Men of Invention and Industry
by Samuel Smiles · English · Gutenberg #725 · 692,799 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Men of Invention and Industry
Author: Samuel Smiles
Release date: November 1, 1996 [eBook #725]
Most recently updated: January 1, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEN OF INVENTION AND INDUSTRY ***
Produced by Eric Hutton. HTML version by Al Haines.
MEN OF INVENTION AND INDUSTRY
by
Samuel Smiles
"Men there have been, ignorant of letters; without art, without
eloquence; who yet had the wisdom to devise and the courage to perform
that which they lacked language to explain. Such men have worked the
deliverance of nations and their own greatness. Their hearts are their
books; events are their tutors; great actions are their
eloquence."--MACAULAY.
Contents.
Preface
CHAPTER I Phineas Pett:
Beginnings of English Shipbuilding
CHAPTER II Francis Pettit Smith:
Practical Introducer of the Screw Propeller
CHAPTER III John Harrison:
Inventor of the Marine Chronometer
CHAPTER IV John Lombe:
Introducer of the Silk Industry into England
CHAPTER V William Murdock:
His Life and Inventions
CHAPTER VI Frederick Koenig:
Inventor of the Steam-printing Machine
CHAPTER VII The Walters of 'The Times':
Inventor of the Walter Press
CHAPTER VIII William Clowes:
Book-printing by Steam
CHAPTER IX Charles Bianconi:
A Lesson of Self-Help in Ireland
CHAPTER X Industry in Ireland:
Through Connaught and Ulster to Belfast
CHAPTER XI Shipbuilding in Belfast:
By Sir E. J. Harland, Engineer and Shipbuilder
CHAPTER XII Astronomers and students in humble life:
A new Chapter in the 'Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties'
PREFACE
I offer this book as a continuation of the memoirs of men of invention
and industry published some years ago in the 'Lives of Engineers,'
'Industrial Biography,' and 'Self-Help.'
The early chapters relate to the history of a very important branch of
British industry--that of Shipbuilding. A later chapter, kindly
prepared by Sir Edward J. Harland, of Belfast, relates to the origin
and progress of shipbuilding in Ireland.
Many of the facts set forth in the Life and Inventions of William
Murdock have already been published in my 'Lives of Boulton and Watt;'
but these are now placed in a continuous narrative, and supplemented by
other information, more particularly the correspondence between Watt
and Murdock, communicated to me by the present representative of the
family, Mr. Murdock, C.E., of Gilwern, near Abergavenny.
I have also endeavoured to give as accurate an account as possible of
the Invention of the Steam-printing Press, and its application to the
production of Newspapers and Books,--an invention certainly of great
importance to the spread of knowledge, science, and literature,
throughout the world.
The chapter on the "Industry of Ireland" will speak for itself. It
occurred to me, on passing through Ireland last year, that much
remained to be said on that subject; and, looking to the increasing
means of the country, and the well-known industry of its people, it
seems reasonable to expect, that with peace, security, energy, and
diligent labour of head and hand, there is really a great future before
Ireland.
The last chapter, on "Astronomers in Humble Life," consists for the
most part of a series of Autobiographies. It may seem, at first sight,
to have little to do with the leading object of the book; but it serves
to show what a number of active, earnest, and able men are
comparatively hidden throughout society, ready to turn their hands and
heads to the improvement of their own characters, if not to the
advancement of the general community of which they form a part.
In conclusion, I say to the reader, as Quarles said in the preface to
his 'Emblems,' "I wish thee as much pleasure in the reading as I had in
the writing." In fact, the last three chapters were in some measure
the cause of the book being published in its present form.
London, November, 1884.
CHAPTER I.
PHINEAS PETT: BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH SHIP-BUILDING.
"A speck in the Northern Ocean, with a rocky coast, an ungenial
climate, and a soil scarcely fruitful,--this was the material patrimony
which descended to the English race--an inheritance that would have
been little worth but for the inestimable moral gift that accompanied
it. Yes; from Celts, Saxons, Danes, Normans--from some or all of
them--have come down with English nationality a talisman that could
command sunshine, and plenty, and empire, and fame. The 'go' which
they transmitted to us--the national vis--this it is which made the old
Angle-land a glorious heritage. Of this we have had a portion above
our brethren--good measure, running over. Through this our
island-mother has stretched out her arms till they enriched the globe
of the earth....Britain, without her energy and enterprise, what would
she be in Europe?"--Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (1870).
In one of the few records of Sir Isaac Newton's life which he left for
the benefit of others, the following comprehensive thought occurs:
"It is certainly apparent that the inhabitants of this world are of a
short date, seeing that all arts, as letters, ships, printing, the
needle, &c., were discovered within the memory of history."
If this were true in Newton's time, how much truer is it now. Most of
the inventions which are so greatly influencing, as well as advancing,
the civilization of the world at the present time, have been discovered
within the last hundred or hundred and fifty years. We do not say that
man has become so much wiser during that period; for, though he has
grown in Knowledge, the most fruitful of all things were said by "the
heirs of all the ages" thousands of years ago.
But as regards Physical Science, the progress made during the last
hundred years has been very great. Its most recent triumphs have been
in connection with the discovery of electric power and electric light.
Perhaps the most important invention, however, was that of the working
steam engine, made by Watt only about a hundred years ago. The most
recent application of this form of energy has been in the propulsion of
ships, which has already produced so great an effect upon commerce,
navigation, and the spread of population over the world.
Equally important has been the influence of the Railway--now the
principal means of communication in all civilized countries. This
invention has started into full life within our own time. The
locomotive engine had for some years been employed in the haulage of
coals; but it was not until the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester
Railway in 1830, that the importance of the invention came to be
acknowledged. The locomotive railway has since been everywhere adopted
throughout Europe. In America, Canada, and the Colonies, it has opened
up the boundless resources of the soil, bringing the country nearer to
the towns, and the towns to the country. It has enhanced the celerity
of time, and imparted a new series of conditions to every rank of life.
The importance of steam navigation has been still more recently
ascertained. When it was first proposed, Sir Joseph Banks, President
of the Royal Society, said: "It is a pretty plan, but there is just
one point overlooked: that the steam-engine requires a firm basis on
which to work." Symington, the practical mechanic, put this theory to
the test by his successful experiments, first on Dalswinton Lake, and
then on the Forth and Clyde Canal. Fulton and Bell afterwards showed
the power of steamboats in navigating the rivers of America and Britain.
After various experiments, it was proposed to unite England and America
by steam. Dr. Lardner, however, delivered a lecture before the Royal
Institution in 1838, "proving" that steamers could never cross the
Atlantic, because they could not carry sufficient coal to raise steam
enough during the voyage. But this theory was also tested by
experience in the same year, when the Sirius, of London, left Cork for
New York, and made the passage in nineteen days. Four days after the
departure of the Sirius, the Great Western left Bristol for New York,
and made the passage in thirteen days five hours.[1] The problem was
solved; and great ocean steamers have ever since passed in continuous
streams between the shores of England and America.
In an age of progress, one invention merely paves the way for another.
The first steamers were impelled by means of paddle wheels; but these
are now almost entirely superseded by the screw. And this, too, is an
invention almost of yesterday. It was only in 1840 that the Archimedes
was fitted as a screw yacht.
A few years later, in 1845, the Great Britain, propelled by the screw,
left Liverpool for New York, and made the voyage in fourteen days. The
screw is now invariably adopted in all long ocean voyages.
It is curious to look back, and observe the small beginnings of
maritime navigation. As regards this country, though its institutions
are old, modern England is still young. As respects its mechanical and
scientific achievements, it is the youngest of all countries. Watt's
steam engine was the beginning of our manufacturing supremacy; and
since its adoption, inventions and discoveries in Art and Science,
within the last hundred years, have succeeded each other with
extraordinary rapidity. In 1814 there was only one steam vessel in
Scotland; while England possessed none at all. Now, the British
mercantile steam-ships number about 5000, with about 4 millions of
aggregate tonnage.[2]
In olden times this country possessed the materials for great things,
as well as the men fitted to develope them into great results. But the
nation was slow to awake and take advantage of its opportunities.
There was no enterprise, no commerce--no "go" in the people. The roads
were frightfully bad; and there was little communication between one
part of the country and another.
If anything important had to be done, we used to send for foreigners to
come and teach us how to do it. We sent for them to drain our fens, to
build our piers and harbours, and even to pump our water at London
Bridge. Though a seafaring population lived round our coasts, we did
not fish our own seas, but left it to the industrious Dutchmen to catch
the fish, and supply our markets. It was not until the year 1787 that
the Yarmouth people began the deep-sea herring fishery; and yet these
were the most enterprising amongst the English fishermen.
English commerce also had very slender beginnings. At the commencement
of the fifteenth century, England was of very little account in the
affairs of Europe. Indeed, the history of modern England is nearly
coincident with the accession of the Tudors to the throne. With the
exception of Calais and Dunkirk, her dominions on the Continent had
been wrested from her by the French. The country at home had been made
desolate by the Wars of the Roses. The population was very small, and
had been kept down by war, pestilence, and famine.[3] The chief staple
was wool, which was exported to Flanders in foreign ships, there to be
manufactured into cloth. Nearly every article of importance was
brought from abroad; and the little commerce which existed was in the
hands of foreigners. The seas were swept by privateers, little better
than pirates, who plundered without scruple every vessel, whether
friend or foe, which fell in their way.
