His Panama trip fell through and in August 1827 he finally packed his bags, his specimens and the diaries he’d kept during the three years, and travelled up the Magdalena river to the Colombian port of Carthagena where he waited for a boat to New York. He wasn’t going directly back to Liverpool but the long way round, planning to have a look at the brave new United States of America, though his official reason for not going back the way he’d come, direct to England, was that the boats were faster from New York.
While hanging around a quayside inn in Carthagena, waiting for a New York boat, there occurred one of those chance encounters which are the stuff of history. He fell into conversation one day with a down-and-out Cornishman, not normally his favourite sort of Englishman, and discovered it was Richard Trevithick, the Trevithick, the builder of the first locomotive. He’d last been heard of some ten years earlier when he’d been greeted like a king on his arrival in Peru. He’d become a friend of Simon Bolivar and his horse had been shod with silver by a grateful people. Now he was in rags and destitute, having trailed on foot across half of South America.
Trevithick boasted to Robert that he’d bounced him on his knee when he’d been at the height of his English fame and on a grand tour of Tyneside some twenty years previously. It sounds unlikely as George at the time was still an obscure engine-wright, but Robert was sufficiently touched by Trevithick and his stories to give him £50 for his passage home to England. They compared notes about mining in South America, then they parted, Trevithick on a boat back to Falmouth and to the last ignoble stages of a once brilliant career. Robert set sail for New York and England and what was eventually to prove a series of brilliant engineering successes.
Robert was lucky to reach New York. His ship came across the trail of some boats which had been shipwrecked ahead of them. Firstly they picked up some half dead survivors, down to their last rations, then a second lot who had eaten all their supplies and had been reduced to eating each other. (Years later, when Robert told London dinner parties about the incident, people refused to believe that in the year of grace, 1827, humanity would ever be reduced to cannibalism.) Then Robert’s own boat hit the worst of the storm and they too were shipwrecked, though luckily everyone reached shore without loss of life. But most of Robert’s precious specimens and diaries, plus his baggage and three years’ savings, were all lost. ‘Had I not been on the American side of the Atlantic,’ he wrote, ‘I “guess” I would not have gone to sea again.’ (His use of quotation marks round ‘guess’ shows how old this Americanism must be.)
In New York he managed to obtain some more money (though Jeaffreson doesn’t explain where it came from – presumably his firm’s New York agent) and decided to spend some time looking at the natives, putting off even longer his return to England. He didn’t think much of them.
On entering New York we felt ourselves quite at home. All outward appearances of things and persons were indicative of English manners and customs; but on closer investigation we soon discovered the characteristic impudence of the people. In many cases it was nothing short of disgusting. We stayed but a short time in the city, and pushed into the interior for about 500 miles, and were much delighted with the face of the country, which in every direction is populated to a great extent, and affords to an attentive observer a wonderful example of human industry; and it is gratifying to a liberal-minded Englishman to observe how far the sons of his own country have outstripped the other European powers which have transatlantic possessions.
We visited the Falls of Niagara, which did not surprise me so much as the Tequindama. Their magnitude is certainly prodigious; but there is not so much minute beauty about them as the Salta.
After seeing all that our time would permit in the States we passed over into Canada, which is far behind the States in everything. The people want industry and enterprise. Every Englishman, however partial he may be, is obliged to confess the disadvantageous contrast. Whether the cause exists in the people or the system of government I cannot say – perhaps it rests with both.
Robert journeyed by foot and horse, with his friend Charles, once again living a vagrant life, still wearing his cloak-cum-poncho which he’d affected in Colombia. By the sound of his letter he must have covered at least a thousand miles. When he got to Montreal, so he wrote in a letter, he changed into ‘the ordinary costume of an English gentleman’ (surely not that white suit) and attended a few balls before returning to New York, where he caught the steam packet, Pacific, to Liverpool.
It must have been an interesting meeting when George greeted his long lost son at Liverpool at the end of November 1827. Robert’s friend Charles was with him, to take up the ‘Roume’ Mrs Stephenson had set aside for them. They spent a long evening telling their travellers’ tales and the next morning, by their bedside, they each found a handsome watch, left for them by George to help make up for their loss at sea.
George had been through a lot while Robert had been away and his hair had indeed turned white and his face had become heavily lined. He was now forty-six, still healthy but a man past his physical peak. Robert, on the other hand, had become a man. He was now twenty-four, a man of the world, a man who’d had experiences and seen sights far beyond his years, who’d faced dangers, controlled men; a man who’d overcome his self-imposed tests. From now on he could never be in any sense George’s tool. He had proved himself, on his own. They were no longer father and son, but partners.
*Prof. Simmons searched the contemporary press and could find only one small report, in The Times, which contains a reference, but no praise, of Robert. George was obviously trying to flatter his son.
† Robert’s great friend in South America was Charles Empson, another young engineer, and they made plans to travel home together.
