskets made of hazel rods. The corves
were placed together in a cage, between which and the pit-ropes
there was usually from fifteen to twenty feet of chain. The approach
of the corves toward the pit mouth was signaled by a
bell, brought into action by a piece of mechanism worked from
the shaft of the engine. When the bell sounded, the brakesman
checked the speed by taking hold of the hand-gear connected[118]
with the steam-valves, which were so arranged that by their
means he could regulate the speed of the engine, and stop or set
it in motion when required. Connected with the fly-wheel was
a powerful wooden brake, acting by pressure against its rim,
something like the brake of a railway carriage against its wheels.
On catching sight of the chain attached to the ascending corve-cage,
the brakesman, by pressing his foot upon a foot-step near
him, was enabled, with great precision, to stop the revolutions of
the wheel, and arrest the ascent of the corves at the pit mouth,
when they were forthwith landed on the “settle-board.” On the
full corves being replaced by empty ones, it was then the duty of
the brakesman to reverse the engine, and send the corves down
the pit to be filled again.

The monotony of George Stephenson’s occupation as a brakesman
was somewhat varied by the change which he made, in his
turn, from the day to the night shift. His duty, on the latter occasions,
consisted chiefly in sending men and materials into the
mine, and in drawing other men and materials out. Most of the
workmen enter the pit during the night shift, and leave it in the
latter part of the day, while coal-drawing is proceeding. The requirements
of the work at night are such that the brakesman has
a good deal of spare time on his hands, which he is at liberty to
employ in his own way. From an early period, George was accustomed
to employ those vacant night hours in working the sums
set for him by Andrew Robertson upon his slate, practicing writing
in his copy-book, and mending the shoes of his fellow-workmen.
His wages while working at the Dolly Pit amounted to
from £1 15s. to £2 in the fortnight; but he gradually added to
them as he became more expert at shoe-mending, and afterward
at shoe-making.

Probably he was stimulated to take in hand this extra work by
the attachment he had by this time formed for a young woman
named Fanny Henderson, who officiated as servant in the small
farmer’s house in which he lodged. We have been informed that
the personal attractions of Fanny, though these were considerable,
were the least of her charms. Mr. William Fairbairn, who
afterward saw her in her home at Willington Quay, describes her
as a very comely woman. But her temper was one of the sweetest;
and those who knew her were accustomed to speak of the[119]
charming modesty of her demeanor, her kindness of disposition,
and, withal, her sound good sense.

Among his various mendings of old shoes at Callerton, George
was on one occasion favored with the shoes of his sweetheart to
sole. One can imagine the pleasure with which he would linger
over such a piece of work, and the pride with which he would
execute it. A friend of his, still living, relates that, after he had
finished the shoes, he carried them about with him in his pocket
on the Sunday afternoon, and that from time to time he would
pull them out and hold them up, exclaiming “what a capital job
he had made of them!”

Not long after he began to work at Black Callerton as brakesman
he had a quarrel with a pitman named Ned Nelson, a roystering
bully, who was the terror of the village. Nelson was a
great fighter, and it was therefore considered dangerous to quarrel
with him. Stephenson was so unfortunate as not to be able
to please this pitman by the way in which he drew him out of
the pit, and Nelson swore at him grossly because of the alleged
clumsiness of his brakeing. George defended himself, and appealed
to the testimony of the other workmen. Nelson had not
been accustomed to George’s style of self-assertion, and, after a
great deal of abuse, he threatened to kick the brakesman, who
defied him to do so. Nelson ended by challenging Stephenson
to a pitched battle, and the latter accepted the challenge, when a
day was fixed on which the fight was to come off.

Great was the excitement at Black Callerton when it was
known that George Stephenson had accepted Nelson’s challenge.
Every body said he would be killed. The villagers, the young
men, and especially the boys of the place, with whom George was
a great favorite, all wished that he might beat Nelson, but they
scarcely dared to say so. They came about him while he was at
work in the engine-house to inquire if it was really true that he
was “goin’ to fight Nelson.” “Ay; never fear for me; I’ll fight
him.” And fight him he did. For some days previous to the
appointed day of battle, Nelson went entirely off work for the
purpose of keeping himself fresh and strong, whereas Stephenson
went on doing his daily work as usual, and appeared not in the
least disconcerted by the prospect of the affair. So, on the evening
appointed, after George had done his day’s labor, he went[120]
into the Dolly Pit Field, where his already exulting rival was
ready to meet him. George stripped, and “went in” like a practiced
pugilist, though it was his first and last fight. After a few
rounds, George’s wiry muscles and practiced strength enabled him
severely to punish his adversary and to secure an easy victory.

This circumstance is related in illustration of Stephenson’s personal
pluck and courage, and it was thoroughly characteristic of
the man. He was no pugilist, and the reverse of quarrelsome.
But he would not be put down by the bully of the colliery, and
he fought him. There his pugilism ended; they afterward shook
hands, and continued good friends. In after life Stephenson’s
mettle was often as hardly tried, though in a different way, and
he did not fail to exhibit the same courage in contending with
the bullies of the railway world as he showed in his encounter
with Ned Nelson, the fighting pitman of Callerton.

[121]

CHAPTER III.

ENGINE-MAN AT WILLINGTON QUAY AND KILLINGWORTH.

George Stephenson had now acquired the character of an expert
workman. He was diligent and observant while at work,
and sober and studious when the day’s work was done. His
friend Coe described him to the author as “a standing example
of manly character.” On pay-Saturday afternoons, when the pitmen
held their fortnightly holiday, occupying themselves chiefly
in cock-fighting and dog-fighting in the adjoining fields, followed
by adjournments to the “yel-house,” George was accustomed to
take his engine to pieces, for the purpose of obtaining “insight,”
and he cleaned all the parts and put the machine in thorough
working order before leaving her. His amusements continued
to be principally of the athletic kind, and he found few that
could beat him at lifting heavy weights, leaping, and throwing
the hammer.

In the evenings he improved himself in the arts of reading and
writing, and occasionally he took a turn at modeling. It was at
Callerton, his son Robert informed us, that he began to try his[122]
hand at original invention, and for some time he applied his attention
to a machine of the nature of an engine-brake, which reversed
itself by its own action. But nothing came of the contrivance,
and it was eventually thrown aside as useless. Yet not
altogether so; for even the highest skill must undergo the inevitable
discipline of experiment, and submit to the wholesome correction
of occasional failure.

After working at Callerton for about two years, Stephenson received
an offer to take charge of the engine on Willington Ballast
Hill at an advanced wage. He determined to accept it, and
at the same time to marry Fanny Henderson, and begin housekeeping
on his own account. Though he was only twenty-one
years old, he had contrived, by thrift, steadiness, and industry, to
save as much money as enabled him, with the help of Fanny’s
small hoard, to take a cottage dwelling at Willington Quay, and
furnish it in a humble but comfortable style for the reception of
his bride.

Willington Quay lies on the north bank of the Tyne, about six
miles below Newcastle. It consists of a line of houses straggling
along the river side, and high behind it towers up the huge mound
of ballast emptied out of the ships which resort to the quay for
their cargoes of coal for the London market. The ballast is
thrown out of the ships’ holds into wagons laid alongside. When
filled, a train of these is dragged to the summit of the Ballast
Hill, where they are run out, and their contents emptied on to
the monstrous accumulation of earth, chalk, and Thames mud already
laid there, probably to form a puzzle for future antiquaries
and geologists when the origin of these immense hills along
the Tyne has been forgotten. At the foot of this great mound
of shot rubbish was a fixed engine, which drew the trains of
laden wagons up the incline by means of ropes working over
pulleys, and of this engine George Stephenson acted as brakesman.

The cottage in which he took up his abode was a small two-storied
dwelling, standing a little back from the quay, with a bit
of garden ground in front;[22] but he only occupied the upper[123]
room in the west end of the cottage. Close behind rose the Ballast
Hill.

When the cottage dwelling had been made snug and was ready
for his wife’s reception, the marriage took place. It was celebrated
in Newburn Church on the 28th of November, 1802.
George Stephenson’s signature, as it stands in the register, is that
of a person who seems to have just learned to write. With all
the writer’s care, however, he had not been able to avoid a blotch.
The name of Frances Henderson has the appearance of being
written by the same hand.

After the ceremony, George and his newly-wedded partner
proceeded to the house of old Robert Stephenson and his wife
Mabel at Jolly Close. The old man was now becoming infirm,
though he still worked as an engine-fireman, and contrived with
difficulty “to keep his head above water.” When the visit had
been paid, the bridal party prepared to set out for their new
home at Willington Quay. They went in a style which was quite
common before traveling by railway had been invented. Two
farm-horses, borrowed from a neighboring farmer, were each provided
with a saddle and a pillion, and George having mounted
one, his wife seated herself behind him, holding on by her arms
round his waist. The brideman and bridemaid in like manner
mounted the other horse, and in this wise the wedding party rode
across the country, passing through the old streets of Newcastle,
and then by Wallsend to Willington Quay—a long ride of about
fifteen miles.

George Stephenson’s daily life at Willington was that of a
steady workman. By the manner, however, in which he continued
to improve his spare hours in the evening, he was silently
and surely paving the way for being something more than a manual
laborer. He diligently set himself to study the principles of[124]
mechanics, and to master the laws by which his engine worked.
For a workman, he was even at that time more than ordinarily
speculative, often taking up strange theories, and trying to sift
out the truth that was in them. While sitting by the side of his
young wife in his cottage dwelling in the winter evenings, he was
usually occupied in studying mechanical subjects or in modeling
experimental machines.

Among his various speculations while at Willington, he tried
to discover a means of Perpetual Motion. Although he failed,
as so many others had done before him, the very efforts he made
tended to whet his inventive faculties and to call forth his dormant
powers. He actually went so far as to construct the model
of a machine for the purpose. It consisted of a wooden wheel,
the periphery of which was furnished with glass tubes filled with
quicksilver; as the wheel rotated, the quicksilver poured itself
down into the lower tubes, and thus a sort of self-acting motion
was kept up in the apparatus, which, however, did not prove to be
perpetual. Where he had first obtained the idea of this machine—whether
from conversation, or reading, or his own thoughts, is
not known; but his son Robert was of opinion that he had heard
of an apparatus of this kind as described in the “History of Inventions.”
As he had then no access to books, and, indeed, could
scarcely yet read, it is probable that he had been told of the invention,
and set about testing its value according to his own methods.

Much of his spare time continued to be occupied by labor more
immediately profitable, regarded in a pecuniary point of view.
In the evenings, after his day’s labor at his engine, he would occasionally
employ himself for a few hours in casting ballast out
of the collier ships, by which means he was enabled to earn a few
shillings weekly. Mr. William Fairbairn, of Manchester, has informed
the author that, while Stephenson was employed at the
Willington Ballast Hill, he himself was working in the neighborhood
as an engine apprentice at the Percy Main Colliery. He
was very fond of George, who was a fine, hearty fellow, besides
being a capital workman. In the summer evenings young Fairbairn
was accustomed to go down to Willington to see his friend,
and on such occasions he would frequently take charge of
George’s engine for a few hours, to enable him to take a two or
three hours’ turn at heaving ballast out of the ships’ holds. It is[125]
pleasant to think of the future President of the British Association
thus helping the future Railway Engineer to earn a few extra
shillings by overwork in the evenings, at a time when both
occupied the rank but of humble working men in an obscure
northern village.

Mr. Fairbairn was also a frequent visitor at George’s cottage
on the Quay, where, though there was no luxury, there was comfort,
cleanness, and a pervading spirit of industry. Even at home
George was never for a moment idle. When there was no ballast
to heave, he took in shoes to mend; and from mending he
proceeded to making them, as well as shoe-lasts, in which he was
admitted to be very expert. William Coe, who continued to live
at Willington in 1851, informed the author that he bought a pair
of shoes from George Stephenson for 7s. 6d., and he remembered
that they were a capital fit, and wore very well.

But an accident occurred in Stephenson’s household about this
time which had the effect of directing his industry into a new
and still more profitable channel. The cottage chimney took fire
one day in his absence, when the alarmed neighbors, rushing in,
threw quantities of water upon the flames; and some, in their
zeal, even mounted the ridge of the house, and poured buckets of
water down the chimney. The fire was soon put out, but the
house was thoroughly soaked. When George came home, he
found the water running out of the door, every thing in disorder,
and his new furniture covered with soot. The eight-day clock,
which hung against the wall—one of the most highly-prized articles
in the house—was seriously damaged by the steam with
which the room had been filled. Its wheels were so clogged by
the dust and soot that it was brought to a complete stand-still.

George was advised to send the article to the clock-maker, but
that would cost money; and he declared that he would repair it
himself—at least he would try. The clock was accordingly taken
to pieces and cleaned; the tools which he had been accumulating
for the purpose of constructing his Perpetual Motion machine
readily enabled him to do this, and he succeeded so well that,
shortly after, the neighbors sent him their clocks to clean, and he
soon became one of the most expert clock-cleaners in the neighborhood.

It was while living at Willington Quay that George Stephenson’s[126]
only son was born on the 16th of October, 1803.[23] The
child was from the first, as may well be imagined, a great favorite
with his father, and added much to the happiness of his evening
hours. George Stephenson’s strong “philoprogenitiveness,”
as phrenologists call it, had in his boyhood expended itself on
birds, and dogs, and rabbits, and even on the poor old gin-horses
which he had driven at the Callerton Pit, and now he found in
his child a more genial object for the exercise of his affection.

The christening of the boy took place in the school-house at
Wallsend, the old parish church being at the time in so dilapidated
a condition from the “creeping” or subsidence of the ground,
consequent upon the excavation of the coal, that it was considered
dangerous to enter it.[24] On this occasion, Robert Gray and
Anne Henderson, who had officiated as brideman and bridemaid
at the wedding, came over again to Willington, and stood godfather
and godmother to little Robert, as the child was named, after
his grandfather.

After working for about three years as a brakesman at the
Willington machine, George Stephenson was induced to leave his
situation there for a similar one at the West Moor Colliery, Killingworth.
It was not without considerable persuasion that he
was induced to leave the Quay, as he knew that he should thereby
give up the chance of earning extra money by casting ballast
from the keels. At last, however, he consented, in the hope of
making up the loss in some other way.

The village of Killingworth lies about seven miles north of
Newcastle, and is one of the best-known collieries in that neighborhood.
[127]The workings of the coal are of vast extent, and give
employment to a large number of work-people. To this place
Stephenson first came as a brakesman about the end of 1804. He
had not been long in his new home ere his wife died of consumption,
leaving him with his only child Robert. George deeply
felt the loss, for his wife and he had been very happy together.
Their lot had been sweetened by daily successful toil. George
had been hard-working, and his wife had made his hearth so
bright and his home so snug, that no attraction could draw him
from her side in the evening hours. But this domestic happiness
was all to pass away, and the bereaved husband felt for a time as
one that had thenceforth to tread the journey of life alone.

Shortly after this event, while his grief was still fresh, he received
an invitation from some gentlemen concerned in large
spinning-works near Montrose, in Scotland, to proceed thither
and superintend the working of one of Boulton and Watt’s engines.
He accepted the offer, and made arrangements to leave
Killingworth for a time.