The British navy has risen from very low beginnings. The English fleet
had fallen from its high estate since the reign of Edward III., who won
a battle from the French and Flemings in 1340, with 260 ships; but his
vessels were all of moderate size, being boats, yachts, and caravels,
of very small tonnage. According to the contemporary chronicles,
Weymouth, Fowey, Sandwich, and Bristol, were then of nearly almost as
much importance as London;[4] which latter city only furnished
twenty-five vessels, with 662 mariners.
The Royal Fleet began in the reign of Henry VII. Only six or seven
vessels then belonged to the King, the largest being the Grace de Dieu,
of comparatively small tonnage. The custom then was, to hire ships
from the Venetians, the Genoese, the Hanse towns, and other trading
people; and as soon as the service for which the vessels so hired was
performed, they were dismissed.
When Henry VIII. ascended the throne in 1509, he directed his attention
to the state of the navy. Although the insular position of England was
calculated to stimulate the art of shipbuilding more than in most
continental countries, our best ships long continued to be built by
foreigners. Henry invited from abroad, especially from Italy, where
the art of shipbuilding had made the greatest progress, as many skilful
artists and workmen as he could procure, either by the hope of gain, or
the high honours and distinguished countenance which he paid them. "By
incorporating," says Charnock, "these useful persons among his own
subjects, he soon formed a corps sufficient to rival those states which
had rendered themselves most distinguished by their knowledge in this
art; so that the fame of Genoa and Venice, which had long excited the
envy of the greater part of Europe, became suddenly transferred to the
shores of Britain."[5]
In fitting out his fleet, we find Henry disbursing large sums to
foreigners for shipbuilding, for "harness" or armour, and for munitions
of all sorts. The State Papers[6] particularize the amounts paid to
Lewez de la Fava for "harness;" to William Gurre, "bregandy-maker;" and
to Leonard Friscobald for "almayn ryvetts."
Francis de Errona, a Spaniard, supplied the gunpowder. Among the
foreign mechanics and artizans employed were Hans Popenruyter,
gunfounder of Mechlin; Robert Sakfeld, Robert Skorer, Fortuno de
Catalenago, and John Cavelcant. On one occasion 2,797L. 19s. 4 1/2d.
was disbursed for guns and grindstones. This sum must be multiplied by
about four, to give the proper present value. Popenruyter seems to have
been the great gunfounder of the age; he supplied the principal guns
and gun stores for the English navy, and his name occurs in every
Ordnance account of the series, generally for sums of the largest
amounts.
Henry VIII. was the first to establish Royal dockyards, first at
Woolwich, then at Portsmouth, and thirdly at Deptford, for the erection
and repair of ships. Before then, England had been principally
dependent upon Dutchmen and Venetians, both for ships of war and
merchantmen. The sovereign had neither naval arsenals nor dockyards,
nor any regular establishment of civil or naval affairs to provide
ships of war. Sir Edward Howard, Lord High Admiral of England, at the
accession of Henry VIII., actually entered into a "contract" with that
monarch to fight his enemies.
This singular document is still preserved in the State Paper office.
Even after the establishment of royal dockyards, the sovereign--as late
as the reign of Elizabeth--entered into formal contracts with
shipwrights for the repair and maintenance of ships, as well as for
additions to the fleet.
The King, having made his first effort at establishing a royal navy,
sent the fleet to sea against the ships of France. The Regent was the
ship royal, with Sir Thomas Knivet, Master of the Horse, and Sir John
Crew of Devonshire, as Captains. The fleet amounted to twenty-five
well furnished ships. The French fleet were thirty-nine in number.
They met in Brittany Bay, and had a fierce fight. The Regent grappled
with a great carack of Brest; the French, on the English boarding their
ship, set fire to the gunpowder, and both ships were blown up, with all
their men. The French fleet fled, and the English kept the seas. The
King, hearing of the loss of the Regent, caused a great ship to be
built, the like of which had never before been seen in England, and
called it Harry Grace de Dieu.
This ship was constructed by foreign artizans, principally by Italians,
and was launched in 1515. She was said to be of a thousand tons
portage--the largest ship in England. The vessel was four-masted, with
two round tops on each mast, except the shortest mizen. She had a high
forecastle and poop, from which the crew could shoot down upon the deck
or waist of another vessel. The object was to have a sort of castle at
each end of the ship. This style of shipbuilding was doubtless
borrowed from the Venetians, then the greatest naval power in Europe.
The length of the masts, the height of the ship above the water's edge,
and the ornaments and decorations, were better adapted for the
stillness of the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas, than for the
boisterous ocean of the northern parts of Europe.[7] The story long
prevailed that "the Great Harry swept a dozen flocks of sheep off the
Isle of Man with her bob-stay." An American gentleman (N.B. Anderson,
LL.D., Boston) informed the present author that this saying is still
proverbial amongst the United States sailors.
The same features were reproduced in merchant ships. Most of them were
suited for defence, to prevent the attacks of pirates, which swarmed
the seas round the coast at that time. Shipbuilding by the natives in
private shipyards was in a miserable condition. Mr. Willet, in his
memoir relative to the navy, observes: "It is said, and I believe with
truth, that at this time (the middle of the sixteenth century) there
was not a private builder between London Bridge and Gravesend, who
could lay down a ship in the mould left from a Navy Board's draught,
without applying to a tinker who lived in Knave's Acre."[8]
Another ship of some note built at the instance of Henry VIII. was the
Mary Rose, of the portage of 500 tons. We find her in the "pond at
Deptford" in 1515. Seven years later, in the thirtieth year of Henry
VIII.'s reign, she was sent to sea, with five other English ships of
war, to protect such commerce as then existed from the depredations of
the French and Scotch pirates. The Mary Rose was sent many years later
(in 1544) with the English fleet to the coast of France, but returned
with the rest of the fleet to Portsmouth without entering into any
engagement. While laid at anchor, not far from the place where the
Royal George afterwards went down, and the ship was under repair, her
gun-ports being very low when she was laid over, "the shipp turned, the
water entered, and sodainly she sanke."
What was to be done? There were no English engineers or workmen who
could raise the ship. Accordingly, Henry VIII. sent to Venice for
assistance, and when the men arrived, Pietro de Andreas was dispatched
with the Venetian marines and carpenters to raise the Mary Rose. Sixty
English mariners were appointed to attend upon them. The Venetians
were then the skilled "heads," the English were only the "hands."
Nevertheless they failed with all their efforts; and it was not until
the year 1836 that Mr. Dean, the engineer, succeeded in raising not
only the Royal George, but the Mary Rose, and cleared the roadstead at
Portsmouth of the remains of the sunken ships.
When Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558, the commerce and navigation
of England were still of very small amount. The population of the
kingdom amounted to only about five millions--not much more than the
population of London is now. The country had little commerce, and what
it had was still mostly in the hands of foreigners. The Hanse towns
had their large entrepot for merchandise in Cannon Street, on the site
of the present Cannon Street Station. The wool was still sent abroad
to Flanders to be fashioned into cloth, and even garden produce was
principally imported from Holland. Dutch, Germans, Flemings, French,
and Venetians continued to be our principal workmen. Our iron was
mostly obtained from Spain and Germany. The best arms and armour came
from France and Italy. Linen was imported from Flanders and Holland,
though the best came from Rheims. Even the coarsest dowlas, or
sailcloth, was imported from the Low Countries.
The royal ships continued to be of very small burthen, and the
mercantile ships were still smaller. The Queen, however, did what she
could to improve the number and burthen of our ships. "Foreigners,"
says Camden, "stiled her the restorer of naval glory and Queen of the
Northern Seas." In imitation of the Queen, opulent subjects built
ships of force; and in course of time England no longer depended upon
Hamburg, Dantzic, Genoa, and Venice, for her fleet in time of war.
Spain was then the most potent power in Europe, and the Netherlands,
which formed part of the dominions of Spain, was the centre of
commercial prosperity. Holland possessed above 800 good ships, of from
200 to 700 tons burthen, and above 600 busses for fishing, of from 100
to 200 tons. Amsterdam and Antwerp were in the heyday of their
prosperity. Sometimes 500 great ships were to be seen lying together
before Amsterdam;[9] whereas England at that time had not four merchant
ships of 400 tons each! Antwerp, however, was the most important city
in the Low Countries. It was no uncommon thing to see as many as 2500
ships in the Scheldt, laden with merchandize. Sometimes 500 ships
would come and go from Antwerp in one day, bound to or returning from
the distant parts of the world. The place was immensely rich, and was
frequented by Spaniards, Germans, Danes, English, Italians, and
Portuguese the Spaniards being the most numerous. Camden, in his
history of Queen Elizabeth, relates that our general trade with the
Netherlands in 1564 amounted to twelve millions of ducats, five
millions of which was for English cloth alone.