‡ George Rennie, who’d been in charge of the previous survey.
§ Presumably Charles Vignoles, one of Rennie’s engineers, whom George disliked and eventually helped to sack.
* The tunnel at Rotherhithe was built by Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, assisted by his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and cost £468,000.
* Nicholas Wood (1795–1865), George’s friend who was manager at Killingworth Colliery.
† This election, in June 1826, was famous in Northumberland as it led to a duel on Bamburgh Sands involving John Lambton, later Earl of Durham.
11
RAINHILL AND THE ROCKET
Robert Stephenson returned to Newcastle in January 1828 to run the locomotive works and made them his headquarters and primary concern for the next five years, five of the most important years in the history of locomotives. Each technical development during these years has been exhaustingly written about by scores of engineering experts, all trying to agree on who invented which valve, which blast, which boiler. We need not over-concern ourselves here with such arguments.
During this period of intense engineering activity, Robert somehow found time to get married. From March onwards he was continually popping down to Broad Street in the City of London to see a certain Miss Fanny Sanderson, the daughter of John Sanderson, a gentleman of good repute, in the City. ‘Robert Stephenson had been introduced to the young lady before leaving England for South America,’ wrote Jeaffreson, ‘and even at that date he had entertained for her sentiments which, if not those of love, closely resembled them.’ It just needs one single letter to turn up showing that there had been a row between Robert and Fanny before he went off to South America and everybody’s theories about Robert’s departure will have to be rethought. However, no one has ever suggested such a possibility. So far.
‘I plainly perceive a man can only be a man,’ wrote Robert to a friend in August, 1828. ‘As soon as he ever aspires to be anything else he becomes ridiculous. Come, come away with moralising thus gloomily. Affairs go on smoothly in London, at least, the last time I heard from thence, they cannot have undergone any material change.’
Fanny doesn’t appear to have been much of a beauty, but everyone spoke highly of her intell
igence. In October, Robert introduced her to his father and the meeting went off successfully, to Robert’s relief. ‘I took him to the house without her having the most distant idea of his coming. He likes her appearance and thinks she looks intelligent. She did not appear confused and the visit passed off extremely well.’ They were married the following June at the parish church in Bishopsgate. Robert took her back to Newcastle at a house he’d taken at 5, Greenfield Place.
While he’d been away in America not only had the locomotive works been in financial troubles but the state of locomotives generally had been at a low ebb. George had been too busy with the Liverpool line and all its problems. Timothy Hackworth, who’d been recommended as engineer at Darlington by George, was about the only engineer actively working on the problem, improving and developing the Stockton and Darlington engines. But they were still very primitive. Brakes, for example, were little more than a matter of the driver bringing pressure on the wheels with his foot.
For all the local excitement of its opening, the Darlington line still had many critics. Rumours swept the north about the number of accidents, all exaggerated, and even its fans had to admit that the locomotives were slow and cumbersome. They were going so slowly, rarely more than four mph, that small boys were running after them, jumping on and travelling free. It was realised that many engine drivers were turning a blind eye to such tricks so the company issued a public notice warning drivers and illegal passengers of the serious consequences. A handsome reward was promised for information about offenders.
Local estate owners were still complaining about their lands, claiming now that plantations were being set alight by hot cinders from the engines. Any engineman who allowed this to happen, so the company announced, would be dismissed. Hackworth was told to have large numbers painted on the chimneys of each engine so that two company spies, who were to be hidden in the plantations on hot summer nights, would be able to write down the numbers of the guilty men. From the very beginning railway companies were always very tough on any offenders. (Just a few years later the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway was warning that trespassers on the line would be transported for seven years.)
Horses were still being used until 1833 for passenger traffic on the Stockton and Darlington, though they weren’t attracting many customers. Up to 1832 the average number didn’t rise above 520 a week. Horses generally were still considered as a vital source of power in most of the railways being planned. In 1829, which was when the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway Bill was passed, it was on condition that horses, not locomotives, should be used.
There was one interesting development in the horsedrawn wagons on these early railways, a system known as the dandy. When a horse had finished pulling its load up a hill it was trained to stand aside, then jump onto the open end of the last wagon, where some hay would be waiting for it. It would then ride in comfort down the hill, getting out at the next hill to start pulling again. George Stephenson maintained he’d first suggested the idea of these dandy carts. In a letter to Hackworth from Liverpool in 1828 he wrote, ‘Brandreth has got my plan introduced for the horses to ride which I suppose he will set off as his own invention.’ (The term dandy cart later referred to any railway wagon pulled by a horse. One of the last ceased operation on a line near Carlisle, from Drumburgh to Port Carlisle, in 1914.)