Having left his boy in charge of a respectable woman who
acted as his housekeeper, he set out on the journey to Scotland[128]
on foot, with his kit upon his back. While working at Montrose,
he gave a striking proof of that practical ability in contrivance
for which he was afterward so distinguished. It appears that
the water required for the purposes of his engine, as well as for
the use of the works, was pumped from a considerable depth, being
supplied from the adjacent extensive sand strata. The
pumps frequently got choked by the sand drawn in at the bottom
of the well through the snore-holes, or apertures through
which the water to be raised is admitted. The barrels soon became
worn, and the bucket and clack leathers destroyed, so that
it became necessary to devise a remedy; and with this object,
the engine-man proceeded to adopt the following simple but
original expedient. He had a wooden box or boot made, twelve
feet high, which he placed in the sump or well, and into this he
inserted the lower end of the pump. The result was, that the
water flowed clear from the outer part of the well over into the
boot, and was drawn up without any admixture of sand, and the
difficulty was thus conquered.[25]

During his stay in Scotland, Stephenson, being paid good
wages, contrived to save a sum of £28, which he took back with
him to Killingworth, after an absence of about a year. Longing
to get back to his kindred, and his heart yearning for the boy
whom he had left behind, our engine-man bade adieu to his Montrose
employers, and trudged back to Killingworth on foot as he
had gone. He related to his friend Coe, on his return, that when
on the borders of Northumberland, late one evening, footsore
and wearied with his long day’s journey, he knocked at a small
farmer’s cottage door, and requested shelter for the night. It
was refused; and then he entreated that, being sore tired and
unable to proceed any farther, they would permit him to lie[129]
down in the out-house, for that a little clean straw would serve
him. The farmer’s wife appeared at the door, looked at the
traveler, then retiring with her husband, the two confabulated a
little apart, and finally they invited Stephenson into the cottage.
Always full of conversation and anecdote, he soon made himself
at home in the farmer’s family, and spent with them some pleasant
hours. He was hospitably entertained for the night, and
when he left the cottage in the morning, he pressed them to
make some charge for his lodging, but they refused to accept
any recompense. They only asked him to remember them kindly,
and if he ever came that way, to be sure and call again.
Many years after, when Stephenson had become a thriving man,
he did not forget the humble pair who had thus succored and
entertained him on his way; he sought their cottage again when
age had silvered their hair; and when he left the aged couple on
that occasion, they may have been reminded of the old saying
that we may sometimes “entertain angels unawares.”

Reaching home, Stephenson found that his father had met
with a serious accident at the Blucher Pit, which had reduced
him to great distress and poverty. While engaged in the inside
of an engine, making some repairs, a fellow-workman inadvertently
let in the steam upon him. The blast struck him full in
the face; he was terribly scorched, and his eyesight was irretrievably
lost. The helpless and infirm man had struggled for a time
with poverty; his sons who were at home, poor as himself, were
little able to help him, while George was at a distance in Scotland.
On his return, however, with his savings in his pocket, his
first step was to pay off his father’s debts, amounting to about
£15; and, shortly after, he removed the aged pair from Jolly’s
Close to a comfortable cottage adjoining the tram-road near the
West Moor at Killingworth, where the old man lived for many
years, supported by his son.

Stephenson was again taken on as a brakesman at the West
Moor Pit. He does not seem to have been very hopeful as to
his prospects in life at the time. Indeed, the condition of the
working classes was then very discouraging. England was engaged
in a great war, which pressed upon the industry, and severely
tried the resources of the country. Heavy taxes were imposed
upon all the articles of consumption that would bear them.[130]
There was a constant demand for men to fill the army, navy, and
militia. Never before had England witnessed such drumming
and fifing for recruits. In 1805, the gross forces of the United
Kingdom amounted to nearly 700,000 men, and early in 1808
Lord Castlereagh carried a measure for the establishment of a
local militia of 200,000 men. These measures were accompanied
by general distress among the laboring classes. There were riots
in Manchester, Newcastle, and elsewhere, through scarcity of
work and lowness of wages. The working people were also liable
to be pressed for the navy, or drawn for the militia; and
though people could not fail to be discontented under such circumstances,
they scarcely dared even to mutter their discontent
to their neighbors.

George Stephenson was one of those drawn for the militia.
He must therefore either quit his work and go a-soldiering, or
find a substitute. He adopted the latter course, and borrowed
£6, which, with the remainder of his savings, enabled him to
provide a militia-man to serve in his stead. Thus the whole of
his hard-won earnings were swept away at a stroke. He was almost
in despair, and contemplated the idea of leaving the country,
and emigrating to the United States. Although a voyage
thither was then a much more formidable thing for a working
man to accomplish than a voyage to Australia is now, he seriously
entertained the project, and had all but made up his mind to
go. His sister Ann, with her husband, emigrated about that
time, but George could not raise the requisite money, and they
departed without him. After all, it went sore against his heart
to leave his home and his kindred, the scenes of his youth and
the friends of his boyhood, and he struggled long with the idea,
brooding over it in sorrow. Speaking afterward to a friend of
his thoughts at the time, he said: “You know the road from my
house at the West Moor to Killingworth. I remember once
when I went along that road I wept bitterly, for I knew not
where my lot in life would be cast.” But his poverty prevented
him from prosecuting the idea of emigration, and rooted him to
the place where he afterward worked out his career so manfully
and victoriously.

In 1808, Stephenson, with two other brakesmen, took a small
contract under the colliery lessees, brakeing the engines at the[131]
West Moor Pit. The brakesmen found the oil and tallow; they
divided the work among them, and were paid so much per score
for their labor. There being two engines working night and day,
two of the three men were always on duty, the average earnings
of each amounting to from 18s. to 20s. a week. It was the interest
of the brakesmen to economize the working as much as possible,
and George no sooner entered upon the contract than he proceeded
to devise ways and means of making the contract “pay.”
He observed that the ropes with which the coal was drawn out
of the pit by the winding-engine were badly arranged; they
“glued” and wore each other to tatters by the perpetual friction.
There was thus great wear and tear, and a serious increase in the
expenses of the pit. George found that the ropes which, at other
pits in the neighborhood, lasted about three months, at the West
Moor Pit became worn out in about a month. He accordingly
set himself to ascertain the cause of the defect; and, finding that
it was occasioned by excessive friction, he proceeded, with the
sanction of the head engine-wright and of the colliery owners, to
shift the pulley-wheels so that they worked immediately over the
centre of the pit. By this expedient, accompanied by an entire
rearrangement of the gearing of the machine, he shortly succeeded
in greatly lessening the wear and tear of the ropes, to the advantage
of the owners as well as of the workmen, who were thus
enabled to labor more continuously and profitably.

About the same time he attempted an improvement in the
winding-engine which he worked, by placing a valve between
the air-pump and condenser. This expedient, although it led to
no practical result, showed that his mind was actively engaged in
studying new mechanical adaptations. It continued to be his
regular habit, on Saturdays, to take his engine to pieces, for the
purpose at the same time of familiarizing himself with its action,
and of placing it in a state of thorough working order; and by
mastering the details of the engine, he was enabled, as opportunity
occurred, to turn to practical account the knowledge thus diligently
and patiently acquired.

Such an opportunity was not long in presenting itself. In the
year 1810, a pit was sunk by the “Grand Allies” (the lessees of
the mines) at the village of Killingworth, now known as the
Killingworth High Pit. An atmospheric or Newcomen engine,[132]
originally made by Smeaton, was fixed there for the purpose of
pumping out the water from the shaft; but, somehow or other,
the engine failed to clear the pit. As one of the workmen has
since described the circumstance—”She couldn’t keep her jack-head
in water: all the engine-men in the neighborhood were
tried, as well as Crowther of the Ouseburn, but they were clean
bet.” The engine had been fruitlessly pumping for nearly twelve
months, and came to be regarded as a total failure. Stephenson
had gone to look at it when in course of erection, and then observed
to the over-man that he thought it was defective; he also
gave it as his opinion that if there were much water in the mine,
the engine could never keep it under. Of course, as he was only
a brakesman, his opinion was considered to be worth very little
on such a point. He continued, however, to make frequent visits
to the engine to see “how she was getting on.” From the bank-head
where he worked his brake he could see the chimney smoking
at the High Pit; and as the workmen were passing to and
from their work, he would call out and inquire “if they had gotten
to the bottom yet.” And the reply was always to the same
effect—the pumping made no progress, and the workmen were
still “drowned out.”

One Saturday afternoon he went over to the High Pit to examine
the engine more carefully than he had yet done. He had
been turning the subject over in his mind, and, after a long examination,
he seemed to have satisfied himself as to the cause of the
failure. Kit Heppel, one of the sinkers, asked him, “Weel, George,
what do you mak’ o’ her? Do you think you could do any thing
to improve her?” “Man,” said George, in reply, “I could alter
her and make her draw: in a week’s time from this I could send
you to the bottom.”

Heppel at once reported this conversation to Ralph Dodds, the
head viewer, who, being now quite in despair, and hopeless of
succeeding with the engine, determined to give George’s skill a
trial. George had already acquired the character of a very clever
and ingenious workman, and, at the worst, he could only fail,
as the rest had done. In the evening Dodds went in search of
Stephenson, and met him on the road, dressed in his Sunday’s
suit, on his way to “the preaching” in the Methodist Chapel,
which he at that time attended. “Well, George,” said Dodds,[133]
“they tell me that you think you can put the engine at the High
Pit to rights.” “Yes, sir,” said George, “I think I could.” “If
that’s the case, I’ll give you a fair trial, and you must set to work
immediately. We are clean drowned out, and can not get a step
farther. The engineers hereabouts are all bet; and if you really
succeed in accomplishing what they can not do, you may depend
upon it I will make you a man for life.”

Stephenson began his operations early next morning. The
only condition that he made, before setting to work, was that he
should select his own workmen. There was, as he knew, a good
deal of jealousy among the “regular” men that a colliery brakesman
should pretend to know more about their engine than they
themselves did, and attempt to remedy defects which the most
skilled men of their craft, including the engineer of the colliery,
had failed to do. But George made the condition a sine quâ non.
“The workmen,” said he, “must either be all Whigs or all Tories.”
There was no help for it, so Dodds ordered the old hands
to stand aside. The men grumbled, but gave way; and then
George and his party went in.

The engine was taken entirely to pieces. The cistern containing
the injection water was raised ten feet; the injection cock,
being too small, was enlarged to nearly double its former size,
and it was so arranged that it should be shut off quickly at the
beginning of the stroke. These and other alterations were necessarily
performed in a rough way, but, as the result proved, on
true principles. Stephenson also, finding that the boiler would
bear a greater pressure than five pounds to the inch, determined
to work it at a pressure of ten pounds, though this was contrary
to the directions of both Newcomen and Smeaton.

The necessary alterations were made in about three days, and
many persons came to see the engine start, including the men
who had put her up. The pit being nearly full of water, she had
little to do on starting, and, to use George’s words, “came bounce
into the house.” Dodds exclaimed, “Why, she was better as she
was; now, she will knock the house down.” After a short time,
however, the engine got fairly to work, and by ten o’clock that
night the water was lower in the pit than it had ever been before.
The engine was kept pumping all Thursday, and by the Friday
afternoon the pit was cleared of water, and the workmen were[134]
“sent to the bottom,” as Stephenson had promised. Thus the alterations
effected in the pumping apparatus proved completely
successful.[26]

Mr. Dodds was particularly gratified with the manner in which
the job had been done, and he made Stephenson a present of ten
pounds, which, though very inadequate when compared with the
value of the work performed, was accepted with gratitude. George
was proud of the gift as the first marked recognition of his skill
as a workman; and he used afterward to say that it was the biggest
sum of money he had up to that time earned in one lump.
Ralph Dodds, however, did more than this; he released the brakesman
from the handles of his engine at West Moor, and appointed
him engine-man at the High Pit, at good wages, during the time
the pit was sinking—the job lasting for about a year; and he also
kept him in mind for farther advancement.

Stephenson’s skill as an engine-doctor soon became noised
abroad, and he was called upon to prescribe remedies for all the
old, wheezy, and ineffective pumping-machines in the neighborhood.
In this capacity he soon left the “regular” men far behind,
though they, in their turn, were very much disposed to treat
the Killingworth brakesman as no better than a quack. Nevertheless,
his practice was really founded upon a close study of the
principles of mechanics, and on an intimate practical acquaintance
with the details of the pumping-engine.

Another of his smaller achievements in the same line is still
told by the people of the district. At the corner of the road leading
to Long Benton there was a quarry from which a peculiar
and scarce kind of ochre was taken. In the course of working
it out, the water had collected in considerable quantities; and
there being no means of draining it off, it accumulated to such an
extent that the farther working of the ochre was almost entirely
stopped. Ordinary pumps were tried, and failed; and then a
windmill was tried, and failed too. On this, George was asked
what ought to be done to clear the quarry of the water. He said
“he would set up for them an engine, little bigger than a kailpot,[135]
that would clear them out in a week.” And he did so. A
little engine was speedily erected, by means of which the quarry
was pumped dry in the course of a few days. Thus his skill as
a pump-doctor soon became the marvel of the district.

In elastic muscular vigor Stephenson was now in his prime,
and he still continued zealous in measuring his strength and agility
with his fellow-workmen. The competitive element in his
nature was always strong, and his success in these feats of rivalry
was certainly remarkable. Few, if any, could lift such weights,
throw the hammer and put the stone so far, or cover so great a
space at a standing or running leap. One day, between the engine
hour and the rope-rolling hour, Kit Heppel challenged him
to leap from one high wall to another, with a deep gap between.
To Heppel’s surprise and dismay, George took the standing leap,
and cleared the eleven feet at a bound. Had his eye been less
accurate, or his limbs less agile and sure, the feat must have cost
him his life.

But so full of redundant muscular vigor was he, that leaping,
putting, or throwing the hammer, were not enough for him. He
was also ambitious of riding on horseback; and, as he had not
yet been promoted to an office enabling him to keep a horse of
his own, he sometimes borrowed one of the gin-horses for a ride.
On one of these occasions he brought the animal back reeking,
when Tommy Mitcheson, the bank horse-keeper, a rough-spoken
fellow, exclaimed to him, “Set such fellows as you on horseback,
and you’ll soon ride to the De’il.” But Tommy Mitcheson lived
to tell the story, and to confess that, after all, there had been a
better issue of George’s horsemanship than what he had predicted.

Old Cree, the engine-wright at Killingworth High Pit, having
been killed by an accident, George Stephenson was, in 1812, appointed
engine-wright of the colliery at the salary of £100 a year.
He was also allowed the use of a galloway to ride upon in his visits
of inspection to the collieries leased by the “Grand Allies” in
that neighborhood.

The “Grand Allies” were a company of gentlemen, consisting
of Sir Thomas Liddell (afterward Lord Ravensworth), the Earl of
Strathmore, and Mr. Stuart Wortley (afterward Lord Wharncliffe),
the lessees of the Killingworth collieries. Having been informed
of the merits of Stephenson, of his indefatigable industry,[136]
and the skill which he had displayed in the repairs of the pumping-engines,
they readily acceded to Mr. Dodds’s recommendation
that he should be appointed the colliery engine-wright; and, as
we shall afterward find, they continued to honor him by distinguished
marks of their approval.

[137]

CHAPTER IV.

THE STEPHENSONS AT KILLINGWORTH—EDUCATION AND SELF-EDUCATION
OF FATHER AND SON.

George Stephenson had now been diligently employed for
several years in the work of self-improvement, and he experienced
the usual results in increasing mental strength, capability,
and skill. Perhaps the secret of every man’s best success in life
is to be found in the alacrity and industry with which he takes
advantage of the opportunities which present themselves for well-doing.
Our engine-man was an eminent illustration of the importance
of cultivating this habit of life. Every spare moment
was laid under contribution by him, either for the purpose of
adding to his earnings or to his knowledge. He missed no opportunity
of extending his observations, especially in his own department
of work, aiming at improvement, and trying to turn all
that he did know to useful practical account.

He continued his attempts to solve the mystery of Perpetual
Motion, and contrived several model machines with the object of
embodying his ideas in a practical working shape. He afterward
used to lament the time he had lost in these futile efforts, and said
that if he had enjoyed the opportunities which most young men
now have, of learning from books what previous experimenters
had accomplished, he would have been spared much labor and
mortification. Not being acquainted with what other mechanics[138]
had done, he groped his way in pursuit of some idea originated
by his own independent thinking and observation, and, when he
had brought it into some definite form, lo! he found that his supposed
invention had long been known and recorded in scientific
books. Often he thought he had hit upon discoveries which he
subsequently found were but old and exploded fallacies. Yet
his very struggle to overcome the difficulties which lay in his
way was of itself an education of the best sort. By wrestling
with them, he strengthened his judgment and sharpened his skill,
stimulating and cultivating his inventiveness and mechanical ingenuity.
Being very much in earnest, he was compelled to consider
the subject of his special inquiry in all its relations, and thus
he gradually acquired practical ability through his very efforts
after the impracticable.