The religious persecutions of Philip II. of Spain and of Charles IX. of
France shortly supplied England with the population of which she stood
in need--active, industrious, intelligent artizans. Philip set up the
Inquisition in Flanders, and in a few years more than 50,000 persons
were deliberately murdered. The Duchess of Parma, writing to Philip II.
in 1567, informed him that in a few days above 100,000 men had already
left the country with their money and goods, and that more were
following every day. They fled to Germany, to Holland, and above all
to England, which they hailed as Asylum Christi. The emigrants settled
in the decayed cities and towns of Canterbury, Norwich, Sandwich,
Colchester, Maidstone, Southampton, and many other places, where they
carried on their manufactures of woollen, linen, and silk, and
established many new branches of industry.[10]
Five years later, in 1572, the massacre of St. Bartholomew took place
in France, during which the Roman Catholic Bishop Perefixe alleges that
100,000 persons were put to death because of their religions opinions.
All this persecution, carried on so near the English shores, rapidly
increased the number of foreign fugitives into England, which was
followed by the rapid advancement of the industrial arts in this
country.
The asylum which Queen Elizabeth gave to the persecuted foreigners
brought down upon her the hatred of Philip II. and Charles IX. When
they found that they could not prevent her furnishing them with an
asylum, they proceeded to compass her death. She was excommunicated by
the Pope, and Vitelli was hired to assassinate her. Philip also
proceeded to prepare the Sacred Armada for the subjugation of the
English nation, and he was master of the most powerful army and navy in
the world.
Modern England was then in the throes of her birth. She had not yet
reached the vigour of her youth, though she was full of life and
energy. She was about to become the England of free thought, commerce,
and manufactures; to plough the ocean with her navies, and to plant her
colonies over the earth. Up to the accession of Elizabeth, she had
done little, but now she was about to do much.
It was a period of sudden emancipation of thought, and of immense
fertility and originality. The poets and prose writers of the time
united the freshness of youth with the vigour of manhood. Among these
were Spenser, Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, the Fletchers, Marlowe,
and Ben Jonson. Among the statesmen of Elizabeth were Burleigh,
Leicester, Walsingham, Howard, and Sir Nicholas Bacon. But perhaps
greatest of all were the sailors, who, as Clarendon said, "were a
nation by themselves;" and their leaders--Drake, Frobisher, Cavendish,
Hawkins, Howard, Raleigh, Davis, and many more distinguished seamen.
They were the representative men of their time, the creation in a great
measure of the national spirit. They were the offspring of long
generations of seamen and lovers of the sea. They could not have been
great but for the nation which gave them birth, and imbued them with
their worth and spirit. The great sailors, for instance, could not
have originated in a nation of mere landsmen.
They simply took the lead in a country whose coasts were fringed with
sailors. Their greatness was but the result of an excellence in
seamanship which prevailed widely around them.
The age of English maritime adventure only began in the reign of
Elizabeth. England had then no colonies--no foreign possessions
whatever. The first of her extensive colonial possessions was
established in this reign. "Ships, colonies, and commerce" began to be
the national motto--not that colonies make ships and commerce, but that
ships and commerce make colonies. Yet what cockle-shells of ships our
pioneer navigators first sailed in!
Although John Cabot or Gabota, of Bristol, originally a citizen of
Venice, had discovered the continent of North America in 1496, in the
reign of Henry VII., he made no settlement there, but returned to
Bristol with his four small ships. Columbus did not see the continent
of America until two years later, in 1498, his first discoveries being
the islands of the West Indies.
It was not until the year 1553 that an attempt was made to discover a
North-west passage to Cathaya or China. Sir Hugh Willonghby was put in
command of the expedition, which consisted of three ships,--the Bona
Esperanza, the Bona Ventura (Captain Chancellor), and the Bona
Confidentia (Captain Durforth),--most probably ships built by
Venetians. Sir Hugh reached 72 degrees of north latitude, and was
compelled by the buffeting of the winds to take refuge with Captain
Durforth's vessel at Arcina Keca, in Russian Lapland, where the two
captains and the crews of these ships, seventy in number, were frozen
to death. In the following year some Russian fishermen found Sir John
Willonghby sitting dead in his cabin, with his diary and other papers
beside him.
Captain Chancellor was more fortunate. He reached Archangel in the
White Sea, where no ship had ever been seen before. He pointed out to
the English the way to the whale fishery at Spitzbergen, and opened up
a trade with the northern parts of Russia. Two years later, in 1556,
Stephen Burroughs sailed with one small ship, which entered the Kara
Sea; but he was compelled by frost and ice to return to England. The
strait which he entered is still called "Burrough's Strait."
It was not, however, until the reign of Elizabeth that great maritime
adventures began to be made. Navigators were not so venturous as they
afterwards became. Without proper methods of navigation, they were apt
to be carried away to the south, across an ocean without limit. In
1565 a young captain, Martin Frobisher, came into notice. At the age
of twenty-five he captured in the South Seas the Flying Spirit, a
Spanish ship laden with a rich cargo of cochineal. Four years later,
in 1569, he made his first attempt to discover the north-west passage
to the Indies, being assisted by Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick. The
ships of Frobisher were three in number, the Gabriel, of from 15 to 20
tons; the Michael, of from 20 to 25 tons, or half the size of a modern
fishing-boat; and a pinnace, of from 7 to 10 tons! The aggregate of
the crews of the three ships was only thirty-five, men and boys. Think
of the daring of these early navigators in attempting to pass by the
North Pole to Cathay through snow, and storm, and ice, in such
miserable little cockboats! The pinnace was lost; the Michael, under
Owen Griffith, a Welsh-man, deserted; and Martin Frobisher in the
Gabriel went alone into the north-western sea!
He entered the great bay, since called Hudson's Bay, by Frobisher's
Strait. He returned to England without making the discovery of the
Passage, which long remained the problem of arctic voyagers. Yet ten
years later, in 1577, he made another voyage, and though he made his
second attempt with one of Queen Elizabeth's own ships, and two barks,
with 140 persons in all, he was as unsuccessful as before. He brought
home some supposed gold ore; and on the strength of the stones
containing gold, a third expedition went out in the following year.
After losing one of the ships, consuming the provisions, and suffering
greatly from ice and storms, the fleet returned home one by one. The
supposed gold ore proved to be only glittering sand.
While Frobisher was seeking El-Dorado in the North, Francis Drake was
finding it in the South. He was a sailor, every inch of him.
"Pains, with patience in his youth," says Fuller, "knit the joints of
his soul, and made them more solid and compact." At an early age, when
carrying on a coasting trade, his imagination was inflamed by the
exploits of his protector Hawkins in the New World, and he joined him
in his last unfortunate adventure on the Spanish Main. He was not,
however, discouraged by his first misfortune, but having assembled
about him a number of seamen who believed in him, he made other
adventures to the West Indies, and learnt the navigation of that part
of the ocean. In 1570, he obtained a regular commission from Queen
Elizabeth, though he sailed his own ships, and made his own ventures.
Every Englishman, who had the means, was at liberty to fit out his own
ships; and with tolerable vouchers, he was able to procure a commission
from the Court, and proceed to sea at his own risk and cost. Thus, the
naval enterprise and pioneering of new countries under Elizabeth, was
almost altogether a matter of private enterprise and adventure.
In 1572, the butchery of the Hugnenots took place at Paris and
throughout France; while at the same time the murderous power of Philip
II. reigned supreme in the Netherlands. The sailors knew what they had
to expect from the Spanish king in the event of his obtaining his
threatened revenge upon England; and under their chosen chiefs they
proceeded to make war upon him. In the year of the massacre of St.
Bartholomew, Drake set sail for the Spanish Main in the Pasha, of
seventy tons, accompanied by the Swan, of twenty-five tons; the united
crews of the vessels amounting to seventy-three men and boys. With
this insignificant force, Drake made great havoc amongst the Spanish
shipping at Nombre de Dios. He partially crossed the Isthmus of
Darien, and obtained his first sight of the great Pacific Ocean. He
returned to England in August 1573, with his frail barks crammed with
treasure.
A few years later, in 1577, he made his ever-memorable expedition.
Charnock says it was "an attempt in its nature so bold and
unprecedented, that we should scarcely know whether to applaud it as a
brave, or condemn it as a rash one, but for its success." The squadron
with which he sailed for South America consisted of five vessels, the
largest of which, the Pelican, was only of 100 tons burthen; the next,
the Elizabeth, was of 80; the third, the Swan, a fly-boat, was of 50;
the Marygold bark, of 30; and the Christopher, a pinnace, of 15 tons.
The united crews of these vessels amounted to only 164, gentlemen and
sailors.
The gentlemen went with Drake "to learn the art of navigation." After
various adventures along the South American coast, the little fleet
passed through the Straits of Magellan, and entered the Pacific Ocean.
Drake took an immense amount of booty from the Spanish towns along the
coast, and captured the royal galleon, the Cacafuego, laden with
treasure. After trying in vain to discover a passage home by the
North-eastern ocean, though what is now known as Behring Straits, he
took shelter in Port San Francisco, which he took possession of in the
name of the Queen of England, and called New Albion. He eventually
crossed the Pacific for the Moluccas and Java, from which he sailed
right across the Indian Ocean, and by the Cape of Good Hope to England,
thus making the circumnavigation of the world. He was absent with his
little fleet for about two years and ten months.