One of the most serious rumours in circulation about the time of Robert’s return was that locomotives were to be withdrawn as too expensive. Financially the Darlington line was certainly not proving a gold mine, confirming what Edward Pease had always said. At the end of their second year in operation the annual revenue was just £18,304, only £2,000 more than Pease had estimated. Until 1830, when the revenue was still only £23,727, they were paying dividends of 5 per cent. (It was only after 1830 that traffic and profits started booming, especially when the iron trade began.)
Locomotives, from every point of view, still had to prove themselves, as Robert soon realised on his journeys round the country. From 1 January 1828, which was when he wrote the following letter to Longridge, he decided to make them his first priority.
Liverpool, Jan 1, 1828
My Dear Sir,
I had hoped my father would accompany me to the North this time, but he finds that all his attention must be devoted to this road alone.
I have just returned from a ride along the line for seven miles, in which distance I have not been a little surprised to find excavations of such magnitude. Since I came down from London, I have been talking a great deal to my father about endeavouring to reduce the size and ugliness of our travelling-engines, by applying the engine either on the side of the boiler or beneath it entirely, somewhat similarly to Gurney’s steam-coach. He has agreed to an alteration which I think will considerably reduce the quantity of machinery as well as the liability to mismanagement. Mr. Jos. Pease writes my father that in their present complicated state they cannot be managed by ‘fools,’ therefore they must undergo some alteration or amendment. It is very true that the locomotive engine, or any other kind of engine, may be shaken to pieces; but such accidents are in a great measure under the control of enginemen, which are, by the by, not the most manageable class of beings. They perhaps want improvement as much as the engines.
While Robert moved back up to Newcastle, George remained in Liverpool, struggling to complete the construction of the line, but he was in regular correspondence with Robert about the progress of new engines, passing on information about likely customers for the locomotive works.
Liverpool, March 3, 1828
Dear Robert,
I wish you could contrive to come here to stay a week or a fortnight.… There is an American Engineer here and I think he will also want four Loco motive engines. There is also a neighbour of mine who will want a Steam Mill Engine, and I think it will be better for you to be here to close the bargains yourself in case we can agree for prices – I expect now in a few weeks to receive orders to proceed with the Canterbury Engines. The Bill is now in Parliament and is expected to pass shortly, to enable Mr. Ellis to take the lease of that concern and I suppose as soon as it goes forward I must deliver my profits up to Robert Stephenson & Co. I think it is likely the Chester Line will go forward which I was speaking to Mr. Longridge about – I only returned last night from examining the ground – I send in my report tomorrow of the practicability and expense of the Line – I am glad to hear you have got a Horse to suit you, but if it is a cheap one I think it is very likely to be a shabby one and very unfit to come by the side of mine; the whole of which are as fat as pigs –
I am
Dear Robert
Your Afft. Father
GEO. STEPHENSON
Despite George’s promises to the Liverpool board, it is obvious from this letter that he was still involved in other lines, though when it came to an official engagement, he usually passed over the job of engineer to other people – usually to someone in his own family or to his assistants. Robert, the most talented of his three brothers, had been telling the truth when he wrote to James that time about a job, extolling his own virtues. He’d laid down the rails for George at Hetton and was now appointed to construct the Bolton and Leigh Railway, one of the lines George had helped to survey. Young Robert had got the job of engineer to the Canterbury and Whitstable line, which was useful to him when he was courting Fanny, giving him a good excuse, as well as paying his expenses, to go down to London.
It’s hard to decide whether George was power mad, greedy or simply a genius, managing to be involved in so many jobs. His critics certainly accused him of the first two, and he’d already made many enemies, but from his point of view, believing implicitly in the future of locomotion, he felt he had to take on everything offered because he alone knew what had to be done. The more railways he built, the more locomotives would be needed. But his mono-mania led to many rows with the board and on several occasions almost led to his downfall.
In 1828, work on the Liverpool line was proving so difficult a
nd so expensive, in construction and in keeping the opposition quiet, that the board ran out of money and was forced to apply to the government for an exchequer loan of £100,000. One of the government’s conditions was that an outside expert should be sent to find out what on earth was going on at Liverpool and advise if a loan of £100,000 was really justified. Their expert turned out to be none other than Thomas Telford, the greatest engineer of the day, famed throughout Europe for his roads, bridges and canals. He was by now seventy-two, but still the most distinguished man in his profession. He had been the first president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a body of gentlemen whom George, with some justification, thought were against him. He was in the middle of the construction of the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal (a project begun in 1827, the same year as the Liverpool earthworks, and not finished till 1835) and sent an assistant at first to check up on George. George refused to see him, being always out or unavailable. Telford finally came in person and toured the line with George, not at all happy with what he saw. He was highly critical of George’s method of fixing prices (paying different contractors different prices for the same job, depending on how George felt about them) and of George’s insistence on supervising and deciding everything himself. He felt that a sum nearer £200,000 would be needed to finish the job, if it was ever finished.
George Stephenson Page 18