Many of his evenings were spent in the society of John Wigham,
whose father occupied the Glebe farm at Benton close at
hand. John was a fair penman and good arithmetician, and Stephenson
frequented his society chiefly for the purpose of improving
himself in writing and “figuring.” Under Andrew Robertson
he had never quite mastered the Rule of Three, and it was
only when Wigham took him in hand that he made progress in
the higher branches of arithmetic. He generally took his slate
with him to the Wighams’ cottage, when he had his sums set, that
he might work them out while tending his engine on the following
day. When too busy with other work to be able to call upon
Wigham in person, he sent the slate by a fellow-workman to have
the former sums corrected and new ones set. Sometimes also, at
leisure moments, he was enabled to do a little “figuring” with
chalk upon the sides of the coal-wagons. So much patient perseverance
could not but eventually succeed; and by dint of practice
and study, Stephenson was enabled to master the successive
rules of arithmetic.

John Wigham was of great use to his pupil in many ways. He
was a good talker, fond of argument, an extensive reader as country
reading went in those days, and a very suggestive thinker.
Though his store of information might be comparatively small
when measured with that of more highly cultivated minds, much
of it was entirely new to Stephenson, who regarded him as a very
clever and extraordinary person. Wigham also taught him to draw[139]
plans and sections, though in this branch Stephenson proved so
apt that he soon surpassed his master. A volume of “Ferguson’s
Lectures on Mechanics” which fell into their hands was a great
treasure to both the students. One who remembers their evening
occupations says he “used to wonder what they meant by
weighing the air and water in so odd a way.” They were trying
the specific gravities of objects; and the devices which they employed,
the mechanical shifts to which they were put, were often
of the rudest kind. In these evening entertainments the mechanical
contrivances were supplied by Stephenson, while Wigham
found the scientific rationale. The opportunity thus afforded to
the former of cultivating his mind by contact with one wiser
than himself proved of great value, and in after life Stephenson
gratefully remembered the assistance which, when a humble
workman, he had received from John Wigham, the farmer’s son.

His leisure moments thus carefully improved, it will be inferred
that Stephenson continued a sober man. Though his notions
were never extreme on this point, he was systematically temperate.
It appears that on the invitation of his master, Ralph Dodds—and
an invitation from a master to a workman is not easy to
resist—he had, on one or two occasions, been induced to join him
in a forenoon glass of ale in the public house of the village. But
one day, about noon, when Mr. Dodds had got him as far as the
public-house door, on his invitation to “come in and take a glass
o’ yel,” Stephenson made a dead stop, and said, firmly, “No, sir,
you must excuse me; I have made a resolution to drink no more
at this time of day.” And he went back. He desired to retain
the character of a steady workman; and the instances of men
about him who had made shipwreck of their character through
intemperance were then, as now, unhappily too frequent.

But another consideration besides his own self-improvement
had already begun to exercise an important influence upon his
life. This was the training and education of his son Robert, now
growing up an active, intelligent boy, as full of fun and tricks as
his father had been. When a little fellow, scarce big enough to
reach so high as to put a clock-head on when placed upon the
table, his father would make him mount a chair for the purpose;
and to “help father” was the proudest work which the boy then,
and ever after, could take part in. When the little engine was[140]
set up at the Ochre Quarry to pump it dry, Robert was scarcely
absent for an hour. He watched the machine very eagerly when
it was set to work, and he was very much annoyed at the fire
burning away the grates. The man who fired the engine was a
sort of wag, and thinking to get a laugh at the boy, he said,
“Those bars are getting varra bad, Robert; I think we maun cut
up some of that hard wood, and put it in instead.” “What would
be the use of that, you fool?” said the boy, quickly. “You would
no sooner have put them in than they would be burnt out again!”

So soon as Robert was of a proper age, his father sent him
over to the road-side school at Long Benton, kept by Rutter, the
parish clerk. But the education which he gave was of a very
limited kind, scarcely extending beyond the primer and pothooks.
While working as a brakesman on the pit-head at Killingworth,
the father had often bethought him of the obstructions he had
himself encountered in life through his want of schooling, and
he formed the determination that no labor, nor pains, nor self-denial
on his part should be spared to furnish his son with the
best education that it was in his power to bestow.

It is true, his earnings were comparatively small at that time.[141]
He was still maintaining his infirm parents, and the cost of living
continued excessive. But he fell back, as before, upon his old
expedient of working up his spare time in the evenings at home,
or during the night shifts when it was his turn to tend the engine,
in mending and making shoes, cleaning clocks and watches,
making shoe-lasts for the shoemakers of the neighborhood, and
cutting out the pitmen’s clothes for their wives; and we have
been told that to this day there are clothes worn at Killingworth
made after “Geordy Steevie’s cut.” To give his own words:
“In the earlier period of my career,” said he, “when Robert was
a little boy, I saw how deficient I was in education, and I made
up my mind that he should not labor under the same defect, but
that I would put him to a good school, and give him a liberal
training. I was, however, a poor man; and how do you think
I managed? I betook myself to mending my neighbors’ clocks
and watches at nights, after my daily labor was done, and thus I
procured the means of educating my son.”[27]

By dint of such extra labor in his by-hours, with this object,
Stephenson contrived to save a sum of £100, which he accumulated
in guineas, each of which he afterward sold to Jews, who
went about buying up gold coins (then dearer than silver), at
twenty-six shillings apiece; and he lent out the proceeds at interest.
He was now, therefore, a comparatively thriving man.

When he was appointed engine-wright of the colliery, he was,
of course, still easier in his circumstances; and, carrying out the
resolution which he had formed as to his boy’s education, Robert
was sent to Mr. Bruce’s school in Percy Street, Newcastle, at mid-summer,
1815, when he was about twelve years old. His father
bought for him a donkey, on which he rode into Newcastle and
back daily; and there are many still living who remember the
little boy, dressed in his suit of homely gray stuff cut out by his
father, cantering along to school upon the “cuddy,” with his wallet
of provisions for the day and his bag of books slung over his
shoulder.

When Robert went to Mr. Bruce’s school he was a shy, unpolished
country lad, speaking the broad dialect of the pitmen; and
the other boys would occasionally tease him, for the purpose of[142]
provoking an outburst of his Killingworth Doric. As the shyness
got rubbed off by familiarity, his love of fun began to show
itself, and he was found able enough to hold his own among the
other boys. As a scholar he was steady and diligent, and his
master was accustomed to hold him up to the laggards of the
school as an example of good conduct and industry. But his
progress, though satisfactory, was by no means extraordinary.
He used in after life to pride himself on his achievements in
mensuration, though another boy, John Taylor, beat him at arithmetic.
He also made considerable progress in mathematics; and
in a letter written to the son of his teacher, many years after, he
said, “It was to Mr. Bruce’s tuition and methods of modeling the
mind that I attribute much of my success as an engineer, for it
was from him that I derived my taste for mathematical pursuits,
and the facility I possess of applying this kind of knowledge to
practical purposes, and modifying it according to circumstances.”

During the time Robert attended school at Newcastle, his father
made the boy’s education instrumental to his own. Robert
was accustomed to spend some of his spare time at the rooms of
the Literary and Philosophical Institute, and when he went home[143]
in the evening he would recount to his father the results of his
reading. Sometimes he was allowed to take with him to Killingworth
a volume of the “Repertory of Arts and Sciences,” which
father and son studied together. But many of the most valuable
works belonging to the Newcastle Library were not permitted to
be removed from the rooms; these Robert was instructed to read
and study, and bring away with him descriptions and sketches
for his father’s information. His father also practiced him in
the reading of plans and drawings without at all referring to the
written descriptions. He used to observe to his son, “A good
drawing or plan should always explain itself;” and, placing a
drawing of an engine or machine before the youth, he would say,
“There, now, describe that to me—the arrangement and the action.”
Thus he taught him to read a drawing as easily as he
would read a page of a book. Both father and son profited by
this excellent practice, which shortly enabled them to apprehend
with the greatest facility the details of even the most difficult
and complicated mechanical drawing.

While Robert went on with his lessons in the evenings, his father
was usually occupied with his watch and clock cleaning, or
contriving models of pumping-engines, or endeavoring to embody
in a tangible shape the mechanical inventions which he found described
in the odd volumes on Mechanics which fell in his way.
This daily and unceasing example of industry and application,
working on before the boy’s eyes in the person of a loving and
beloved father, imprinted itself deeply upon his mind in characters
never to be effaced. A spirit of self-improvement was thus
early and carefully planted and fostered in him, which continued
to influence his character through life; and toward the close of
his career he was proud to confess that if his professional success
had been great, it was mainly to the example and training of his
father that he owed it.

Robert was not, however, exclusively devoted to study, but, like
most boys full of animal spirits, he was very fond of fun and
play, and sometimes of mischief. Dr. Bruce relates that an old
Killingworth laborer, when asked by Robert, on one of his last
visits to Newcastle, if he remembered him, replied with emotion,
“Ay, indeed! Haven’t I paid your head many a time when you
came with your father’s bait, for you were always a sad hempy?”

[144]

The author had the pleasure, in the year 1854, of accompanying
Robert Stephenson on a visit to his old home and haunts at
Killingworth. He had so often traveled the road upon his donkey
to and from school that every foot of it was familiar to him,
and each turn in it served to recall to mind some incident of his
boyish days.[28] His eyes glistened when he came in sight of Killingworth
pit head. Pointing to a humble red-tiled house by the
roadside at Benton, he said, “You see that house—that was Rutter’s,
where I learned my A B C, and made a beginning of my
school learning; and there,” pointing to a colliery chimney on
the left, “there is Long Benton, where my father put up his first
pumping-engine; and a great success it was. And this humble
clay-floored cottage you see here is where my grandfather lived
till the close of his life. Many a time have I ridden straight
into the house, mounted on my cuddy, and called upon grandfather
to admire his points. I remember the old man feeling the
animal all over—he was then quite blind—after which he would
dilate upon the shape of his ears, fetlocks, and quarters, and usually
end by pronouncing him to be a ‘real blood.’ I was a great
favorite with the old man, who continued very fond of animals,
and cheerful to the last; and I believe nothing gave him greater
pleasure than a visit from me and my cuddy.”

On the way from Benton to High Killingworth, Mr. Stephenson
pointed to a corner of the road where he had once played
a boyish trick upon a Killingworth collier. “Straker,” said he,
“was a great bully, a coarse, swearing fellow, and a perfect tyrant
among the women and children. He would go tearing into
old Nanny the huxter’s shop in the village, and demand in a savage
voice, ‘What’s ye’r best ham the pund?’ ‘What’s floor the
hunder?’ ‘What d’ye ax for prime bacon?’—his categories usually
ending with the miserable order, accompanied with a tremendous
oath, of ‘Gie’s a penny rrow (roll) an’ a baubee herrin’!’
The poor woman was usually set ‘all of a shake’ by a visit from
this fellow. He was also a great boaster, and used to crow over
the robbers whom he had put to flight; mere men in buckram,[145]
as every body knew. We boys,” he continued, “believed him to
be a great coward, and determined to play him a trick. Two
other boys joined me in waylaying Straker one night at that corner,”
pointing to it. “We sprang out and called upon him, in
as gruff voices as we could assume, to ‘stand and deliver!’ He
dropped down upon his knees in the dirt, declaring he was a poor
man, with a sma’ family, asking for ‘mercy,’ and imploring us, as
‘gentlemen, for God’s sake, t’ let him a-be!’ We couldn’t stand
this any longer, and set up a shout of laughter. Recognizing
our boys’ voices, he sprang to his feet again and rattled out a
volley of oaths, on which we cut through the hedge, and heard
him shortly after swearing his way along the road to the yel-house.”

On another occasion Robert played a series of tricks of a somewhat
different character. Like his father, he was very fond of
reducing his scientific reading to practice; and after studying
Franklin’s description of the lightning experiment, he proceeded
to expend his store of Saturday pennies in purchasing about half
a mile of copper wire at a brazier’s shop in Newcastle. Having
prepared his kite, he set it up in the field opposite his father’s
door, and bringing the wire, insulated by means of a few feet of
silk cord, over the backs of some of Farmer Wigham’s cows, he
soon had them skipping about the field in all directions with their
tails up. One day he had his kite flying at the cottage-door as
his father’s galloway was hanging by the bridle to the paling,
waiting for the master to mount. Bringing the end of the wire
just over the pony’s crupper, so smart an electric shock was given
it that the brute was almost knocked down. At this juncture
his father issued from the house, riding-whip in hand, and was
witness to the scientific trick just played off upon his galloway.
“Ah! you mischievous scoondrel!” cried he to the boy, who ran
off, himself inwardly chuckling with pride, nevertheless, at Robert’s
successful experiment.[29]

At this time, and for many years after, Stephenson dwelt in a[146]
cottage standing by the side of the road leading from the West
Moor Pit to Killingworth. The railway from West Moor crosses
this road close by the easternmost end of the cottage. The dwelling
originally consisted of but one apartment on the ground floor,
with a garret overhead, to which access was obtained by means
of a step-ladder. With his own hands Stephenson built an oven,
and in the course of time he added rooms to the cottage, until
it became expanded into a comfortable four-roomed dwelling, in
which he remained as long as he lived at Killingworth.

He continued as fond of birds and animals as ever, and seemed
to have the power of attaching them to him in a remarkable degree.
He had a blackbird at Killingworth so fond of him that
it would fly about the cottage, and on holding out his finger the
bird would come and perch upon it directly. A cage was built
for “blackie” in the partition between the passage and the room,
a square of glass forming its outer wall; and Robert used afterward
to take pleasure in describing the oddity of the bird, imitating
the manner in which it would cock its head on his father’s
entering the house, and follow him with its eye into the inner
apartment.

[147]

Neighbors were accustomed to call at the cottage and have
their clocks and watches set to rights when they went wrong.
One day, after looking at the works of a watch left by a pitman’s
wife, George handed it to his son: “Put her in the oven, Robert,”
said he, “for a quarter of an hour or so.” It seemed an odd way
of repairing a watch; nevertheless, the watch was put into the
oven, and at the end of the appointed time it was taken out,
going all right. The wheels had merely got clogged by the oil
congealed by the cold, which at once explains the rationale of the
remedy adopted.

There was a little garden attached to the cottage, in which,
while a workman, Stephenson took a pride in growing gigantic
leeks and astonishing cabbages. There was great competition in
the growing of vegetables among the villagers, all of whom he
excelled excepting one, whose cabbages sometimes outshone his.
To protect his garden-crops from the ravages of the birds, he invented
a strange sort of “fley-craw,” which moved its arms with
the wind; and he fastened his garden-door by means of a piece
of ingenious mechanism, so that no one but himself could enter
it. His cottage was quite a curiosity-shop of models of engines,
self-acting planes, and perpetual-motion machines. The last
named contrivances, however, were only unsuccessful attempts to
solve a problem which had already baffled hundreds of preceding
inventors.

His odd and eccentric contrivances often excited great wonder
among the Killingworth villagers. He won the women’s admiration
by connecting their cradles with the smoke-jack, and making
them self-acting. Then he astonished the pitmen by attaching
an alarm to the clock of the watchman whose duty it was to
call them betimes in the morning. He also contrived a wonderful
lamp which burned under water, with which he was afterward
wont to amuse the Brandling family at Gosforth—going
into the fish-pond at night, lamp in hand, attracting and catching
the fish, which rushed wildly toward the flame.

Dr. Bruce tells of a competition which Stephenson had with
the joiner at Killingworth as to which of them could make the
best shoe-last; and when the former had done his work, either
for the humor of the thing or to secure fair play from the appointed
judge, he took it to the Morrisons in Newcastle, and got[148]
them to put their stamp upon it; so that it is possible the Killingworth
brakesman, afterward the inventor of a safety-lamp and
originator of the locomotive railway system, and John Morrison,
the last-maker, afterward the translator of the Scriptures into the
Chinese language, may have confronted each other in solemn
contemplation of the successful last, which won the verdict coveted
by its maker.