Not less extraordinary was the voyage of Captain Cavendish, who made
the circumnavigation of the globe at his own expense. He set out from
Plymouth in three small vessels on the 21st July, 1586. One vessel was
of 120 tons, the second of 60 tons, and the third of 40 tons--not much
bigger than a Thames yacht. The united crews, of officers, men, and
boys, did not exceed 123! Cavendish sailed along the South American
continent, and made through the Straits of Magellan, reaching the
Pacific Ocean. He burnt and plundered the Spanish settlements along
the coast, captured some Spanish ships, and took by boarding the
galleon St. Anna, with 122,000 Spanish dollars on board. He then
sailed across the Pacific to the Ladrone Islands, and returned home
through the Straits of Java and the Indian Archipelago by the Cape of
Good Hope, and reached England after an absence of two years and a
month.
The sacred and invincible Armada was now ready, Philip II. was
determined to put down those English adventurers who had swept the
coasts of Spain and plundered his galleons on the high seas. The
English sailors knew that the sword of Philip was forged in the gold
mines of South America, and that the only way to defend their country
was to intercept the plunder on its voyage home to Spain. But the
sailors and their captains--Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, Howard,
Grenville, Raleigh, and the rest--could not altogether interrupt the
enterprise of the King of Spain. The Armada sailed, and came in sight
of the English coast on the 20th of July, 1588.
The struggle was of an extraordinary character. On the one side was
the most powerful naval armament that had ever put to sea. It consisted
of six squadrons of sixty fine large ships, the smallest being of 700
tons. Besides these were four gigantic galleasses, each carrying fifty
guns, four large armed galleys, fifty-six armed merchant ships, and
twenty caravels--in all, 149 vessels. On board were 8000 sailors,
20,000 soldiers, and a large number of galley-slaves. The ships
carried provisions enough for six months' consumption; and the supply
of ammunition was enormous.
On the other side was the small English fleet under Hawkins and Drake.
The Royal ships were only thirteen in number. The rest were
contributed by private enterprize, there being only thirty-eight
vessels of all sorts and sizes, including cutters and pinnaces,
carrying the Queen's flag. The principal armed merchant ships were
provided by London, Southampton, Bristol, and the other southern ports.
Drake was followed by some privateers; Hawkins had four or five ships,
and Howard of Effingham two. The fleet was, however, very badly found
in provisions and ammunition. There was only a week's provisions on
board, and scarcely enough ammunition for one day's hard fighting. But
the ships, small though they were, were in good condition. They could
sail, whether in pursuit or in flight, for the men who navigated them
were thorough sailors.
The success of the defence was due to tact, courage, and seamanship.
At the first contact of the fleets, the Spanish towering galleons
wished to close, to grapple with their contemptuous enemies, and crush
them to death. "Come on!" said Medina Sidonia. Lord Howard came on
with the Ark and three other ships, and fired with immense rapidity
into the great floating castles. The Sam Mateo luffed, and wanted them
to board. "No! not yet!" The English tacked, returned, fired again,
riddled the Spaniards, and shot away in the eye of the wind. To the
astonishment of the Spanish Admiral, the English ships approached him
or left him just as they chose. "The enemy pursue me," wrote the
Spanish Admiral to the Prince of Parma; "they fire upon me most days
from morning till nightfall, but they will not close and grapple,
though I have given them every opportunity." The Capitana, a galleon
of 1200 tons, dropped behind, struck her flag to Drake, and increased
the store of the English fleet by some tons of gunpowder. Another
Spanish ship surrendered, and another store of powder and shot was
rescued for the destruction of the Armada. And so it happened
throughout, until the Spanish fleet was driven to wreck and ruin, and
the remaining ships were scattered by the tempests of the north. After
all, Philip proved to be, what the sailors called him, only "a Colossus
stuffed with clouts."
The English sailors followed up their advantage. They went on
"singeing the Ring of Spain's beard." Private adventurers fitted up a
fleet under the command of Drake, and invaded the mainland of Spain.
They took the lower part of the town of Corunna; sailed to the Tagus,
and captured a fleet of ships laden with wheat and warlike stores for a
new Armada. They next sacked Vigo, and returned to England with 150
pieces of cannon and a rich booty. The Earl of Cumberland sailed to
the West Indies on a private adventure, and captured more Spanish
prizes. In 1590, ten English merchantmen, returning from the Levant,
attacked twelve Spanish galleons, and after six hours' contest, put
them to flight with great loss. In the following year, three merchant
ships set sail for the East Indies, and in the course of their voyage
took several Portuguese vessels.
A powerful Spanish fleet still kept the seas, and in 1591 they
conquered the noble Sir Richard Grenville at the Azores--fifteen great
Spanish galleons against one Queen's ship, the Revenge. In 1593, two
of the Queen's ships, accompanied by a number of merchant ships, sailed
for the West Indies, under Burroughs, Frobisher, and Cross, and amongst
their other captures they took the greatest of all the East India
caracks, a vessel of 1600 tons, 700 men, and 36 brass cannon, laden
with a magnificent cargo. She was taken to Dartmouth, and surprised
all who saw her, being the largest ship that had ever been seen in
England. In 1594, Captain James Lancaster set sail with three ships
upon a voyage of adventure. He was joined by some Dutch and French
privateers. The result was, that they captured thirty-nine of the
Spanish ships. Sir Amias Preston, Sir John Hawkins, and Sir Francis
Drake, also continued their action upon the seas. Lord Admiral Howard
and the Earl of Essex made their famous attack upon Cadiz for the
purpose of destroying the new Armada; they demolished all the forts;
sank eleven of the King of Spain's best ships, forty-four merchant
ships, and brought home much booty.
Nor was maritime discovery neglected. The planting of new colonies
began, for the English people had already begun to swarm. In 1578, Sir
Humphrey Gilbert planted Newfoundland for the Queen. In 1584, Sir
Waiter Raleigh planted the first settlement in Virginia. Nor was the
North-west passage neglected; for in 1580, Captain Pett (a name famous
on the Thames) set sail from Harwich in the George, accompanied by
Captain Jackman in the William. They reached the ice in the North Sea,
but were compelled to return without effecting their purpose! Will it
be believed that the George was only of 40 tons, and that its crew
consisted of nine men and a boy; and that the William was of 20 tons,
with five men and a boy? The wonder is that these little vessels could
resist the terrible icefields, and return to England again with their
hardy crews.
Then in 1585, another of our adventurous sailors, John Davis, of
Sandridge on the Dart, set sail with two barks, the Sunshine and the
Moonshine, of 50 and 35 tons respectively, and discovered in the far
North-west the Strait which now bears his name. He was driven back by
the ice; but, undeterred by his failure, he set out on a second, and
then on a third voyage of discovery in the two following years. But he
never succeeded in discovering the North-west passage. It all reads
like a mystery--these repeated, determined, and energetic attempts to
discover a new way of reaching the fabled region of Cathay.
In these early times the Dutch were not unworthy rivals of the English.
After they had succeeded in throwing off the Spanish yoke and achieved
their independence, they became one of the most formidable of maritime
powers. In the course of another century Holland possessed more
colonies, and had a larger share of the carrying trade of the world
than Britain. It was natural therefore that the Dutch republic should
take an interest in the North-west passage; and the Dutch sailors, by
their enterprise and bravery, were among the first to point the way to
Arctic discovery. Barents and Behring, above all others, proved the
courage and determination of their heroic ancestors.
The romance of the East India Company begins with an advertisement in
the London Gazette of 1599, towards the end of the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. As with all other enterprises of the nation, it was
established by private means. The Company was started with a capital
of 72,000L. in 50L. shares. The adventurers bought four vessels of an
average burthen of 350 tons. These were stocked with provisions,
"Norwich stuffs," and other merchandise. The tiny fleet sailed from
Billingsgate on the 13th February, 1601. It went by the Cape of Good
Hope to the East Indies, under the command of Captain James Lancaster.
It took no less than sixteen months to reach the Indian Archipelago.
The little fleet reached Acheen in June, 1602. The king of the
territory received the visitors with courtesy, and exchanged spices
with them freely. The four vessels sailed homeward, taking possession
of the island of St. Helena on their way back; having been absent
exactly thirty-one months. The profits of the first voyage proved to
be about one hundred per cent. Such was the origin of the great East
India Company--now expanded into an empire, and containing about two
hundred millions of people.
To return to the shipping and the mercantile marine of the time of
Queen Elizabeth. The number of Royal ships was only thirteen, the rest
of the navy consisting of merchant ships, which were hired and
discharged when their purpose was served.[11] According to Wheeler, at
the accession of the Queen, there were not more than four ships
belonging to the river Thames, excepting those of the Royal Navy, which
were over 120 tons in burthen;[12] and after forty years, the whole of
the merchant ships of England, over 100 tons, amounted to 135; only a
few of these being of 500 tons. In 1588, the number had increased to
150, "of about 150 tons one with another, employed in trading voyages
to all parts and countries." The principal shipping which frequented
the English ports still continued to be foreign--Italian, Flemish, and
German.