Sometimes George would endeavor to impart to his fellow-workmen
the results of his scientific reading. Every thing that
he learned from books was so new and so wonderful to him, that
he regarded the facts he drew from them in the light of discoveries,
as if they had been made but yesterday. Once he tried to
explain to some of the pitmen how the earth was round, and kept
turning round. But his auditors flatly declared the thing to be
impossible, as it was clear that “at the bottom side they must fall
off!” “Ah!” said George, “you don’t quite understand it yet.”
His son Robert also early endeavored to communicate to others
the information which he had gathered at school; and Dr. Bruce
relates that, when visiting Killingworth on one occasion, he found
him engaged in teaching algebra to such of the pitmen’s boys as
would become his pupils.

While Robert was still at school, his father proposed to him
during the holidays that he should construct a sun-dial, to be
placed over their cottage-door at West Moor. “I expostulated
with him at first,” said Robert, “that I had not learned sufficient
astronomy and mathematics to enable me to make the necessary
calculations. But he would have no denial. ‘The thing is to be
done,’ said he, ‘so just set about it at once.’ Well, we got a ‘Ferguson’s
Astronomy,’ and studied the subject together. Many a
sore head I had while making the necessary calculations to adapt
the dial to the latitude of Killingworth. But at length it was
fairly drawn out on paper, and then my father got a stone, and
we hewed, and carved, and polished it, until we made a very respectable
dial of it; and there it is, you see,” pointing to it over
the cottage door, “still quietly numbering the hours when the sun
shines. I assure you, not a little was thought of that piece of
work by the pitmen when it was put up, and began to tell its
tale of time.” The date carved upon the dial is “August 11th,
MDCCCXVI.” Both father and son were in after life very proud of[149]
their joint production. Many
years after, George took a party
of savans, when attending
the meeting of the British Association
at Newcastle, over to
Killingworth to see the pits,
and he did not fail to direct
their attention to the sun-dial;
and Robert, on the last visit
which he made to the place, a
short time before his death,
took a friend into the cottage,
and pointed out to him the
very desk, still there, at which
he had sat when making his calculations of the latitude of Killingworth.

From the time of his appointment as engineer at the Killingworth
Pit, George Stephenson was in a measure relieved from
the daily routine of manual labor, having, as we have seen, advanced
himself to the grade of a higher-class workman. He had
not ceased to be a worker, though he employed his industry in a
different way. It might, indeed, be inferred that he had now the
command of greater leisure; but his spare hours were as much
as ever given to work, either necessary or self-imposed. So far
as regarded his social position, he had already reached the summit
of his ambition; and when he had got his hundred a year,
and his dun galloway to ride on, he said he never wanted to be
any higher. When Robert Wetherly offered to give him an old
gig, his traveling having so much increased of late, he accepted
it with great reluctance, observing that he should be ashamed to
get into it, “people would think him so proud.”

When the High Pit had been sunk and the coal was ready for
working, Stephenson erected his first winding-engine to draw the
coals out of the pit, and also a pumping-engine for Long Benton
colliery, both of which proved quite successful. Among other
works of this time, he projected and laid down a self-acting incline
along the declivity which fell toward the coal-loading place
near Willington, where he had formerly officiated as brakesman;
and he so arranged it that the full wagons, descending, drew the[150]
empty wagons up the railroad. This was one of the first self-acting
inclines laid down in the district.

The following is Stephenson’s own account of his various duties
and labors at this period of his life, as given before a Committee
of the House of Commons in 1835:[30]

It will thus be observed that Stephenson had now much better
opportunities for improving himself in mechanics than he had
heretofore possessed. His practical knowledge of the steam-engine
could not fail to prove of the greatest value to him. His
shrewd insight, together with his intimate acquaintance with its
mechanism, enabled him to apprehend, as if by intuition, its most
abstruse and difficult combinations. The study which he had[151]
given to it when a workman, and the patient manner in which
he had groped his way through all the details of the machine,
gave him the power of a master in dealing with it as applied to
colliery purposes.

Sir Thomas Liddell was frequently about the works, and took
pleasure in giving every encouragement to the engine-wright in
his efforts after improvement. The subject of the locomotive engine
was already occupying Stephenson’s careful attention, although
it was still regarded in the light of a curious and costly
toy, of comparatively little real use. But he had at an early period
recognized its practical value, and formed an adequate conception
of the might which as yet slumbered within it, and he
now proceeded to bend the whole faculties of his mind to the development
of its powers.

[152]

CHAPTER V.

THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE—GEORGE STEPHENSON BEGINS ITS IMPROVEMENT.

The rapid increase in the coal-trade of the Tyne about the beginning
of the present century had the effect of stimulating the
ingenuity of mechanics, and encouraging them to devise improved
methods of transporting the coal from the pits to the
shipping-places. From our introductory chapter, it will have
been observed that the improvements which had thus far been
effected were confined almost entirely to the road. The railway
wagons still continued to be drawn by horses. By improving
and flattening the tram-way, considerable economy in horse-power
had been secured; but, unless some more effective method of
mechanical traction could be devised, it was clear that railway
improvement had almost reached its limits.

Notwithstanding Trevithick’s comparatively successful experiment
with the first railway locomotive on the Merthyr Tydvil
tram-road in 1804, described in a former chapter, he seems to
have taken no farther steps to bring his invention into notice.
He was probably discouraged by the breakage of the cast-iron
plates, of which the road was formed, which were crushed under
the load of his engine, and could not induce the owners of the
line to relay it with better materials so as to give his locomotive
a fair trial.

An imaginary difficulty, also, seems to have tended, among
other obstacles, to prevent the adoption of the locomotive, viz.,
the idea that, if a heavy weight were placed behind the engine,
the “grip” or “bite” of its smooth wheels upon the equally
smooth iron rail must necessarily be so slight that they would
whirl round upon it, and, consequently, that the machine would
not make any progress.[31] Hence Trevithick, in his patent, provided[153]
that the periphery of the driving-wheels should be made
rough by the projection of bolts or cross-grooves, so that the adhesion
of the wheels to the road might thereby be better secured.

Trevithick himself does not seem to have erected another engine,
but we gather from the evidence given by Mr. Rastrick in
the committee on the Liverpool and Manchester Bill in 1825,
that ten or twelve years before that time he had made an engine
for Trevithick after his patent, and that the engine was exhibited
in London. “A circular railroad was laid down,” said Mr. Rastrick,
“and it was stated that this engine was to run against a
horse, and that which went a sufficient number of miles was to
win.” It is not known what afterward became of this engine.

There were, however, at a much earlier period, several wealthy
and enterprising men, both in Yorkshire and Northumberland,
who were willing to give the locomotive a fair trial; and had
Trevithick but possessed the requisite tenacity of purpose—had
he not been too soon discouraged by partially successful experiments—he
might have risen to both fame and fortune, not only
as the inventor of the locomotive, but as the practical introducer
of railway locomotion.

One of Trevithick’s early friends and admirers was Mr. Blackett,
of Wylam. The Wylam wagon-way is one of the oldest in
the north of England. Down to the year 1807 it was formed of
wooden spars or rails, laid down between the colliery at Wylam—where
old Robert Stephenson worked—and the village of Lemington,
some four miles down the Tyne, where the coals were
loaded into keels or barges, and floated down past Newcastle, to
be shipped for London. Each chaldron-wagon had a man in
charge of it, and was originally drawn by one horse. The rate
at which the wagons were hauled was so slow that only two journeys
were performed by each man and horse in one day, and
three on the day following. This primitive wagon-way passed,
as before stated, close in front of the cottage in which George
Stephenson was born, and one of the earliest sights which met
his infant eyes was this wooden tram-road worked by horses.

[154]

Mr. Blackett was the first colliery owner in the North who
took an active interest in the locomotive. He had witnessed the
first performances of Trevithick’s steam-carriage in London, and
was so taken with the idea of its application to railway locomotion
that he resolved to have an engine erected after the new
patent for use upon his tram-way at Wylam. He accordingly
obtained from Trevithick, in October, 1804, a plan of his engine,
provided with “friction-wheels,” and employed Mr. John Whinfield,
of Pipewellgate, Gateshead, to construct it at his foundery
there. The engine was made under the superintendence of one
John Steele,[32] an ingenious mechanic, who had been in Wales,
and worked under Trevithick in fitting the engine at Pen-y-darran.
When the Gateshead locomotive was finished, a temporary
way was laid down in the works, on which it was run backward
and forward many times. For some reason or other, however—it
is said because the engine was too light for drawing the
coal-trains—it never left the works, but was dismounted from
the wheels, and set to blow the cupola of the foundery, in which
service it long continued to be employed.

Several years elapsed before Mr. Blackett took any farther
steps to carry out his idea. The final abandonment of Trevithick’s
locomotive at Pen-y-darran perhaps contributed to deter
him from proceeding farther; but he had the Wylam wooden
tram-way taken up in 1808, and a plate-way of cast iron laid[155]
down instead—a single line furnished with sidings to enable the
laden wagons to pass the empty ones. The new iron road proved
so much smoother than the old wooden one, that a single horse,
instead of drawing one, was enabled to draw two, or even three
laden wagons.

Although the locomotive seemed about to be lost sight of, it
was not forgotten. In 1811, Mr. Blenkinsop, the manager of the
Middleton Collieries, near Leeds, revived the idea of employing
it in lieu of horses to haul the coals along his tram-way. Mr.
Blenkinsop, in the patent which he took out for his proposed engine,
followed in many respects the design of Trevithick; but,
with the help of Matthew Murray, of Leeds, one of the most ingenious
mechanics of his day, he introduced several important
and valuable modifications. Thus he employed two cylinders of
8 in. diameter instead of one, as in Trevithick’s engine. These
cylinders were placed vertically, and immersed for more than
half their length in the steam space of the boiler. The eduction[156]
pipes met in a single tube at the top, and threw the steam into
the air. The boiler was cylindrical in form, but of cast iron.
It had one flue, the fire being at one end and the chimney at the
other. The engine was supported on a carriage without springs,
resting directly upon two pairs of wheels and axles unconnected
with the working parts, and which merely served to carry the
engine upon the rails. The motion was effected in this way:
the piston-rods, by means of cross-heads, worked the connecting-rods,
which came down to two cranks on each side below the
boiler, placed at right angles in order to pass their centres with
certainty. These cranks worked two shafts fixed across the engine,
on which were small-toothed wheels working into a larger
one between them; and on the axis of this large wheel, outside
the framing, were the driving-wheels, one of which was toothed,
and worked into a rack on one side of the railway.

It will be observed that the principal new features in this engine
were the two cylinders and the toothed-wheel working into
a rack-rail. Mr. Blenkinsop contrived the latter expedient in order
to insure sufficient adhesion between the wheel and the road,
supposing that smooth wheels and smooth rails would be insufficient
for the purpose. Clumsy and slow though the engine was
compared with modern locomotives, it was nevertheless a success.
It was the first engine that plied regularly upon any railway,
doing useful work; and it continued so employed for more than
twenty years. What was more, it was a commercial success, for
its employment was found to be economical compared with horse-power.
In a letter to Sir John Sinclair, Mr. Blenkinsop stated
that his engine weighed five tons; consumed two thirds of a hundred
weight of coals and fifty gallons of water per hour; drew
twenty-seven wagons, weighing ninety-four tons, on a dead level,
at three and a half miles an hour, or fifteen tons up an ascent
of 2 in. in the yard; that when “lightly loaded” it traveled at a
speed of ten miles an hour; that it did the work of sixteen horses
in twelve hours; and that its cost was £400. Such was Mr. Blenkinsop’s
own account of the performances of his engine, which
was for a long time regarded as one of the wonders of the neighborhood.[33][157]
The Messrs. Chapman, of Newcastle, in 1812 endeavored to
overcome the same fictitious difficulty of the want of adhesion
between the wheel and the rail by patenting a locomotive to
work along the road by means of a chain stretched from one end
of it to the other. This chain was passed once round a grooved
barrel-wheel under the centre of the engine, so that when the
wheel turned, the locomotive, as it were, dragged itself along the
railway. An engine constructed after this plan was tried on the
Heaton Railway, near Newcastle; but it was so clumsy in action,
there was so great a loss of power by friction, and it was found
to be so expensive and difficult to keep in repair, that it was very
soon abandoned. Another remarkable expedient was adopted by
Mr. Brunton, of the Butterley Works, Derbyshire, who in 1813
patented his Mechanical Traveler, to go upon legs working alternately
like those of a horse.[34] But this engine never got beyond
the experimental state, for, at its very first trial, the driver,
to make sure of a good start, overloaded the safety-valve, when
the boiler burst and killed a number of the by-standers, wounding
many more. These, and other contrivances with the same object,
projected about the same time, show that invention was busily at
work, and that many minds were anxiously laboring to solve the
problem of steam locomotion on railways.

Mr. Blackett, of Wylam, was encouraged by the success of Mr.
Blenkinsop’s experiment, and again he resolved to make a trial
of the locomotive upon his wagon-way. Accordingly, in 1812,
he ordered a second engine, which was so designed as to work
with a toothed driving-wheel upon a rack-rail as at Leeds. This[158]
locomotive was constructed by Thomas Waters, of Gateshead,
under the superintendence of Jonathan Foster, Mr. Blackett’s
principal engine-wright. It was a combination of Trevithick’s
and Blenkinsop’s engines; but it was of a more awkward construction
than either. Like Trevithick’s, it had a single cylinder
with a fly-wheel, which Blenkinsop had discarded. The boiler
was of cast iron. Jonathan Foster described it to the author in
1854 as “a strange machine, with lots of pumps, cog-wheels, and
plugs, requiring constant attention while at work.” The weight
of the whole was about six tons.

When finished, it was conveyed to Wylam on a wagon, and
there mounted upon a wooden frame, supported by four pairs of
wheels, which had been constructed for its reception. A barrel
of water, placed on another frame upon wheels, was attached to
it as a tender. After a great deal of labor, the cumbrous machine
was got upon the road. At first it would not move an
inch. Its maker, Tommy Waters, became impatient, and at length
enraged, and, taking hold of the lever of the safety-valve, declared
in his desperation that “either she or he should go.” At length
the machinery was set in motion, on which, as Jonathan Foster
described to the author, “she flew all to pieces, and it was the
biggest wonder i’ the world that we were not all blewn up.” The
incompetent and useless engine was declared to be a failure; it
was shortly after dismounted and sold; and Mr. Blackett’s praiseworthy
efforts thus far proved in vain.

He was still, however, desirous of testing the practicability of
employing locomotive power in working the coal down to Lemington,
and he determined on making yet another trial. He accordingly
directed his engine-wright, Jonathan Foster, to proceed
with the building of a third engine in the Wylam workshops.
This new locomotive had a single 8-inch cylinder, was provided
with a fly-wheel like its predecessor, and the driving-wheel was
cogged on one side to enable it to travel in the rack-rail laid
along the road. The engine proved more successful than the
former one, and it was found capable of dragging eight or nine
loaded wagons, though at the rate of little more than a mile an
hour, from the colliery to the shipping-place. It sometimes took
six hours to perform the journey of five miles. Its weight was
found too great for the road, and the cast-iron plates were constantly[159]
breaking. It was also very apt to get off the rack-rail,
and then it stood still. The driver was one day asked how he
got on. “Get on?” said he, “we don’t get on; we only get off!”
On such occasions, horses had to be sent out to drag the wagons
as before, and others to haul the engine back to the workshops.
It was constantly getting out of order; its plugs, pumps, or cranks
got wrong, and it was under repair as often as at work. At length
it became so cranky that the horses were usually sent after it to
drag it along when it gave up, and the workmen generally declared
it to be a “perfect plague.” Mr. Blackett did not obtain
credit among his neighbors for these experiments. Many laughed
at his machines, regarding them only in the light of crotchets—frequently
quoting the proverb of “a fool and his money are
soon parted.” Others regarded them as absurd innovations on
the established method of hauling coal, and pronounced that they
would “never answer.”

Notwithstanding, however, the comparative failure of the second
locomotive, Mr. Blackett persevered with his experiments.
He was zealously assisted by Jonathan Foster, the engine-wright,
and William Hedley, the viewer of the colliery, a highly ingenious
person, who proved of great use in carrying out the experiments
to a successful issue. One of the chief causes of failure
being the rack-rail, the idea occurred to Mr. Hedley that it might
be possible to secure sufficient adhesion between the wheel and
the rail by the mere weight of the engine, and he proceeded to
make a series of experiments for the purpose of determining this
problem. He had a frame placed on four wheels, and fitted up
with windlasses attached by gearing to the several wheels. The
frame having been properly weighted, six men were set to work
the windlasses, when it was found that the adhesion of the smooth
wheels on the smooth rails was quite sufficient to enable them to
propel the machine without slipping. Having then found the
proportion which the power bore to the weight, he demonstrated
by successive experiments that the weight of the engine would
of itself produce sufficient adhesion to enable it to draw upon a
smooth railroad the requisite number of wagons in all kinds of
weather. And thus was the fallacy which had heretofore prevailed
on this subject completely exploded, and it was satisfactorily
proved that rack-rails, toothed wheels, endless chains, and[160]
legs, were alike unnecessary for the efficient traction of loaded
wagons upon a moderately level road.[35]

From this time forward, considerably less difficulty was experienced
in working the coal-trains upon the Wylam tram-road.
At length the rack-rail was dispensed with. The road was laid
with heavier rails; the working of the old engine was improved;
and a new engine was shortly after built and placed upon the
road, still on eight wheels, driven by seven rack-wheels working
inside them—with a wrought-iron boiler through which the flue
was returned so as largely to increase the heating surface, and
thus give increased power to the engine.[36] Below is a representation
of this improved Wylam engine.

[161]

As may readily be imagined, the jets of steam from the piston,
blowing off into the air at high pressure while the engine was in
motion, caused considerable annoyance to horses passing along
the Wylam road, at that time a public highway. The nuisance
was felt to be almost intolerable, and a neighboring gentleman
threatened to have it put down. To diminish the noise as much
as possible, Mr. Blackett gave orders that so soon as any horse, or
vehicle drawn by horses, came in sight, the locomotive was to be
stopped, and the frightful blast of the engine thus suspended until
the passing animals had got out of sight. Much interruption was
thus caused to the working of the railway, and it excited considerable
dissatisfaction among the workmen. The following plan
was adopted to abate the nuisance: a reservoir was provided immediately
behind the chimney (as shown in the opposite cut)
into which the waste steam was thrown after it had performed its
office in the cylinder, and from this reservoir the steam gradually
escaped into the atmosphere without noise. This arrangement
was devised with the express object of preventing a blast in the
chimney, the value of which, as we shall subsequently find, was
not detected until George Stephenson, adopting it with a preconceived
design and purpose, demonstrated its importance and value—as
being, in fact, the very life-breath of the locomotive engine.

While Mr. Blackett was thus experimenting and building locomotives
at Wylam, George Stephenson was anxiously studying
the same subject at Killingworth. He was no sooner appointed
engine-wright of the collieries than his attention was directed to
the means of more economically hauling the coal from the pits to
the river side. We have seen that one of the first important improvements
which he made, after being placed in charge of the
colliery machinery, was to apply the surplus power of a pumping
steam-engine fixed underground, for the purpose of drawing the
coals out of the deeper workings of the Killingworth mines, by
which he succeeded in effecting a large reduction in the expenditure
on manual and horse labor.

The coals, when brought above ground, had next to be laboriously
dragged by means of horses to the shipping staiths on the
Tyne, several miles distant. The adoption of a tram-road, it is
true, had tended to facilitate their transit; nevertheless, the haulage
was both tedious and expensive. With the view of economizing[162]
labor, Stephenson laid down inclined planes where the nature
of the ground would admit of this expedient being adopted.
Thus a train of full wagons let down the incline by means of a
rope running over wheels laid along the tram-road, the other end
of which was attached to a train of empty wagons placed at the
bottom of the parallel road on the same incline, dragged them up
by the simple power of gravity. But this applied only to a comparatively
small part of the road. An economical method of
working the coal-trains, instead of by means of horses—the keep
of which was at that time very costly, in consequence of the high
price of corn—was still a great desideratum, and the best practical
minds in the collieries were actively engaged in trying to solve
the problem.

In the first place, Stephenson resolved to make himself thoroughly
acquainted with what had already been done. Mr. Blackett’s
engines were working daily at Wylam, past the cottage where
he had been born, and thither he frequently went[37] to inspect the
improvements made by Mr. Blackett from time to time both in
the locomotive and in the plate-way along which it worked. Jonathan
Foster informed us that, after one of these visits, Stephenson
declared to him his conviction that a much more effective engine
might be made, that should work more steadily and draw
the load more effectively.

He had also the advantage, about the same time, of seeing one
of Blenkinsop’s Leeds engines, which was placed on the tram-way
leading from the collieries of Kenton and Coxlodge, on the 2d of
September, 1813. This locomotive drew sixteen chaldron wagons,
containing an aggregate weight of seventy tons, at the rate
of about three miles an hour. George Stephenson and several of
the Killingworth men were among the crowd of spectators that[163]
day; and after examining the engine and observing its performances,
he remarked to his companions that “he thought he could
make a better engine than that, to go upon legs.” Probably he
had heard of the invention of Brunton, whose patent had by this
time been published, and proved the subject of much curious
speculation in the colliery districts. Certain it is that, shortly
after the inspection of the Coxlodge engine, he contemplated the
construction of a new locomotive, which was to surpass all that
had preceded it. He observed that those engines which had been
constructed up to this time, however ingenious in their arrangements,
were in a great measure practical failures. Mr. Blackett’s
was as yet both clumsy and expensive. Chapman’s had been removed
from the Heaton tram-way in 1812, and was regarded as
a total failure. And the Blenkinsop engine at Coxlodge was
found very unsteady and costly in its working; besides, it pulled
the rails to pieces, the entire strain being upon the rack-rail on
one side of the road. The boiler, however, having shortly blown
up, there was an end of that engine, and the colliery owners did
not feel encouraged to try any farther experiment.

An efficient and economical working locomotive engine, therefore,
still remained to be invented, and to accomplish this object
Stephenson now applied himself. Profiting by what his predecessors
had done, warned by their failures and encouraged by
their partial successes, he commenced his labors. There was
still wanting the man who should accomplish for the locomotive
what James Watt had done for the steam-engine, and combine
in a complete form the best points in the separate plans of others,
embodying with them such original inventions and adaptations
of his own as to entitle him to the merit of inventing the
working locomotive, as James Watt is to be regarded as the inventor
of the working condensing engine. This was the great
work upon which George Stephenson now entered, though probably
without any adequate idea of the ultimate importance of
his labors to society and civilization.

He proceeded to bring the subject of constructing a “Traveling
Engine,” as he then denominated the locomotive, under the
notice of the lessees of the Killingworth Colliery, in the year
1813. Lord Ravensworth, the principal partner, had already
formed a very favorable opinion of the new colliery engine-wright[164]
from the improvements which he had effected in the colliery
engines, both above and below ground; and, after considering
the matter, and hearing Stephenson’s explanations, he authorized
him to proceed with the construction of a locomotive,
though his lordship was by some called a fool for advancing
money for such a purpose. “The first locomotive that I made,”
said Stephenson, many years after,[38] when speaking of his early
career at a public meeting in Newcastle, “was at Killingworth
Colliery, and with Lord Ravensworth’s money. Yes, Lord Ravensworth
and partners were the first to intrust me, thirty-two
years since, with money to make a locomotive engine. I said to
my friends, there was no limit to the speed of such an engine, if
the works could be made to stand.”

Our engine-wright had, however, many obstacles to encounter
before he could get fairly to work with the erection of his locomotive.
His chief difficulty was in finding workmen sufficiently
skilled in mechanics and in the use of tools to follow his instructions
and embody his designs in a practical shape. The tools
then in use about the collieries were rude and clumsy, and there
were no such facilities as now exist for turning out machinery
of an entirely new character. Stephenson was under the necessity
of working with such men and tools as were at his command,
and he had in a great measure to train and instruct the workmen
himself. The engine was built in the workshops at the West
Moor, the leading mechanic being John Thirlwall, the colliery
blacksmith, an excellent mechanic in his way, though quite new
to the work now intrusted to him.

In this first locomotive constructed at Killingworth, Stephenson
to some extent followed the plan of Blenkinsop’s engine.
The wrought-iron boiler was cylindrical, eight feet in length and
thirty-four inches in diameter, with an internal flue-tube twenty
inches wide passing through it. The engine had two vertical
cylinders of eight inches diameter
and two feet stroke let into
the boiler, which worked the propelling
gear with cross-heads and
connecting-rods. The power of
the two cylinders was combined[165]
by means of spur-wheels, which communicated the motive power
to the wheels supporting the engine on the rail, instead of, as in
Blenkinsop’s engine, to cog-wheels which acted on the cogged
rail independent of the four supporting wheels. The engine
thus worked upon what is termed the second motion. The chimney
was of wrought iron, round which was a chamber extending
back to the feed-pumps, for the purpose of heating the water
previous to its injection into the boiler. The engine had no
springs, and was mounted on a wooden frame supported on four
wheels. In order to neutralize as much as possible the jolts and
shocks which such an engine would necessarily encounter from
the obstacles and inequalities of the then very imperfect plate-way,
the water-barrel which served for a tender was fixed to the
end of a lever and weighted, the other end of the lever being
connected with the frame of the locomotive carriage. By this
means the weight of the two was more equally distributed,
though the contrivance did not by any means compensate for
the total absence of springs.

The wheels of the locomotive were all smooth, Stephenson
having satisfied himself by experiment that the adhesion between
the wheels of a loaded engine and the rail would be sufficient for
the purpose of traction. Robert Stephenson informed us that
his father caused a number of workmen to mount upon the wheels
of a wagon moderately loaded, and throw their entire weight
upon the spokes on one side, when he found that the wagon
could thus be easily propelled forward without the wheels slipping.
This, together with other experiments, satisfied him, as it
had already satisfied Mr. Hedley, of the expediency of adopting
smooth wheels on his engine, and it was so made accordingly.

The engine was, after much labor and anxiety, and frequent
alterations of parts, at length brought to completion, having been
about ten months in hand. It was placed upon the Killingworth
Railway on the 25th of July, 1814, and its powers were tried on
the same day. On an ascending gradient of 1 in 450, the engine
succeeded in drawing after it eight loaded carriages of thirty
tons’ weight at about four miles an hour; and for some time after
it continued regularly at work.

Although a considerable advance upon previous locomotives,
“Blucher” (as the engine was popularly called) was nevertheless[166]
a somewhat cumbrous and clumsy machine. The parts were
huddled together. The boiler constituted the principal feature;
and, being the foundation of the other parts, it was made to do
duty not only as a generator of steam, but also as a basis for the
fixings of the machinery and for the bearings of the wheels and
axles. The want of springs was seriously felt; and the progress
of the engine was a succession of jolts, causing considerable derangement
to the machinery. The mode of communicating the
motive power to the wheels by means of the spur-gear also caused
frequent jerks, each cylinder alternately propelling or becoming
propelled by the other, as the pressure of the one upon the wheels
became greater or less than the pressure of the other; and, when
the teeth of the cog-wheels became at all worn, a rattling noise
was produced during the traveling of the engine.

As the principal test of the success of the locomotive was its
economy as compared with horse-power, careful calculations were
made with the view of ascertaining this important point. The
result was, that it was found the working of the engine was at
first barely economical; and at the end of the year the steam-power
and the horse-power were ascertained to be as nearly as
possible upon a par in point of cost.

We give the remainder of the history of George Stephenson’s
efforts to produce an economical working locomotive in the words
of his son Robert, as communicated to the author in 1856, for
the purposes of his father’s “Life.”

The invention of the Steam-blast by George Stephenson in
1815 was fraught with the most important consequences to railway
locomotion, and it is not saying too much to aver that the
success of the locomotive has been in a great measure the result
of its adoption. Without the steam-blast, by means of which the
intensity of combustion is maintained at its highest point, producing
a correspondingly rapid evolution of steam, high rates of
speed could not have been kept up; the advantages of the multitubular
boiler (afterward invented) could never have been fully
tested; and locomotives might still have been dragging themselves
unwieldily along at little more than five or six miles an
hour.

As this invention has been the subject of considerable controversy,
it becomes necessary to add a few words respecting it in
this place. It has been claimed as the invention of Trevithick[171]
in 1804, of Hedley in 1814, of Goldsworthy Gurney in 1820, and
of Timothy Hackworth in 1829. With respect to Trevithick, it
appears that he discharged the waste steam into the chimney
of his engine, but without any intention of thereby producing a
blast;[39] and that he attached no value to the expedient is sufficiently
obvious from the fact that in 1815 he took out a patent
for urging the fire by means of fanners, similar to a winnowing
machine. The claim put forward on behalf of William Hedley,
that he invented the blast-pipe for the Wylam engine, is sufficiently
contradicted by the fact that the Wylam engine had no
blast-pipe. “I remember the Wylam engine,” Robert Stephenson
wrote to the author in 1857, “and I am positive there was no
blast-pipe.” On the contrary, the Wylam engine embodied a contrivance
for the express purpose of preventing a blast. This is
clearly shown by the drawing and description of it contained in
the first edition of Nicholas Wood’s “Practical Treatise on Railroads,”
published in 1825. This evidence is all the more valuable
for our purpose as it was published long before any controversy
had arisen as to the authorship of the invention, and, indeed,
before it was believed that any merit whatever belonged to
it. And it is the more remarkable, as Nicholas Wood himself,
who published the first practical work on railways, did not at
that time approve of the steam-blast, and referred to the Wylam
engine in illustration of how it might be prevented.

The following passage from Mr. Wood’s book clearly describes
the express object and purpose for which George Stephenson invented
and applied the steam-blast in the Killingworth engines.
Describing their action, Mr. Wood says:

And again, at another part of the book, he says:

Mr. Wood then proceeds to show how the noise caused by the
blast—how, in fact, the blast itself, might be effectually prevented
by adopting the expedient employed in the Wylam engine; which
was, to send the exhaust steam, not into the chimney (where alone
the blast could act with effect by stimulating the draught), but
into a steam-reservoir provided for the purpose. His words are
these:

It is curious to find that Mr. Nicholas Wood continued to object
to the use of the steam-blast down even to the time when
the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill was before Parliament.
In his evidence before the Committee on that Bill in
1825, he said: “Those engines [at Killingworth] puff very much,
and the object is to get an increased draught in the chimney.
Now (by enlarging the flue-tube and giving it a double turn
through the boiler) we have got a sufficiency of steam without it,
and I have no doubt, by allowing the steam to exhaust itself in
a reservoir, it would pass quietly into the chimney without that
noise.” In fact, Mr. Wood was still in favor of the arrangement
adopted in the Wylam engine, by which the steam-blast had been
got rid of altogether.

If these statements, made in Mr. Wood’s book, be correct—and
they have never been disputed—they render it perfectly clear that
George Stephenson invented and applied the steam-blast for the
express purpose of quickening combustion in the furnace by increasing
the draught in the chimney. Although urged by Wood
to abandon the blast, Stephenson continued to hold by it as one
of the vital powers of the locomotive engine. It is quite true that
in the early engines, with only a double flue passing through the
boiler, run as they were at low speeds, the blast was of comparatively
less importance. It was only when the improved passenger
engine, fitted with the multitubular boiler, was required to be run
at high speeds that the full merits of the blast were brought out;
and in detecting its essential uses in this respect, and sharpening[174]
it for the purpose of increasing its action, the sagacity of Timothy
Hackworth, of Darlington, is entitled to due recognition.

[175]

CHAPTER VI.

INVENTION OF THE “GEORDY” SAFETY-LAMP.