Liverpool, now possessing the largest shipping tonnage in the world,
had not yet come into existence. It was little better than a fishing
village. The people of the place presented a petition to the Queen,
praying her to remit a subsidy which had been imposed upon them, and
speaking of their native place as "Her Majesty's poor decayed town of
Liverpool." In 1565, seven years after Queen Elizabeth began to reign,
the number of vessels belonging to Liverpool was only twelve. The
largest was of forty tons burthen, with twelve men; and the smallest
was a boat of six tons, with three men.[13]
James I., on his accession to the throne of England in 1603, called in
all the ships of war, as well as the numerous privateers which had been
employed during the previous reign in waging war against the commerce
of Spain, and declared himself to be at peace with all the world.
James was as peaceful as a Quaker. He was not a fighting King;--and,
partly on this account, he was not popular. He encouraged manufactures
in wool, silk, and tapestry. He gave every encouragement to the
mercantile and colonizing adventurers to plant and improve the rising
settlements of Virginia, New England, and Newfoundland. He also
promoted the trade to the East Indies. Attempts continued to be made,
by Hudson, Poole, Button, Hall, Baffin, and other courageous seamen, to
discover the North-West passage, but always without effect.
The shores of England being still much infested by Algerine and other
pirates,[14] King James found it necessary to maintain the ships of war
in order to protect navigation and commerce. He nearly doubled the
ships of the Royal Navy, and increased the number from thirteen to
twenty-four. Their size, however, continued small, both Royal and
merchant ships. Sir William Monson says, that at the accession of
James I. there were not above four merchant ships in England of 400
tons burthen.[15] The East Indian merchants were the first to increase
the size. In 1609, encouraged by their Charter, they built the Trade's
Increase, of 1100 tons burthen, the largest merchant ship that had ever
been built in England. As it was necessary that, the crew of the ship
should be able to beat off the pirates, she was fully armed. The
additional ships of war were also of heavier burthen. In the same
year, the Prince, of 1400 tons burthen, was launched; she carried
sixty-four cannon, and was superior to any ship of the kind hitherto
seen in England.
And now we arrive at the subject of this memoir. The Petts were the
principal ship-builders of the time. They had long been known upon the
Thames, and had held posts in the Royal Dockyards since the reign of
Henry VII. They were gallant sailors, too; one of them, as already
mentioned, having made an adventurous voyage to the Arctic Ocean in his
little bark, the George, of only 40 tons burthen. Phineas Pett was the
first of the great ship-builders. His father, Peter Pett, was one of
the Queen's master shipwrights. Besides being a ship-builder, he was
also a poet, being the author of a poetical piece entitled, "Time's
Journey to seek his daughter Truth,"[16] a very respectable
performance. Indeed, poetry is by no means incompatible with
ship-building--the late Chief Constructor of the Navy being, perhaps,
as proud of his poetry as of his ships. Pett's poem was dedicated to
the Lord High Admiral, Howard, Earl of Nottingham; and this may
possibly have been the reason of the singular interest which he
afterwards took in Phineas Pett, the poet shipwright's son.
Phineas Pett was the second son of his father. He was born at
Deptford, or "Deptford Strond," as the place used to be called, on the
1st of November, 1570. At nine years old, he was sent to the
free-school at Rochester, and remained there for four years. Not
profiting much by his education there, his father removed him to a
private school at Greenwich, kept by a Mr. Adams. Here he made so much
progress, that in three years time he was ready for Cambridge. He was
accordingly sent to that University at Shrovetide, 1586, and was
entered at Emmanuel College, under charge of Mr. Charles Chadwick, the
president. His father allowed him 20L. per annum, besides books,
apparel, and other necessaries.
Phineas remained at Cambridge for three years. He was obliged to quit
the University by the death of his "reverend, ever-loving father,"
whose loss, he says, "proved afterwards my utter undoing almost, had
not God been more merciful to me." His mother married again, "a most
wicked husband," says Pett in his autobiography,[17] "one, Mr. Thomas
Nunn, a minister," but of what denomination he does not state. His
mother's imprudence wholly deprived him of his maintenance, and having
no hopes of preferment from his friends, he necessarily abandoned his
University career, "presently after Christmas, 1590."
Early in the following year, he was persuaded by his mother to
apprentice himself to Mr. Richard Chapman, of Deptford Strond, one of
the Queen's Master shipwrights, whom his late father had "bred up from
a child to that profession." He was allowed 2L. 6s. 8d. per annum,
with which he had to provide himself with tools and apparel. Pett
spent two years in this man's service to very little purpose; Chapman
then died, and the apprentice was dismissed. Pett applied to his elder
brother Joseph, who would not help him, although he had succeeded to
his father's post in the Royal Dockyard. He was accordingly
"constrained to ship himself to sea upon a desperate voyage in a
man-of-war." He accepted the humble place of carpenter's mate on board
the galleon Constance, of London. Pett's younger brother, Peter, then
living at Wapping, gave him lodging, meat, and drink, until the ship
was ready to sail. But he had no money to buy clothes. Fortunately one
William King, a yoeman in Essex, taking pity upon the unfortunate young
man, lent him 3L. for that purpose; which Pett afterwards repaid.
The Constance was of only 200 tons burden. She set sail for the South
a few days before Christmas, 1592. There is no doubt that she was
bound upon a piratical adventure. Piracy was not thought dishonourable
in those days. Four years had elapsed since the Armada had approached
the English coast; and now the English and Dutch ships were scouring
the seas in search of Spanish galleons.
Whoever had the means of furnishing a ship, and could find a plucky
captain to command her, sent her out as a privateer. Even the
Companies of the City of London clubbed their means together for the
purpose of sending out Sir Waiter Raleigh to capture Spanish ships, and
afterwards to divide the plunder; as any one may see on referring to
the documents of the London Corporation.[18]
The adventure in which Pett was concerned did not prove very fortunate.
He was absent for about twenty months on the coasts of Spain and
Barbary, and in the Levant, enduring much misery for want of victuals
and apparel, and "without taking any purchase of any value." The
Constance returned to the Irish coast, "extreme poorly." The vessel
entered Cork harbour, and then Pett, thoroughly disgusted with
privateering life, took leave of both ship and voyage. With much
difficulty, he made his way across the country to Waterford, from
whence he took ship for London. He arrived there three days before
Christmas, 1594, in a beggarly condition, and made his way to his
brother Peter's house at Wapping, who again kindly entertained him.
The elder brother Joseph received him more coldly, though he lent him
forty shillings to find himself in clothes. At that time, the fleet
was ordered to be got ready for the last expedition of Drake and
Hawkins to the West Indies. The Defiance was sent into Woolwich dock
to be sheathed; and as Joseph Pett was in charge of the job, he allowed
his brother to be employed as a carpenter.
In the following year, Phineas succeeded in attracting the notice of
Matthew Baker, who was commissioned to rebuild Her Majesty's Triumph.
Baker employed Pett as an ordinary workman; but he had scarcely begun
the job before Baker was ordered to proceed with the building of a
great new ship at Deptford, called the Repulse.
Phineas wished to follow the progress of the Triumph, but finding his
brother Joseph unwilling to retain him in his employment, he followed
Baker to Deptford, and continued to work at the Repulse until she was
finished, launched, and set sail on her voyage, at the end of April,
1596. This was the leading ship of the squadron which set sail for
Cadiz, under the command of the Earl of Essex and the Lord Admiral
Howard, and which did so much damage to the forts and shipping of
Philip II. of Spain.
During the winter months, while the work was in progress, Pett spent
the leisure of his evenings in perfecting himself in learning,
especially in drawing, cyphering, and mathematics, for the purpose, as
he says, of attaining the knowledge of his profession. His master, Mr.
Baker, gave him every encouragement, and from his assistance, he adds,
"I must acknowledge I received my greatest lights." The Lord Admiral
was often present at Baker's house. Pett was importuned to set sail
with the ship when finished, but he preferred remaining at home. The
principal reason, no doubt, that restrained him at this moment from
seeking the patronage of the great, was the care of his two
sisters,[19] who, having fled from the house of their barbarous
stepfather, could find no refuge but in that of their brother Phineas.
Joseph refused to receive them, and Peter of Wapping was perhaps less
able than willing to do so.
In April, 1597, Pett had the advantage of being introduced to Howard,
Earl of Nottingham, then Lord High Admiral of England. This, he says,
was the first beginning of his rising. Two years later, Howard
recommended him for employment in purveying plank and timber in Norfolk
and Suffolk for shipbuilding purposes. Pett accomplished his business
satisfactorily, though he had some malicious enemies to contend
against. In his leisure, he began to prepare models of ships, which he
rigged and finished complete. He also proceeded with the study of
mathematics. The beginning of the year 1600 found Pett once more out
of employment; and during his enforced idleness, which continued for
six months, he seriously contemplated abandoning his profession and
attempting to gain "an honest and convenient maintenance" by joining a
friend in purchasing a caravel (a small vessel), and navigating it
himself.
He was, however, prevented from undertaking this enterprise by a
message which he received from the Court, then stationed at Greenwich.
The Lord High Admiral desired to see him; and after many civil
compliments, he offered him the post of keeper of the plankyard at
Chatham. Pett was only too glad to accept this offer, though the
salary was small. He shipped his furniture on board a hoy of Rainham,
and accompanied it down the Thames to the junction with the Medway.
There he escaped a great danger--one of the sea perils of the time.