Explosions of fire-damp were unusually frequent in the coal-mines
of Northumberland and Durham about the time when
George Stephenson was engaged in the construction of his first
locomotives. These explosions were often attended with fearful
loss of life and dreadful suffering to the work-people. Killingworth
Colliery was not free from such deplorable calamities; and
during the time that Stephenson was employed as brakesman at
the West Moor, several “blasts” took place in the pit, by which
many workmen were scorched and killed, and the owners of the colliery
sustained heavy losses. One of the most serious of these
accidents occurred in 1806, not long after he had been appointed
brakesman, by which ten persons were killed. Stephenson was
near the pit mouth at the time, and the circumstances connected
with the explosion made a deep impression on his mind, as appears
from the graphic account which he gave of it to the Committee
of the House of Commons on accidents in mines, some
thirty years after the event.

Another explosion took place in the same pit in 1809, by which
twelve persons lost their lives. The blast did not reach the shaft
as in the former case, the unfortunate persons in the pit having
been suffocated by the after-damp. More calamitous still were
the explosions which took place in the neighboring collieries, one
of the worst being that of 1812, in the Felling Pit near Gateshead,
a mine belonging to Mr. Brandling, by which no fewer than ninety[177]
men and boys were suffocated or burnt to death; and a similar
accident occurred in the same pit in the year following, by which
twenty-two men and boys perished.

It was natural that Stephenson should devote his attention to
the causes of these deplorable accidents, and to the means by
which they might, if possible, be prevented. His daily occupation
led him to think much and deeply on the subject. As engine-wright
of a colliery so extensive as that of Killingworth, where
there were nearly 160 miles of gallery excavation, in which he
personally superintended the working of inclined planes, along
which the coals were sent to the pit entrance, he was necessarily
very often under ground, and brought face to face with the dangers
of fire-damp. From fissures in the roofs of the galleries carbureted
hydrogen gas was constantly flowing; and in some of the
more dangerous places it might be heard escaping from the crevices
of the coal with a hissing noise. Ventilation, firing, and all
conceivable modes of drawing out the foul air had been tried,
while the more dangerous parts of the galleries were built up.
Still the danger could not be wholly prevented. The miners must
necessarily guide their steps through the extensive underground
ways with lighted lamps or candles, the naked flame of which,
coming in contact with the inflammable air, daily exposed them
and their fellow-workers in the pit to the risk of death in one of
its most dreadful forms.

[178]

One day in the year 1814, a workman hurried into Stephenson’s
cottage with the startling information that the deepest main
of the colliery was on fire! He immediately hastened to the pit-head,
about a hundred yards off, whither the women and children
of the colliery were running, with wildness and terror depicted
in every face. In a commanding voice, Stephenson ordered the
engine-man to lower him down the shaft in the corve. There
was danger, it might be death, before him, but he must go.

He was soon at the bottom and in the midst of the men, who
were paralyzed at the danger which threatened the lives of all in
the pit. Leaping from the corve on its touching the ground, he
called out, “Are there six men among you who have the courage
to follow me? If so, come, and we will put the fire out.” The
Killingworth pitmen had the most perfect confidence in their engine-wright,
and they readily volunteered to follow him. Silence
succeeded the frantic tumult of the previous minute, and the men
set to work with a will. In every mine, bricks, mortar, and tools
enough are at hand, and by Stephenson’s direction the materials
were forthwith carried to the required spot, where, in a very
short time, a wall was raised at the entrance to the main, he himself
taking the most active part in the work. The atmospheric
air was by this means excluded, the fire was extinguished, most
of the people in the pit were saved from death, and the mine was
preserved.

This anecdote of George Stephenson was related to the writer,
near the pit-mouth, by one of the men, Kit Heppel, who had been
present, and helped to build up the brick wall by which the fire
was stayed, though several of the workmen were suffocated.
Heppel relates that, when down the pit some days after, seeking
out the dead bodies, the cause of the accident was the subject of
some conversation between himself and Stephenson, and Heppel
then asked him, “Can nothing be done to prevent such awful
occurrences?” Stephenson replied that he thought something
might be done. “Then,” said Heppel, “the sooner you begin the
better, for the price of coal-mining now is pitmen’s lives.”

Fifty years since, many of the best pits were so full of the inflammable
gas given forth by the coal that they could not be
worked without the greatest danger, and for this reason some
were altogether abandoned. The rudest possible means were[179]
adopted of producing light sufficient to enable the pitmen to
work by. The phosphorescence of decayed fish-skins was tried;
but this, though safe, was very inefficient. The most common
method employed was what was called a steel mill, the notched
wheel of which, being made to revolve against a flint, struck a
succession of sparks, which scarcely served to do more than make
the darkness visible. A boy carried the apparatus, working the
wheel; and by the imperfect light thus given forth the miner
plied his dangerous trade. Candles were only used in those parts
of the pit where gas was not abundant. Under this rude system
not more than one third of the coal could be worked, while two
thirds were left.

What the workmen, not less than the coal-owners, eagerly desired
was a lamp that should give forth sufficient light, without
communicating flame to the inflammable gas which accumulated
in certain parts of the pit. Something had already been done
toward the invention of such a lamp by Dr. Clanny, of Sunderland,
who, in 1813, contrived an apparatus to which he gave air
from the mine through water, by means of bellows. This lamp
went out of itself in inflammable gas. It was found, however, too
unwieldy to be used by the miners for the purposes of their work,
and did not come into general use. A committee of gentlemen
interested in coal-mining was formed to investigate the causes of
the explosions, and to devise, if possible, some means of preventing
them. At the invitation of that committee, Sir Humphry
Davy, then in the full zenith of his reputation, was requested to
turn his attention to the subject. He accordingly visited the collieries
near Newcastle on the 24th of August, 1815, and at the
close of that year, on the 9th of November, 1815, he read before
the Royal Society of London his celebrated paper “On the Fire-damp
of Coal Mines, and on Methods of Lighting the Mine so as
to prevent its Explosion.”

But a humbler though not less diligent and original thinker
had been at work before him, and had already practically solved
the problem of the Safety-lamp. Stephenson was, of course, well
aware of the desire which prevailed in the colliery districts for
the invention of a lamp which should give light enough for the
miners to work by without exploding the fire-damp, and the painful
incidents above described only served to quicken his eagerness
to master the difficulty.

[180]

For several years he had been engaged, in his own rude way,
in making experiments with the fire-damp in the Killingworth
mine. The pitmen used to expostulate with him on these occasions,
believing the experiments to be fraught with danger. One
of the sinkers, called M’Crie, observing him holding up lighted
candles to the windward of the “blower” or fissure from which
the inflammable gas escaped, entreated him to desist; but Stephenson’s
answer was, that “he was busy with a plan by which
he hoped to make his experiments useful for preserving men’s
lives.” On these occasions the miners usually got out of the way
before he lit the gas.

In 1815, although he was very much occupied with the business
of the collieries and the improvement of his locomotive engine,
he was also busily engaged in making experiments upon
the inflammable gas in the Killingworth Pit. As he himself afterward
related to the Committee of the House of Commons which
sat on the subject of Accidents in Mines in 1835, he imagined
that if he could construct a lamp with a chimney so arranged as
to cause a strong current, it would not fire at the top of the chimney,
as the burnt air would ascend with such a velocity as to prevent
the inflammable air of the pit from descending toward the
flame; and such a lamp, he thought, might be taken into a dangerous
atmosphere without risk of exploding.

Such was Stephenson’s theory, when he proceeded to embody
his idea of a miner’s safety-lamp in a practical form. In the
month of August, 1815, he requested his friend Nicholas Wood,
the head viewer, to prepare a drawing of a lamp according to the
description which he gave him. After several evenings’ careful
deliberations, the drawing was prepared, and it was shown to
several of the head men about the works. “My first lamp,” said
Stephenson, describing it to the committee above referred to,
“had a chimney at the top of the lamp, and a tube at the bottom
to admit the atmospheric air, or fire-damp and air, to feed the
burner or combustion of the lamp. I was not aware of the precise
quantity required to feed the combustion; but to know what
quantity was necessary, I had a slide at the bottom of the tube
in my first lamp, to admit such a quantity of air as might eventually
be found necessary to keep up the combustion.”

Accompanied by his friend Wood, Stephenson went into Newcastle,[181]
and ordered a lamp to be made according to his plan by
the Messrs. Hogg, tinmen, at the head of the Side—a well-known
street in Newcastle. At the same time, he ordered a glass to be
made for the lamp at the Northumberland Glass-house in the
same town. This lamp was received from the makers on the
21st of October, and was taken to Killingworth for the purpose
of immediate experiment.

Arrived at the bottom of the shaft with the lamp, the party
directed their steps toward one of the foulest galleries in the pit,
where the explosive gas was issuing through a blower in the roof
of the mine with a loud hissing noise. By erecting some deal
boarding round that part of the gallery into which the gas was
escaping, the air was thus made more foul for the purpose of the[182]
experiment. After waiting about an hour, Moodie, whose practical
experience of fire-damp in pits was greater than that of
either Stephenson or Wood, was requested to go into the place
which had thus been made foul; and, having done so, he returned,
and told them that the smell of the air was such that if
a lighted candle were now introduced an explosion must inevitably
take place. He cautioned Stephenson as to the danger both
to themselves and to the pit if the gas took fire; but Stephenson
declared his confidence in the safety of his lamp, and, having lit
the wick, he boldly proceeded with it toward the explosive air.
The others, more timid and doubtful, hung back when they came
within hearing of the blower; and, apprehensive of the danger,
they retired into a safe place, out of sight of the lamp, which
gradually disappeared with its bearer in the recesses of the mine.
It was a critical moment, and the danger was such as would have
tried the stoutest heart. Stephenson, advancing alone, with his
yet untried lamp, in the depths of those underground workings,
calmly venturing his life in the determination to discover a mode
by which the lives of many might be saved, and death disarmed
in these fatal caverns, presented an example of intrepid nerve
and manly courage more noble even than that which, in the excitement
of battle and the collective impetuosity of a charge, carries
a man up to the cannon’s mouth.

Advancing to the place of danger, and entering within the
fouled air, his lighted lamp in hand, Stephenson held it firmly
out, in the full current of the blower, and within a few inches of
its mouth. Thus exposed, the flame of the lamp at first increased,
then flickered, and then went out; but there was no explosion of
the gas. Returning to his companions, who were still at a distance,
he told them what had occurred. Having now acquired
somewhat more confidence, they advanced with him to a point
from which they could observe the experiment repeated, but still
at a safe distance. They saw that when the lighted lamp was
held within the explosive mixture, there was a great flame; the
lamp was almost full of fire; and then it seemed to be smothered
out. Again returning to his companions, he relighted the lamp,
and repeated the experiment. This was done several times, with
the same result. At length Wood and Moodie ventured to advance
close to the fouled part of the pit; and, in making some[183]
of the later trials, Mr. Wood himself held up the lighted lamp to
the blower.[44] Such was the result of the first experiments with
the first practical Miner’s Safety-lamp, and such was the daring
resolution of its inventor in testing its qualities.

Before leaving the pit, Stephenson expressed his opinion that,
by an alteration of the lamp which he contemplated, he could
make it burn better. This was by a change in the slide through
which the air was admitted into the lower part of the lamp, under
the flame. After making some experiments on the air collected
at the blower, by means of bladders which were mounted
with tubes of various diameters, he satisfied himself that, when
the tube was reduced to a certain diameter, the explosion would
not pass through; and he fashioned his slide accordingly, reducing
the diameter of the tube until he conceived it was quite safe.
In about a fortnight the experiments were repeated in the pit, in
a place purposely made foul as before. On this occasion a larger
number of persons ventured to witness the experiments, which
again proved successful. The lamp was not yet, however, so efficient
as the inventor desired. It required, he observed, to be[184]
kept very steady when burning in the inflammable gas, otherwise
it was liable to go out, in consequence, as he imagined, of the
contact of the burnt air (as he then called it), or azotic gas, which
lodged round the exterior of the flame. If the lamp was moved
backward and forward, the azote came in contact with the flame
and extinguished it. “It struck me,” said he, “that if I put more
tubes in, I should discharge the poisonous matter that hung round
the flame by admitting the air to its exterior part.”

Although he had then no access to scientific works, nor intercourse
with scientific men, nor any thing that could assist
him in his inquiries on the subject besides his own indefatigable
spirit of inquiry, Stephenson contrived a rude apparatus,
by means of which he proceeded to test the explosive properties
of the gas and the velocity of current (for this was the direction
of his inquiries) required to permit the explosion to pass through
tubes of different diameters. In making these experiments in
his cottage at the West Moor, Nicholas Wood and George’s son
Robert usually acted as his assistants, and sometimes the gentlemen
of the neighborhood—among others, William Brandling
and Matthew Bell, who were interested in coal-mining—attended
as spectators. One who was present on such an occasion remembers
that, when an experiment was about to be performed, and
all was ready, George called to Mr. Wood, who worked the stop-cocks
of the gasometer, “Wise on [turn on] the hydrōgen,
Nichol!”

These experiments were not performed without risk, for on
one occasion the experimenting party had nearly blown off the
roof of the cottage. One of these “blows up” was described by
Stephenson himself before the Committee on Accidents in Coal
Mines in 1835:

The explosion of this glass receiver, which had been borrowed
from the stores of the Philosophical Society at Newcastle for the
purpose of making the experiments, caused the greatest possible
dismay among the party, and they dreaded to inform Mr. Turner,
the secretary,[45] of the calamity which had occurred. Fortunately,
none of the experimenters were injured by the accident.

Stephenson followed up these experiments by others of a similar
kind, with the view of ascertaining whether ordinary flame
would pass through tubes of a small diameter, and with this object
he filed off the barrels of several small keys. Placing these
together, he held them perpendicularly over a strong flame, and
ascertained that it did not pass upward. This was a farther
proof to him of the soundness of the principle on which he had
been proceeding.

In order to correct the defect of his first lamp, he accordingly
proceeded to alter it so as to admit the air to the flame by several
tubes of reduced diameter instead of by a single tube. He inferred[186]
that a sufficient quantity of air would thus be introduced
into the lamp for the purposes of combustion, while the smallness
of the apertures would still prevent the explosion passing
downward, at the same time that the “burnt air” (the cause, in
his opinion, of the lamp going out) would be more effectually
dislodged. The requisite alterations were made in the lamp by
Mr. Matthews, a tinman in Newcastle, and it was so altered that
the air was admitted by three small tubes inserted in the bottom,
the openings of which were placed on the outside of the
burner, instead of having (as in the original lamp) the one tube
opening directly under the flame.

This second or altered lamp was tried in the Killingworth Pit
on the 4th of November, and was found to burn better than the
first lamp, and to be perfectly safe. But, as it did not yet come
up entirely to the inventor’s expectations, he proceeded to contrive
a third lamp, in which he proposed to surround the oil vessel with
a number of capillary tubes. Then it struck him that if he cut
off the middle of the tubes, or made holes in metal plates, placed
at a distance from each other equal to the length of the tubes,
the air would get in better, and the effect in preventing the communication
of explosion would be the same.

He was encouraged to persevere in the completion of his safety-lamp
by the occurrence of several fatal accidents about this
time in the Killingworth Pit. On the 9th of November a boy
was killed by a blast in the A pit, at the very place where Stephenson
had made the experiments with his first lamp; and, when
told of the accident, he observed that if the boy had been provided
with his lamp, his life would have been saved. On the 20th of
November he went over to Newcastle to order his third lamp from
Mr. Watson, a plumber in that town. Mr. Watson referred him
to his clerk, Henry Smith, whom Stephenson invited to join him
at a neighboring public house, where they might quietly talk over
the matter, and finally settle the plan of the new lamp. They
adjourned to the “Newcastle Arms,” near the present High-Level
Bridge, where they had some ale, and a design of the lamp was
drawn in pencil upon a half-sheet of foolscap, with a rough specification
subjoined. The sketch, when shown to us by Robert
Stephenson some years since, still bore the marks of the ale. It
was a very rude design, but sufficient to work from. It was immediately[187]
placed in the hands of the workmen, finished in the
course of a few days, and experimentally tested in the Killingworth
Pit like the previous lamps on the 30th of November, by
which date neither Stephenson nor Wood had heard of Sir Humphry
Davy’s experiments, nor of the lamp which that gentleman
proposed to construct.