The mouths of navigable rivers were still infested with pirates; and as
the hoy containing Pett approached the Nore about three o'clock in the
morning, and while still dark, she came upon a Dunkirk picaroon, full
of men. Fortunately the pirate was at anchor; she weighed and gave
chase, and had not the hoy set full sail, and been impelled up the
Swale by a fresh wind, Pett would have been taken prisoner, with all
his furniture.[20]
Arrived at Chatham, Pett met his brother Joseph, became reconciled to
him, and ever after they lived together as loving brethren. At his
brother's suggestion, Pett took a lease of the Manor House, and settled
there with his sisters. He was now in the direct way to preferment.
Early in the following year (March, 1601) he succeeded to the place of
assistant to the principal master shipwright at Chatham, and undertook
the repairs of Her Majesty's ship The Lion's Whelp, and in the next
year he new-built the Moon enlarging her both in length and breadth.
At the accession of James I. in 1603, Pett was commanded by the Lord
High Admiral with all possible speed to build a little vessel for the
young Prince Henry, eldest son of His Majesty. It was to be a sort of
copy of the Ark Royal, which was the flagship of the Lord High Admiral
when he defeated the Spanish Armada. Pett proceeded to accomplish the
order with all dispatch. The little ship was in length by the keel 28
feet, in breadth 12 feet, and very curiously garnished within and
without with painting and carving. After working by torch and candle
light, night and day, the ship was launched, and set sail for the
Thames, with the noise of drums, trumpets, and cannon, at the beginning
of March, 1604. After passing through a great storm at the Nore, the
vessel reached the Tower, where the King and the young Prince inspected
her with delight. She was christened Disdain by the Lord High Admiral,
and Pett was appointed captain of the ship.
After his return to Chatham, Pett, at his own charge, built a small
ship at Gillingham, of 300 tons, which he launched in the same year,
and named the Resistance. The ship was scarcely out of hand, when Pett
was ordered to Woolwich, to prepare the Bear and other vessels for
conveying his patron, the Lord High Admiral, as an Ambassador
Extraordinary to Spain, for the purpose of concluding peace, after a
strife of more than forty years. The Resistance was hired by the
Government as a transport, and Pett was put in command. He seems to
have been married at this time, as he mentions in his memoir that he
parted with his wife and children at Chatham on the 24th of March,
1605, and that he sailed from Queenborough on Easter Sunday.
During the voyage to Lisbon the Resistance became separated from the
Ambassador's squadron, and took refuge in Corunna. She then set sail
for Lisbon, which she reached on the 24th of April; and afterwards for
St. Lucar, on the Guadalquiver, near Seville, which she reached on the
11th of May following. After revisiting Corunna, "according to
instructions," on the homeward voyage, Pett directed his course for
England, and reached Rye on the 26th of June, "amidst much rain,
thunder, and lightning." In the course of the same year, his brother
Joseph died, and Phineas succeeded to his post as master shipbuilder at
Chatham. He was permitted, in conjunction with one Henry Farvey and
three others, to receive the usual reward of 5s. per ton for building
five new merchant ships,[21] most probably for East Indian commerce,
now assuming large dimensions. He was despatched by the Government to
Bearwood, in Hampshire, to make a selection of timber from the estate
of the Earl of Worcester for the use of the navy, and on presenting his
report 3000 tons were purchased. What with his building of ships, his
attendance on the Lord Admiral to Spain, and his selection of timber
for the Government, his hands seem to have been kept very full during
the whole of 1605.
In July, 1606, Pett received private instructions from the Lord High
Admiral to have all the King's ships "put into comely readiness" for
the reception of the King of Denmark, who was expected on a Royal
visit. "Wherein," he says, "I strove extraordinarily to express my
service for the honour of the kingdom; but by reason the time limited
was short, and the business great, we laboured night and day to effect
it, which accordingly was done, to the great honour of our sovereign
king and master, and no less admiration of all strangers that were
eye-witnesses to the same." The reception took place on the 10th of
August, 1606.
Shortly after the departure of His Majesty of Denmark, four of the
Royal ships--the Ark, Victory, Golden Lion, and Swiftsure--were ordered
to be dry-docked; the two last mentioned at Deptford, under charge of
Matthew Baker; and the two former at Woolwich, under that of Pett. For
greater convenience, Pett removed his family to Woolwich. After being
elected and sworn Master of the Company of Shipwrights, he refers in
his manuscript, for the first time, to his magnificent and original
design of the Prince Royal.[22]
"After settling at Woolwich," he says, "I began a curious model for the
prince my master, most part whereof I wrought with my own hands."
After finishing the model, he exhibited it to the Lord High Admiral,
and, after receiving his approval and commands, he presented it to the
young prince at Richmond. "His Majesty (who was present) was
exceedingly delighted with the sight of the model, and passed some time
in questioning the divers material things concerning it, and demanded
whether I could build the great ship in all parts like the same; for I
will, says His Majesty, compare them together when she shall be
finished. Then the Lord Admiral commanded me to tell His Majesty the
story of the Three Ravens[23] I had seen at Lisbon, in St. Vincent's
Church; which I did as well as I could, with my best expressions,
though somewhat daunted at first at His Majesty's presence, having
never before spoken before any King."
Before, however, he could accomplish his purpose, Pett was overtaken by
misfortunes. His enemies, very likely seeing with spite the favour
with which he had been received by men in high position, stirred up an
agitation against him. There may, and there very probably was, a great
deal of jobbery going on in the dockyards. It was difficult, under the
system which prevailed, to have any proper check upon the expenditure
for the repair and construction of ships. At all events, a commission
was appointed for the purpose of inquiring into the abuses and
misdemeanors of those in office; and Pett's enemies took care that his
past proceedings should be thoroughly overhauled,--together with those
of Sir Robert Mansell, then Treasurer to the Navy; Sir John Trevor,
surveyor; Sir Henry Palmer, controller; Sir Thomas Bluther, victualler;
and many others.
While the commission was still sitting and holding what Pett calls
their "malicious proceedings," he was able to lay the keel of his new
great ship upon the stocks in the dock at Woolwich on the 20th of
October, 1608. He had a clear conscience, for his hands were clean.
He went on vigorously with his work, though he knew that the
inquisition against him was at its full height. His enemies reported
that he was "no artist, and that he was altogether insufficient to
perform such a service" as that of building his great ship.
Nevertheless, he persevered, believing in the goodness of his cause.
Eventually, he was enabled to turn the tables upon his accusers, and to
completely justify himself in all his transactions with the king, the
Lord Admiral, and the public officers, who were privy to all his
transactions. Indeed, the result of the enquiry was not only to cause
a great trouble and expense to all the persons accused, but, as Pett
says in his Memoir, "the Government itself of that royal office was so
shaken and disjoined as brought almost ruin upon the whole Navy, and a
far greater charge to his Majesty in his yearly expense than ever was
known before."[24]
In the midst of his troubles and anxieties, Pett was unexpectedly
cheered with the presence of his "Master" Prince Henry, who specially
travelled out of his way from Essex to visit him at Woolwich, to see
with his own eyes what progress he was making with the great ship.
After viewing the dry dock, which had been constructed by Pett, and was
one of the first, if not the very first in England,--his Highness
partook of a banquet which the shipbuilder had hastily prepared for him
in his temporary lodgings.
One of the circumstances which troubled Pett so much at this time, was
the strenuous opposition of the other shipbuilders to his plans of the
great ship. There never had been such a frightful innovation. The
model was all wrong. The lines were detestable. The man who planned
the whole thing was a fool, a "cozener" of the king, and the ship,
suppose it to be made, was "unfit for any other use but a dung-boat!"
This attack upon his professional character weighed very heavily upon
his mind.
He determined to put his case in a staightforward manner before the
Lord High Admiral. He set down in writing in the briefest manner
everything that he had done, and the plots that had been hatched
against him; and beseeched his lordship, for the honour of the State,
and the reputation of his office, to cause the entire matter to be
thoroughly investigated "by judicious and impartial persons." After a
conference with Pett, and an interview with his Majesty, the Lord High
Admiral was authorised by the latter to invite the Earls of Worcester
and Suffolk to attend with him at Woolwich, and bring all the accusers
of Pett's design of the great ship before them for the purpose of
examination, and to report to him as to the actual state of affairs.
Meanwhile Pett's enemies had been equally busy. They obtained a
private warrant from the Earl of Northampton[25] to survey the work;
"which being done," says Pett, "upon return of the insufficiency of the
same under their hands, and confirmation by oath, it was resolved
amongst them I should be turned out, and for ever disgraced."
But the lords appointed by the King now interfered between Pett and his
adversaries. They first inspected the ship, and made a diligent survey
of the form and manner of the work and the goodness of the materials,
and then called all the accusers before them to hear their allegations.
They were examined separately. First, Baker the master shipbuilder was
called. He objected to the size of the ship, to the length, breadth,
depth, draught of water, height of jack, rake before and aft, breadth
of the floor, scantling of the timber, and so on. Then another of the
objectors was called; and his evidence was so clearly in contradiction
to that which had already been given, that either one or both must be
wrong. The principal objector, Captain Waymouth, next gave his
evidence; but he was able to say nothing to any purpose, except giving
their lordships "a long, tedious discourse of proportions, measures,
lines, and an infinite rabble of idle and unprofitable speeches, clean
from the matter."