An angry controversy afterward took place as to the respective
merits of George Stephenson and Sir Humphry Davy in respect
of the invention of the Safety-lamp. A committee was formed
on both sides, and the facts were stated in various ways. It is
perfectly clear, however, that Stephenson had ascertained the fact
that flame will not pass through tubes of a certain diameter—the
principle on which the safety-lamp is constructed—before Sir
Humphry Davy had formed any definite idea on the subject, or
invented the model lamp afterward exhibited by him before the
Royal Society. Stephenson had actually constructed a lamp on
such a principle, and proved its safety, before Sir Humphry had
communicated his views on the subject to any person; and by the
time that the first public intimation had been given of his discovery,
Stephenson’s second lamp had been constructed and tested in[188]
like manner in the Killingworth Pit. The first was tried on the
21st of October, 1815; the second was tried on the 4th of November;
but it was not until the 9th of November that Sir Humphry
Davy presented his first lamp to the public. And by the 30th of
the same month, as we have seen, Stephenson had constructed and
tested his third safety-lamp.

Stephenson’s theory of the “burnt air” and the “draught” was
no doubt wrong, but his lamp was right, and that was the great
fact which mainly concerned him. Torricelli did not know the
rationale of his tube, nor Otto von Guericke that of his air-pump;
yet no one thinks of denying them the merit of their inventions
on that account. The discoveries of Volta and Galvani were in
like manner independent of theory; the greatest discoveries consisting
in bringing to light certain grand facts, on which theories
are afterward framed. Our inventor had been pursuing the Baconian
method, though he did not think of that; his sole object
being to invent a safe lamp, which he knew could only be done
through the process of repeated experiment. Hence his numerous
experiments on the fire-damp at the blowers in the mine, as
well as on carbureted hydrogen gas in his cottage by means of
the apparatus above described. By experiment he distinctly ascertained
that the explosion of fire-damp could not pass through
small tubes; and he also did what had not before been done by
any inventor—he constructed a lamp on this principle, and repeatedly
proved its safety at the risk of his life. At the same
time, there is no doubt that it was to Sir Humphry Davy that the
merit belonged of elucidating the true law on which the safety-lamp
is constructed.

The subject of this important invention excited so much interest
in the northern mining districts, and Stephenson’s numerous
friends considered his lamp so completely successful—having
stood the test of repeated experiments—that they urged him to
bring his invention before the Philosophical and Literary Society
of Newcastle, of whose apparatus he had availed himself in the
course of his experiments on fire-damp. After much persuasion
he consented to do so, and a meeting was appointed for the purpose
of receiving his explanations on the evening of the 5th of
December, 1815. Stephenson was at that time so diffident in
manner and unpracticed in speech, that he took with him his friend[189]
Nicholas Wood to act as his interpreter and expositor on the occasion.
From eighty to a hundred of the most intelligent members
of the society were present at the meeting, when Mr. Wood
stood forward to expound the principles on which the lamp had
been formed, and to describe the details of its construction. Several
questions were put, to which Mr. Wood proceeded to give replies
to the best of his knowledge. But Stephenson, who up to
that time had stood behind Wood, screened from notice, observing
that the explanations given were not quite correct, could no longer
control himself, and, standing forward, he proceeded in his strong
Northumbrian dialect to describe the lamp down to its minutest
details. He then produced several bladders full of carbureted
hydrogen, which he had collected from the blowers in the Killingworth
mine, and proved the safety of his lamp by numerous
experiments with the gas, repeated in various ways, his earnest
and impressive manner exciting in the minds of his auditors the
liveliest interest both in the inventor and his invention.

Shortly after, Sir H. Davy’s model lamp was received and exhibited
to the coal-miners at Newcastle, on which occasion the
observation was made by several gentlemen, “Why, it is the same
as Stephenson’s!”

[190]

Notwithstanding Stephenson’s claim to be regarded as the first
inventor of the Tube Safety-lamp, his merits do not seem to have
been generally recognized. Sir Humphry Davy carried off the
larger share of the éclat which attached to the discovery. What
chance had the unknown workman of Killingworth with so distinguished
a competitor? The one was as yet but a colliery engine-wright,
scarce raised above the manual-labor class, without
chemical knowledge or literary culture, pursuing his experiments
in obscurity, with a view only to usefulness; the other was the
scientific prodigy of his day, the pet of the Royal Society, the
favorite of princes, the most brilliant of lecturers, and the most
popular of philosophers.

No small indignation was expressed by the friends of Sir Humphry
Davy at Stephenson’s “presumption” in laying claim to the
invention of the Safety-lamp. The scientific class united to ignore
him entirely in the matter. In 1831, Dr. Paris, in his
“Life of Sir Humphry Davy,” thus wrote: “It will hereafter be
scarcely believed that an invention so eminently scientific, and
which could never have been derived but from the sterling treasury
of science, should have been claimed on behalf of an engine-wright
of Killingworth, of the name of Stephenson—a person
not even possessing a knowledge of the elements of chemistry.”

But Stephenson was really far above claiming for himself an
invention not his own. He had already accomplished a far
greater thing even than the making of a safety-lamp: he had
constructed a successful locomotive, which was to be seen in daily
work on the Killingworth Railway. By the improvements he
had made in the engine, he might almost be said to have invented
it; yet no one—not even the philosophers—detected as yet the
significance of that wonderful machine. It excited no scientific
interest, called forth no leading articles in the newspapers or the
reviews, and formed the subject of no eloquent lectures at the
Royal Society; for railways were as yet comparatively unknown,
and the might which slumbered in the locomotive was scarcely,
as yet, even dreamed of. What railways were to become rested
in a great measure with that “engine-wright of Killingworth, of
the name of Stephenson,” though he was scarcely known as yet
beyond the bounds of his own district.

[191]

As to the value of the invention of the safety-lamp there could
be no doubt, and the colliery owners of Durham and Northumberland,
to testify their sense of its importance, determined to
present a testimonial to its inventor. The friends of Sir H. Davy
met in August, 1816, to take steps to raise a subscription for the
purpose. The advertised object of the meeting was to present
him with a reward for the invention of his safety-lamp. To
this no objection could be taken; for, though the principle on
which the safety-lamps of Stephenson and Davy were constructed
was the same, and although Stephenson’s lamp was unquestionably
the first successful lamp that had been constructed on such
principle, and proved to be efficient, yet Sir H. Davy did invent
a safety-lamp, no doubt quite independently of all that Stephenson
had done; and having directed his careful attention to the
subject, and elucidated the true theory of explosion of carbureted
hydrogen, he was entitled to all praise and reward for his labor.
But when the meeting of coal-owners proposed to raise a subscription
for the purpose of presenting Sir H. Davy with a reward
for “his invention of the safety-lamp,” the case was entirely
altered, and Stephenson’s friends then proceeded to assert his
claims to be regarded as its first inventor.

Many meetings took place on the subject, and much discussion
ensued, the result of which was that a sum of £2000 was presented
to Sir Humphry Davy as “the inventor of the safety-lamp;”
but, at the same time, a purse of 100 guineas was voted
to George Stephenson, in consideration of what he had done in
the same direction. This result was, however, very unsatisfactory
to Stephenson, as well as to his friends; and Mr. Brandling,
of Gosforth, suggested to him that, the subject being now fairly
before the public, he should publish a statement of the facts on
which his claim was founded.

But this was not at all in George Stephenson’s line. He had
never appeared in print before, and it seemed to him a far more
formidable thing to write a letter for publication in “the papers”
than even to invent a safety-lamp or design a locomotive. Having
called his son Robert to his assistance, he set him down before
a sheet of foolscap, and when all was ready, he said, “Now,
put down there just what I tell you.” The composition of this
letter, as we were informed by the writer of it, occupied more[192]
evenings than one; and when it was at length finished after
many corrections, and fairly copied out, the father and son set
out—the latter dressed in his Sunday’s round jacket—to lay
the joint production before Mr. Brandling, at Gosforth House.
Glancing over the letter, Mr. Brandling said, “George, this will
never do.” “It is all true, sir,” was the reply. “That may be;
but it is badly written.” Robert blushed, for he thought it was
the penmanship that was called in question, and he had written
his very best. Mr. Brandling then requested his visitors to sit
down while he put the letter in a more polished form, which he
did, and it was shortly after published in the local papers.

As the controversy continued for some time longer to be carried
on in the Newcastle papers, Mr. Stephenson, in the year
1817, consented to publish the detailed plans, with descriptions,
of the several safety-lamps which he had contrived for use in the
Killingworth Colliery. The whole forms a pamphlet of only
sixteen pages of letter-press.[46]

His friends, being fully satisfied of his claims to priority as
the inventor of the safety-lamp used in the Killingworth and
other collieries, proceeded to hold a public meeting for the purpose
of presenting him with a reward “for the valuable service
he had thus rendered to mankind.” Charles J. Brandling, Esq.,
occupied the chair; and several resolutions were passed, of which
the first and most important was as follows: “That it is the
opinion of this meeting that Mr. George Stephenson, having discovered
the fact that explosion of hydrogen gas will not pass
through tubes and apertures of small dimensions, and having
been the first to apply that principle in the construction of a
safety-lamp, is entitled to a public reward.”

A subscription was immediately commenced with this object,
and a committee was formed, consisting of the Earl of Strathmore,
C. J. Brandling, and others. The subscription list was
headed by Lord Ravensworth, one of the partners in the Killingworth
Colliery, who showed his appreciation of the merits of
Stephenson by giving 100 guineas. C. J. Brandling and partners
gave a like sum, and Matthew Bell and partners, and John
Brandling and partners, gave 50 guineas each.[193]
When the resolutions appeared in the newspapers, the scientific
friends of Sir Humphry Davy in London met, and passed a
series of counter-resolutions, which they published, declaring
their opinion that Mr. Stephenson was not the author of the discovery
of the fact that explosion of hydrogen will not pass
through tubes and apertures of small dimensions, and that he
was not the first to apply that principle to the construction of a
safety-lamp. To these counter-resolutions were attached the
well-known names of Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S., William Thomas
Brande, Charles Hatchett, W. H. Wollaston, and Thomas Young.

Mr. Stephenson’s friends then, to make assurance doubly sure,
and with a view to set the question at rest, determined to take
evidence in detail as to the date of discovery by George Stephenson
of the fact in question, and its practical application by him
in the formation and actual trial of his safety-lamp. The witnesses
examined were George Stephenson himself, Mr. Nicholas
Wood, and John Moodie, who had been present at the first trial
of the lamp; the several tinmen who made the lamps; the secretary
and other members of the Literary and Philosophical Society
of Newcastle, who were present at the exhibition of the third
lamp; and some of the workmen who were present at the Killingworth
Colliery, who had been witnesses of Stephenson’s experiments
on fire-damp made with the lamps at different times
before Sir Humphry Davy’s investigations had been heard of.
This evidence was quite conclusive to the minds of the gentlemen
who investigated the subject, and they published it in 1817,
together with their Report, in which they declared that, “after a
careful inquiry into the merits of the case, conducted, as they
trust, in a spirit of fairness and moderation, they can perceive no
satisfactory reason for changing their opinion.”[47][194]
The Stephenson subscription, when collected, amounted to
£1000. Part of the money was devoted to the purchase of a
silver tankard, which was presented to the inventor, together
with the balance of the subscription, at a public dinner given in
the Assembly Rooms at Newcastle.[48] But what gave Stephenson
even greater pleasure than the silver tankard and purse of
sovereigns was the gift of a silver watch, purchased by small subscriptions
collected among the colliers themselves, and presented
to him by them as a token of their esteem and regard for him as
a man, as well as of their gratitude for the perseverance and
skill with which he had prosecuted his valuable and life-saving
invention to a successful issue. To the last day of his life he
spoke with pride of this watch as the most highly-prized gift he
had ever received.

However great may be the merits of Stephenson in connection
with the invention of the tube safety-lamp, they can not be regarded
as detracting in any degree from the reputation of Sir
Humphry Davy. His inquiries into the explosive properties of
carbureted hydrogen gas were quite original, and his discovery
of the fact that explosion will not pass through tubes of a certain
diameter was made independently of all that Stephenson had
done in verification of the same fact. It would even appear
that Mr. Smithson Tennant and Dr. Wollaston had observed the
same fact several years before, though neither Stephenson nor
Davy knew of it while they were prosecuting their experiments.
Sir Humphry Davy’s subsequent modification of the tube-lamp,
by which, while diminishing the diameter, he in the same ratio
shortened the tubes without danger, and in the form of wire-gauze[195]
enveloped the safety-lamp by a multiplicity of tubes, was
a beautiful application of the true theory which he had formed
upon the subject.

The increased number of accidents which have occurred from
explosions in coal-mines since the general introduction of the
Davy lamp led to considerable doubts being entertained as to its
safety, and inquiries were consequently made as to the means by
which it might be farther improved; for experience has shown
that, under certain circumstances, the Davy lamp is not safe.
Stephenson was himself of opinion that the modification of his
own and Sir Humphry Davy’s lamp, by combining the glass cylinder
with the wire-gauze, would give the best lamp. At the
same time, it must be admitted that the Davy and the Geordy
lamps alike failed to stand the severe tests to which they were
submitted by Dr. Pereira, before the Committee on Accidents in
Mines. Indeed, Dr. Pereira did not hesitate to say that, when
exposed to a current of explosive gas, the Davy lamp is “decidedly
unsafe,” and that the experiments by which its safety had
been “demonstrated” in the lecture-room had proved entirely
“fallacious.”

It is worthy of remark that, under circumstances in which the
wire-gauze of the Davy lamp becomes red-hot from the high explosiveness
of the gas, the Geordy lamp is extinguished; and we
can not but think that this fact testifies to the decidedly superior
safety of the Geordy. An accident occurred in the Oaks Colliery
Pit at Barnsley on the 20th of August, 1857, which strikingly
exemplified the respective qualities of the lamps. A sudden
outburst of gas took place from the floor of the mine along
a distance of fifty yards. Fortunately, the men working in the
pit at the time were all supplied with safety-lamps—the hewers
with Stephenson’s, and the hurriers with Davy’s. On this occasion,
the whole of the Stephenson lamps, over a space of five
hundred yards, were extinguished almost instantaneously; whereas
the Davy lamps were filled with fire and became red-hot, so
that several of the men using them had their hands burnt by the
gauze. Had a strong current of air been blowing through the
gallery at the time, an explosion would most probably have taken
place—an accident which, it will be observed, could not, under
such circumstances, occur from the use of the Geordy,[196]
which is immediately extinguished as soon as the air becomes
explosive.[49]

Nicholas Wood, a good judge, has said of the two inventions,
“Priority has been claimed for each of them—I believe the inventions
to be parallel. By different roads they both arrived at
the same result. Stephenson’s is the superior lamp. Davy’s is
safe—Stephenson’s is safer.”

When the question of priority was under discussion at Mr.
Lough’s studio in 1857, Sir Matthew White Ridley asked Robert
Stephenson, who was present, for his opinion on the subject. His
answer was, “I am not exactly the person to give an unbiased[197]
opinion; but, as you ask me frankly, I will as frankly say, that
if George Stephenson had never lived, Sir Humphry Davy could
and most probably would have invented the safety-lamp; but
again, if Sir Humphry Davy had never lived, George Stephenson
certainly would have invented the safety-lamp, as I believe
he did, independently of all that Sir Humphry Davy had done in
the matter.”

To this day the Geordy lamp continues in regular use in the
Killingworth Collieries, and the Killingworth pitmen have expressed
to the writer their decided preference for it compared
with the Davy. It is certainly a strong testimony in its favor
that no accident is known to have arisen from its use since it was
generally introduced into the Killingworth pits.

[198]

CHAPTER VII.