The result was that their lordships reported favourably of the design
of the ship, and the progress which had already been made.
The Earl of Nottingham interposed his influence; and the King himself,
accompanied by the young Prince, went down to Woolwich, and made a
personal examination.[26] A great many witnesses were again examined,
twenty-four on one side, and twenty-seven on the other. The King then
carefully examined the ship himself: "the planks, the tree-nails, the
workmanship, and the cross-grained timber." "The cross-grain," he
concluded, "was in the men and not in the timber." After all the
measurements had been made and found correct, "his Majesty," says Pett,
"with a loud voice commanded the measurers to declare publicly the very
truth; which when they had delivered clearly on our side, all the whole
multitude heaved up their hats, and gave a great and loud shout and
acclamation. And then the Prince, his Highness, called with a high
voice in these words: 'Where be now these perjured fellows that dare
thus abuse his Majesty with these false accusations? Do they not
worthily deserve hanging?"'
Thus Pett triumphed over all his enemies, and was allowed to finish the
great ship in his own way. By the middle of September 1610, the vessel
was ready to be "strucken down upon her ways"; and a dozen of the
choice master carpenters of his Majesty's navy came from Chatham to
assist in launching her. The ship was decorated, gilded, draped, and
garlanded; and on the 24th the King, the Queen, and the Royal family
came from the palace at Theobald's to witness the great sight.
Unfortunately, the day proved very rough; and it was little better than
a neap tide. The ship started very well, but the wind "overblew the
tide"; she caught in the dock-gates, and settled hard upon the ground,
so that there was no possibility of launching her that day.
This was a great disappointment. The King retired to the palace at
Greenwich, though the Prince lingered behind. When he left, he
promised to return by midnight, after which it was proposed to make
another effort to set the ship afloat. When the time arrived, the
Prince again made his appearance, and joined the Lord High Admiral, and
the principal naval officials. It was bright moonshine. After
midnight the rain began to fall, and the wind to blow from the
southwest. But about two o'clock, an hour before high water, the word
was given to set all taut, and the ship went away without any straining
of screws and tackles, till she came clear afloat into the midst of the
Thames. The Prince was aboard, and amidst the blast of trumpets and
expressions of joy, he performed the ceremony of drinking from the
great standing cup, and throwing the rest of the wine towards the
half-deck, and christening the ship by the name of the Prince Royal.[27]
The dimensions of the ship may be briefly described. Her keel was 114
feet long, and her cross-beam 44 feet. She was of 1400 tons burthen,
and carried 64 pieces of great ordnance. She was the largest ship that
had yet been constructed in England.
The Prince Royal was, at the time she was built, considered one of the
most wonderful efforts of human genius. Mr. Charnock, in his 'Treatise
on Marine Architecture,' speaks of her as abounding in striking
peculiarities. Previous to the construction of this ship, vessels were
built in the style of the Venetian galley, which although well adapted
for the quiet Mediterranean, were not suited for the stormy northern
ocean. The fighting ships also of the time of Henry VIII. and
Elizabeth were too full of "top-hamper" for modern navigation. They
were oppressed by high forecastles and poops. Pett struck out entirely
new ideas in the build and lines of his new ship; and the course which
he adopted had its effect upon all future marine structures. The ship
was more handy, more wieldy, and more convenient. She was
unquestionably the first effort of English ingenuity in the direction
of manageableness and simplicity. "The vessel in question," says
Charnock, "may be considered the parent of the class of shipping which
continues in practice even to the present moment."
It is scarcely necessary to pursue in detail the further history of
Phineas Pett. We may briefly mention the principal points. In 1612,
the Prince Royal was appointed to convey the Princess Elizabeth and her
husband, The Palsgrave, to the Continent. Pett was on board the ship,
and found that "it wrought exceedingly well, and was so yare of conduct
that a foot of helm would steer her." While at Flushing, "such a
multitude of people, men, women, and children, came from all places in
Holland to see the ship, that we could scarce have room to go up and
down till very night."
About the 27th of March, 1616, Pett bargained with Sir Waiter Raleigh
to build a vessel of 500 tons,[28] and received 500L. from him on
account. The King, through the interposition of the Lord Admiral,
allowed Pett to lay her keel on the galley dock at Woolwich. In the
same year he was commissioned by the Lord Zouche, now Lord Warden of
the Cinque Ports, to construct a pinnace of 40 tons, in respect of
which Pett remarks, "towards the whole of the hull of the pinnace, and
all her rigging, I received only 100L. from the Lord Zouche, the rest
Sir Henry Mainwaring (half-brother to Raleigh) cunningly received on my
behalf, without my knowledge, which I never got from him but by
piecemeal, so that by the bargain I was loser 100L. at least."
Pett fared much worse at the hands of Raleigh himself. His great ship,
the Destiny, was finished and launched in December, 1616. "I delivered
her to him," says Pett, "on float, in good order and fashion; by which
business I lost 700L., and could never get any recompense at all for
it; Sir Walter going to sea and leaving me unsatisfied."[29] Nor was
this the only loss that Pett met with this year. The King, he states,
"bestowed upon me for the supply of my present relief the making of a
knight-baronet," which authority Pett passed to a recusant, one Francis
Ratcliffe, for 700L.; but that worthy defrauded him, so that he lost
30L. by the bargain.
Next year, Pett was despatched by the Government to the New Forest in
Hampshire, "where," he says, "one Sir Giles Mompesson[30] had made a
vast waste in the spoil of his Majesty's timber, to redress which I was
employed thither, to make choice out of the number of trees he had
felled of all such timber as was useful for shipping, in which business
I spent a great deal of time, and brought myself into a great deal of
trouble." About this period, poor Pett's wife and two of his children
lay for some time at death's door. Then more enquiries took place into
the abuses of the dockyards, in which it was sought to implicate Pett.
During the next three years (1618-20) he worked under the immediate
orders of the Commissioners in the New Dock at Chatham.
In 1620, Pett's friend Sir Robert Mansell was appointed General of the
Fleet destined to chastise the Algerine pirates, who still continued
their depredations on the shipping in the Channel, and the King
thereupon commissioned Pett to build with all dispatch two pinnaces, of
120 and 80 tons respectively. "I was myself," he says, "to serve as
Captain in the voyage"--being glad, no doubt, to escape from his
tormentors. The two pinnaces were built at Ratcliffe, and were
launched on the 16th and 18th of October, 1620. On the 30th, Pett
sailed with the fleet, and after driving the pirates out of the
Channel, he returned to port after an absence of eleven months.
His enemies had taken advantage of his absence from England to get an
order for the survey of the Prince Royal, his masterpiece; the result
of which was, he says, that "they maliciously certified the ship to be
unserviceable, and not fit to continue--that what charges should be
bestowed upon her would be lost." Nevertheless, the Prince Royal was
docked, and fitted for a voyage to Spain. She was sent thither with
Charles Prince of Wales and the Duke of Buckingham, the former going in
search of a Spanish wife. Pett, the builder of the ship, was commanded
to accompany the young Prince and the Duke.
The expedition sailed on the 24th of August, 1623, and returned on the
14th of October. Pett was entertained on board the Prince Royal, and
rendered occasional services to the officers in command, though nothing
of importance occurred during the voyage.
The Prince of Wales presented him with a valuable gold chain as a
reward for his attendance. In 1625, Pett, after rendering many
important services to the Admiralty, was ordered again to prepare the
Prince Royal for sea. She was to bring over the Prince of Wales's
bride from France. While the preparations were making for the voyage,
news reached Chatham of the death of King James. Pett was afterwards
commanded to go forward with the work of preparing the Prince Royal, as
well as the whole fleet, which was intended to escort the French
Princess, or rather the Queen, to England. The expedition took place
in May, and the young Queen landed at Dover on the 12th of that month.
Pett continued to be employed in building and repairing ships, as well
as in preparing new designs, which he submitted to the King and the
Commissioners of the Navy. In 1626, he was appointed a joint
commissioner, with the Lord High Admiral, the Lord Treasurer
Marlborough, and others, "to enquire into certain alleged abuses of the
Navy, and to view the state thereof, and also the stores thereof,"
clearly showing that he was regaining his old position. He was also
engaged in determining the best mode of measuring the tonnage of
ships.[31] Four years later he was again appointed a commissioner for
making "a general survey of the whole navy at Chatham." For this and
his other services the King promoted Pett to be a principal officer of
the Navy, with a fee of 200L. per annum. His patent was sealed on the
16th of January, 1631. In the same year the King visited Woolwich to
witness the launching of the Vanguard, which Pett had built; and his
Majesty honoured the shipwright by participating in a banquet at his
lodgings.
From this period to the year 1637, Pett records nothing of particular
importance in his autobiography. He was chiefly occupied in aiding his
son Peter--who was rapidly increasing his fame as a shipwright--in
repairing and building first-class ships of war. As Pett had, on an
early occasion in his life, prepared a miniature ship for Prince Henry,
eldest son of James I., he now proceeded to prepare a similar model for
the Prince of Wales, the King's eldest son, afterwards Charles II.