GEORGE STEPHENSON’S FARTHER IMPROVEMENTS IN THE LOCOMOTIVE—THE
HETTON RAILWAY—ROBERT STEPHENSON AS VIEWER’S APPRENTICE
AND STUDENT.

Stephenson’s experiments on fire-damp, and his labors in connection
with the invention of the safety-lamp, occupied but a
small portion of his time, which was necessarily devoted, for the
most part, to the ordinary business of the colliery. From the
day of his appointment as engine-wright, one of the subjects
which particularly occupied his attention was the best practical
method of winning and raising the coal. Nicholas Wood has
said of him that he was one of the first to introduce steam machinery
underground with that object. Indeed, the Killingworth
mines came to be regarded as the models of the district; and
when Mr. Robert Bald, the celebrated Scotch mining engineer,
was requested by Dr. (afterward Sir David) Brewster to prepare
the article “Mine” for the “Edinburg Encyclopædia,” he proceeded
to Killingworth principally for the purpose of examining
Stephenson’s underground machinery. Mr. Bald has favored us
with an account of his visit made with that object in 1818, and
he states that he was much struck with the novelty, as well as
the remarkable efficiency of Stephenson’s arrangements, especially
in regard to what is called the underdip working.

The whole of the working arrangements seemed to Mr. Bald
to be conducted in the most skillful and efficient manner, reflecting
the highest credit on the colliery engineer.

Besides attending to the underground arrangements, the improved
transit of the coals above ground from the pit-head to the
shipping-place demanded an increasing share of Stephenson’s attention.
Every day’s experience convinced him that the locomotive
constructed by him after his patent of the year 1815 was far
from perfect, though he continued to entertain confident hopes
of its complete eventual success. He even went so far as to say
that the locomotive would yet supersede every other traction-power
for drawing heavy loads. It is true, many persons continued
to regard his traveling engine as little better than a dangerous
curiosity; and some, shaking their heads, predicted for it “a
terrible blow-up some day.” Nevertheless, it was daily performing
its work with regularity, dragging the coal-wagons between
the colliery and the staiths, and saving the labor of many men
and horses.

There was not, however, so marked a saving in the expense of
haulage as to induce the colliery masters to adopt locomotive
power generally as a substitute for horses. How it could be improved,
and rendered more efficient as well as economical, was
constantly present to Stephenson’s mind. He was fully conscious
of the imperfections both in the road and the engine, and
gave himself no rest until he had brought the efficiency of both
up to a higher point. Thus he worked his way inch by inch,
slowly but surely, and every step gained was made good as a basis
for farther improvements.

At an early period of his labors, or about the time when he
had completed his second locomotive, he began to direct his particular
attention to the state of the Road, perceiving that the extended
use of the locomotive must necessarily depend in a great
measure upon the perfection, solidity, continuity, and smoothness[200]
of the way along which the engine traveled. Even at that early
period he was in the habit of regarding the road and the locomotive
as one machine, speaking of the Rail and the Wheel as
“Man and Wife.”

All railways were at that time laid in a careless and loose manner,
and great inequalities of level were allowed to occur without
much attention being paid to repairs. The consequence was a
great loss of power, as well as much wear and tear of the machinery,
by the frequent jolts and blows of the wheels against the
rails. Stephenson’s first object, therefore, was to remove the inequalities
produced by the imperfect junction between rail and
rail.

At that time (1816) the rails were made of cast iron, each rail
being about three feet long; and sufficient care was not taken to
maintain the points of junction on the same level. The chairs,
or cast-iron pedestals into which the rails were inserted, were flat
at the bottom, so that whenever any disturbance took place in the
stone blocks or sleepers supporting them, the flat base of the chair
upon which the rails rested being tilted by unequal subsidence,
the end of one rail became depressed, while that of the other was
elevated. Hence constant jolts and shocks, the reaction of which
very often caused the fracture of the rails, and occasionally threw
the engine off the road.

To remedy this imperfection, Mr. Stephenson devised a new
chair, with an entirely new mode of fixing the rails therein. Instead
of adopting the butt-joint which had hitherto been used in
all cast-iron rails, he adopted the half-lap joint, by which means
the rails extended a certain
distance over each
other at the ends like a
scarf-joint. These ends,
instead of resting on the
flat chair, were made to
rest upon the apex of a
curve forming the bottom of the chair. The supports were also
extended from three feet to three feet nine inches or four feet
apart. These rails were accordingly substituted for the old cast-iron
plates on the Killingworth Colliery Railway, and they were
found to be a very great improvement on the previous system,[201]
adding both to the efficiency of the horse-power (still used on the
railway) and to the smooth action of the locomotive engine, but
more particularly increasing the efficiency of the latter.

This improved form of the rail and chair was embodied in a
patent taken out in the joint names of Mr. Losh, of Newcastle,
iron founder, and of Mr. Stephenson, bearing date the 30th of
September, 1816. Mr. Losh being a wealthy, enterprising iron-manufacturer,
and having confidence in George Stephenson and
his improvements, found the money for the purpose of taking
out the patent, which in those days was a very costly as well as
troublesome affair. At the same time, Mr. Losh guaranteed Stephenson
a salary of £100 per annum, with a share in the profits
arising from his inventions, conditional on his attending at the
Walker Iron-works two days a week—an arrangement to which
the owners of the Killingworth Colliery cheerfully gave their
sanction.

The specification of 1816 included various important improvements
in the locomotive itself. The wheels of the engine were
improved, being altered from cast to malleable iron, in whole or
in part, by which they were made lighter as well as more durable
and safe. The patent also included the ingenious and original[202]
contrivance by which the steam generated in the boiler was made
to serve as a substitute for springs—an expedient already explained
in a preceding chapter.

The result of the actual working of the new locomotive on the
improved road amply justified the promises held forth in the
specification. The traffic was conducted with greater regularity
and economy, and the superiority of the engine, as compared with
horse traction, became still more marked. And it is a fact worthy
of notice, that the identical engines constructed by Stephenson in
1816 are to this day in regular useful work upon the Killingworth
Railway, conveying heavy coal-trains at the speed of between five
and six miles an hour, probably as economically as any of the
more perfect locomotives now in use.

George Stephenson’s endeavors having been attended with such
marked success in the adaptation of locomotive power to railways,
his attention was called by many of his friends, about the year
1818, to the application of steam to traveling on common roads.
It was from this point, indeed, that the locomotive had started,
Trevithick’s first engine having been constructed with this special
object. Stephenson’s friends having observed how far behind he
had left the original projector of the locomotive in its application
to railroads, perhaps naturally inferred that he would be equally
successful in applying it to the purpose for which Trevithick and
Vivian had intended their first engine. But the accuracy with
which he estimated the resistance to which loads were exposed
on railways, arising from friction and gravity, led him at a very
early stage to reject the idea of ever applying steam-power economically
to common road traveling. In October, 1818, he made
a series of careful experiments, in conjunction with Mr. Nicholas
Wood, on the resistance to which carriages were exposed on railways,
testing the results by means of a dynamometer of his own
contrivance. The series of practical observations made by means
of this instrument were interesting, as the first systematic attempt
to determine the precise amount of resistance to carriages moving
along railways. It was then for the first time ascertained by
experiment that the friction was a constant quantity at all velocities.
Although this theory had long before been developed
by Vince and Coulomb, and was well known to scientific men as
an established truth, yet, at the time when Stephenson made his[203]
experiments, the deductions of philosophers on the subject were
neither believed in nor acted upon by practical engineers. To
quote again from the MS. account supplied to the author by
Robert Stephenson for the purposes of his father’s “Life:”

At this day it is difficult to understand how the sagacious and
strong common-sense views of Stephenson on this subject failed
to force themselves sooner upon the minds of those who were
persisting in their vain though ingenious attempts to apply locomotive
power to ordinary roads. For a long time they continued
to hold with obstinate perseverance to the belief that for such
purposes a soft road was better than a hard one—a road easily
crushed better than one incapable of being crushed; and they
held to this after it had been demonstrated in all parts of the
mining districts that iron tram-ways were better than paved
roads. But the fallacy that iron was incapable of adhesion upon
iron continued to prevail, and the projectors of steam-traveling
on common roads only shared in the common belief. They still
considered that roughness of surface was essential to produce
“bite,” especially in surmounting acclivities; the truth being
that they confounded roughness of surface with tenacity of surface
and contact of parts, not perceiving that a yielding surface
which would adapt itself to the tread of the wheel could never
become an unyielding surface to form a fulcrum for its progression.

Although Stephenson’s locomotive engines were in daily use
for many years on the Killingworth Railway, they excited comparatively
little interest. They were no longer experimental, but
had become an established tractive power. The experience of
years had proved that they worked more steadily, drew heavier
loads, and were, on the whole, considerably more economical than
horses. Nevertheless, eight years passed before another locomotive
railway was constructed and opened for the purposes of coal
or other traffic.

It is difficult to account for this early indifference on the part
of the public to the merits of the greatest mechanical invention[206]
of the age. Steam-carriages were exciting much interest, and
numerous and repeated experiments were made with them. The
improvements effected by M’Adam in the mode of constructing
turnpike roads were the subject of frequent discussions in the
Legislature, on the grants of public money being proposed, which
were from time to time made to him. Yet here at Killingworth,
without the aid of a farthing of government money, a system
of road locomotion had been in existence since 1814, which was
destined, before many years, to revolutionize the internal communications
of England and of the world, but of which the English
public and the English government as yet knew nothing.

But Stephenson had no means of bringing his important invention
prominently under the notice of the public. He himself
knew well its importance, and he already anticipated its eventual
general adoption; but, being an unlettered man, he could not
give utterance to the thoughts which brooded within him on the
subject. Killingworth Colliery lay far from London, the centre
of scientific life in England. It was visited by no savans nor
literary men, who might have succeeded in introducing to notice
the wonderful machine of Stephenson. Even the local chroniclers
seem to have taken no notice of the Killingworth Railway.
The “Puffing Billy” was doing its daily quota of hard work, and
had long ceased to be a curiosity in the neighborhood. Blenkinsop’s
clumsier and less successful engine—which has long since
been disused, while Stephenson’s Killingworth engines continue
working to this day—excited far more interest, partly, perhaps,
because it was close to the large town of Leeds, and used to be
visited by strangers as one of the few objects of interest in that
place. Blenkinsop was also an educated man, and was in communication
with some of the most distinguished personages of his
day on the subject of his locomotive, which thus obtained considerable
celebrity.

The first engine constructed by Stephenson to order, after the
Killingworth model, was made for the Duke of Portland in 1817,
for use upon his tram-road, about ten miles long, extending from
Kilmarnock to Troon, in Ayrshire. It was employed to haul the
coals from the duke’s collieries along the line to Troon harbor.
Its use was, however, discontinued in consequence of the frequent
breakages of the cast-iron rails, by which the working of the line[207]
was interrupted, and accordingly horses were again employed as
before.[50]

There seemed, indeed, to be so small a prospect of introducing
the locomotive into general use, that Stephenson—perhaps conscious
of the capabilities within him—again recurred to his old
idea of emigrating to the United States. Before entering as
sleeping partner in a small foundery at Forth Banks, Newcastle,
managed by Mr. John Burrell, he had thrown out the suggestion
to the latter that it would be a good speculation for them to emigrate
to North America, and introduce steam-boats on the great
inland lakes there. The first steamers were then plying upon the
Tyne before his eyes, and he saw in them the germ of a great
revolution in navigation. It occurred to him that the great lakes
of North America presented the finest field for trying their wonderful
powers. He was an engineer, and Mr. Burrell was an
iron-founder; and between them, he thought they might strike
out a path to fortune in the mighty West. Fortunately, this idea
remained a mere speculation so far as Stephenson was concerned,
and it was left to others to do what he had dreamed of achieving.
After all his patient waiting, his skill, industry, and perseverance
were at length about to bear fruit.

In 1819, the owners of the Hetton Colliery, in the county of
Durham, determined to have their wagon-way altered to a locomotive
railroad. The result of the working of the Killingworth
Railway had been so satisfactory that they resolved to adopt the
same system. One reason why an experiment so long continued
and so successful as that at Killingworth should have been so
slow in producing results perhaps was, that to lay down a railway
and furnish it with locomotives, or fixed engines where necessary,
required a very large capital, beyond the means of ordinary
coal-owners; while the small amount of interest felt in railways
by the general public, and the supposed impracticability of
working them to a profit, as yet prevented the ordinary capitalists
from venturing their money in the promotion of such undertakings.
The Hetton Coal Company were, however, possessed of[208]
adequate means, and the local reputation of the Killingworth
engine-wright pointed him out as the man best calculated to lay
out their line and superintend their works. They accordingly
invited him to act as the engineer of the proposed railway. Being
in the service of the Killingworth Company, Stephenson felt
it necessary to obtain their permission to enter upon this new
work. This was at once granted. The best feeling existed between
him and his employers, and they regarded it as a compliment
that their colliery engineer should be selected for a work so
important as the laying down of the Hetton Railway, which was
to be the longest locomotive line that had, up to that time, been
constructed in the neighborhood. Stephenson accepted the appointment,
his brother Robert acting as resident engineer and
personally superintending the execution of the works.

The Hetton Railway extended from the Hetton Colliery, situated
about two miles south of Houghton-le-Spring, to the ship-places
on the banks of the Wear, near Sunderland. Its length
was about eight miles; and in its course it crossed Warden Law,
one of the highest hills in the district. The character of the
country forbade the construction of a flat line, or one of comparatively
easy gradients, except by the expenditure of a much
larger capital than was placed at Stephenson’s command. Heavy
works could not be executed; it was therefore necessary to form
the line with but little deviation from the natural conformation
of the district which it traversed, and also to adapt the mechanical
methods employed for its working to the character of the gradients,
which in some places were necessarily heavy.

Although George Stephenson had, with every step made toward
its increased utility, become more and more identified with
the success of the locomotive engine, he did not allow his enthusiasm
to carry him away into costly mistakes. He carefully drew
the line between the cases in which the locomotive could be usefully
employed and those in which stationary engines were calculated
to be more economical. This led him, as in the instance
of the Hetton Railway, to execute lines through and over rough
countries, where gradients within the powers of the locomotive
engine of that day could not be secured, employing in their stead
stationary engines where locomotives were not practicable. In
the present case, this course was adopted by him most successfully.[209]
On the original Hetton line there were five self-acting
inclines—the full wagons drawing the empty ones up—and two
inclines worked by fixed reciprocating engines of sixty-horse power
each. The locomotive traveling engine, or “the iron horse,”
as the people of the neighborhood then styled it, worked the rest
of the line. On the day of the opening of the Hetton Railway,
the 18th of November, 1822, crowds of spectators assembled from
all parts to witness the first operations of this ingenious and powerful
machinery, which was entirely successful. On that day five
of Stephenson’s locomotives were at work upon the railway, under
the direction of his brother Robert; and the first shipment of
coal was then made by the Hetton Company at their new staiths
on the Wear. The speed at which the locomotives traveled was
about four miles an hour, and each engine dragged after it a
train of seventeen wagons weighing about sixty-four tons.

While thus advancing step by step—attending to the business
of the Killingworth Colliery, and laying out railways in the
neighborhood—he was carefully watching over the education of
his son. We have already seen that Robert was sent to school at
Newcastle, where he remained about four years. While Robert
was at school, his father, as usual, made his son’s education instrumental
to his own. He entered him a member of the Newcastle
Literary and Philosophical Institute, the subscription to
which was three guineas a year. Robert spent much of his leisure
hours there, reading and studying; and when he went home
in the afternoons, he was accustomed to carry home with him a
volume of the “Repertory of Arts and Sciences,” or of some
work on practical science, which furnished the subject of interesting
reading and discussion in the evening hours. Both father
and son were always ready to acknowledge the great advantages
they had derived from the use of so excellent a library of books;
and, toward the close of his life, the latter, in recognition of his
debt of gratitude to the institution, contributed a large sum for
the purpose of clearing off the debt, but conditional on the annual
subscription being reduced to a guinea, in order that the
usefulness of the Institute might be extended.