This model was presented to the Prince at St. James's, "who entertained
it with great joy, being purposely made to disport himself withal." On
the next visit of his Majesty to Woolwich, he inspected the progress
made with the Leopard, a sloop-of-war built by Peter Pett. While in
the hold of the vessel, the King called Phineas to one side, and told
him of his resolution to have a great new ship built, and that Phineas
must be the builder. This great new ship was The Sovereign of the
Seas, afterwards built by Phineas and Peter Pett. Some say that the
model was prepared by the latter; but Phineas says that it was prepared
by himself, and finished by the 29th of October, 1634. As a
compensation for his services, his Majesty renewed his pension of 40L.
(which had been previously stopped), with orders for all the arrears
due upon it to be paid.
To provide the necessary timber for the new ship, Phineas and his son
went down into the North to survey the forests. They went first by
water to Whitby; from thence they proceeded on horseback to Gisborough
and baited; then to Stockton, where they found but poor entertainment,
though they lodged with the Mayor, whose house "was only a mean
thatched cottage!" Middlesborough and the great iron district of the
North had not yet come into existence.
Newcastle, already of some importance, was the principal scene of their
labours. The timber for the new ship was found in Chapley Wood and
Bracepeth Park. The gentry did all they could to facilitate the object
of Pett. On his journey homewards (July, 1635), he took Cambridge on
his way, where, says he, "I lodged at the Falcon, and visited Emmanuel
College, where I had been a scholar in my youth."
The Sovereign of the Seas was launched on the 12th of October, 1637,
having been about two years in building. Evelyn in his diary says of
the ship (19th July, 1641):--"We rode to Rochester and Chatham to see
the Soveraigne, a monstrous vessel so called, being for burthen,
defence, and ornament, the richest that ever spread cloth before the
wind. She carried 100 brass cannon, and was 1600 tons, a rare sailer,
the work of the famous Phineas Pett." Rear-Admiral Sir William Symonds
says that she was afterwards cut down, and was a safe and fast ship.[32]
The Sovereign continued for nearly sixty years to be the finest ship in
the English service. Though frequently engaged in the most injurious
occupations, she continued fit for any services which the exigencies of
the State might require. She fought all through the wars of the
Commonwealth; she was the leading ship of Admiral Blake, and was in all
the great naval engagements with France and Holland. The Dutch gave
her the name of The Golden Devil. In the last fight between the
English and French, she encountered the Wonder of the World, and so
warmly plied the French Admiral, that she forced him out of his
three-decked wooden castle, and chasing the Royal Sun, before her,
forced her to fly for shelter among the rocks, where she became a prey
to lesser vessels, and was reduced to ashes. At last, in the reign of
William III., the Sovereign became leaky and defective with age; she
was laid up at Chatham, and being set on fire by negligence or
accident, she burnt to the water's edge.
To return to the history of Phineas Pett. As years approached, he
retired from office, and "his loving son," as he always affectionately
designates Peter, succeeded him as principal shipwright, Charles I.
conferring upon him the honour of knighthood. Phineas lived for ten
years after the Sovereign of the Seas was launched. In the burial
register of the parish of Chatham it is recorded, "Phineas Pett, Esqe.
and Capt., was buried 21st August, 1647."[33]
Sir Peter Pett was almost as distinguished as his father. He was the
builder of the first frigate, The Constant Warwick. Sir William
Symonds says of this vessel:--"She was an incomparable sailer,
remarkable for her sharpness and the fineness of her lines; and many
were built like her." Pett "introduced convex lines on the immersed
part of the hull, with the studding and sprit sails; and, in short, he
appears to have fully deserved his character of being the best ship
architect of his time."[34] Sir Peter Pett's monument in Deptford Old
Church fully records his services to England's naval power.
The Petts are said to have been connected with shipbuilding in the
Thames for not less than 200 years. Fuller, in his 'Worthies of
England,' says of them--"I am credibly informed that that mystery of
shipwrights for some descents hath been preserved faithfully in
families, of whom the Petts about Chatham are of singular regard. Good
success have they with their skill, and carefully keep so precious a
pearl, lest otherwise amongst many friends some foes attain unto it."
The late Peter Bolt, member for Greenwich, took pride in being
descended from the Petts; but so far as we know, the name itself has
died out. In 1801, when Charnock's 'History of Marine Architecture'
was published, Mr. Pett, of Tovil, near Maidstone, was the sole
representative of the family.
Footnotes for Chapter I.
[1] This was not the first voyage of a steamer between England and
America. The Savannah made the passage from New York to Liverpool as
early as 1819; but steam was only used occasionally during the voyage,
In 1825, the Enterprise, with engines by Maudslay, made the voyage from
Falmouth to Calcutta in 113 days; and in 1828, the Curacoa made the
voyage between Holland and the Dutch West Indies. But in all these
cases, steam was used as an auxiliary, and not as the one essential
means of propulsion, as in the case of the Sirius and the Great
Western, which were steam voyages only.
[2] "In 1862 the steam tonnage of the country was 537,000 tons; in
1872, it was 1,537,000 tons; and in 1882, it had reached 3,835,000
tons."--Mr. Chamberlain's speech, House of Commons, 19th May, 1884.
[3] The last visit of the plague was in 1665.
[4] Roll of Edward the Third's Fleet. Cotton's Library, British Museum.
[5] Charnock's History Of Marine Architecture, ii. 89.
[6] State Papers. Henry VIII. Nos. 3496, 3616, 4633. The principal
kinds of ordnance at that time were these:--The "Apostles," so called
from the head of an Apostle which they bore; "Curtows," or "Courtaulx";
"Culverins" and "Serpents"; "Minions," and "Potguns"; "Nurembergers,"
and "Bombards" or mortars.
[7] The sum of all costs of the Harry Grace de Dieu and three small
galleys, was 7708L. 5s. 3d. (S.P.O. No. 5228, Henry VIII.)
[8] Charnock, ii. 47 (note).
[9] Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, ii. 126.
[10] The Huguenots: their Settlements, Churches, and Industries, in
England and Ireland, ch. iv.
[11] Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, ii. 156.
[12] Ibid. ii. 85.
[13] Picton's Selections from the Municipal Archives and Records of
Liverpool, p. 90. About a hundred years later, in 1757, the gross
customs receipts of Liverpool had increased to 198,946L.; whilst those
of Bristol were as much as 351,211L. In 1883, the amount of tonnage of
Liverpool, inwards and outwards, was 8,527,531 tons, and the total dock
revenue for the year was 1,273,752L.!
[14] There were not only Algerine but English pirates scouring the
seas. Keutzner, the German, who wrote in Elizabeth's reign, said, "The
English are good sailors and famous pirates (sunt boni nautae et
insignis pyratae)." Roberts, in his Social History of the Southern
Counties (p. 93), observes, "Elizabeth had employed many English as
privateers against the Spaniard. After the war, many were loth to lead
an inactive life. They had their commissions revoked, and were
proclaimed pirates. The public looked upon them as gallant fellows;
the merchants gave them underhand support; and even the authorities in
maritime towns connived at the sale of their plunder. In spite of
proclamations, during the first five years after the accession of James
I., there were continual complaints. This lawless way of life even
became popular. Many Englishmen furnished themselves with good ships
and scoured the seas, but little careful whom they might plunder." It
was found very difficult to put down piracy. According to Oliver's
History of the city of Exeter, not less than "fifteen sail of Turks"
held the English Channel, snapping up merchantmen, in the middle of the
seventeenth century! The harbours in the south-west were infested by
Moslem pirates, who attacked and plundered the ships, and carried their
crews into captivity. The loss, even to an inland port like Exeter, in
ships, money, and men, was enormous.
[15] Naval Tracts, p. 294.
[16] This poem is now very rare. It is not in the British Museum.
[17] There are three copies extant of the autobiography, all of which
are in the British Museum. In the main, they differ but slightly from
each other. Not one of them has been published in extenso. In
December, 1795, and in February, 1796, Dr. Samuel Denne communicated to
the Society of Antiquaries particulars of two of these MSS., and
subsequently published copious extracts from them in their transactions
(Archae. xii. anno 1796), in a very irregular and careless manner. It
is probable that Dr. Denne never saw the original manuscript, but only
a garbled copy of it. The above narrative has been taken from the
original, and collated with the documents in the State Paper Office.
[18] See, for instance, the Index to the Journals of Records of the
Corporation of the City of London (No. 2, p. 346, 15901694) under the
head of "Sir Walter Raleigh." There is a document dated the 15th
November, 1593, in the 35th of Elizabeth, which runs as
follows:--"Committee appointed on behalf of such of the City Companies
as have ventured in the late Fleet set forward by Sir Walter Raleigh,
Knight, and others, to join with such honourable personages as the
Queen hath appointed, to take a perfect view of all such goods, prizes,
spices, jewels, pearls, treasures, &c., lately taken in the Carrack,
and to make sale and division (Jor. 23, p. 156). Suit to be made to
the Queen and Privy Council for the buying of the goods, &c., lately
taken at sea in the Carrack; a committee appointed to take order
accordingly; the benefit or loss arising thereon to be divided and
borne between the Chamber [of the Corporation of the City] and the
Companies that adventured (157). The several Companies that adventured
at sea with Sir Waiter Raleigh to accept so much of the goods taken in
the Carrack to the value of 12,000L. according to the Queen's offer. A
committee appointed to acquaint the Lords of the Council with the
City's acceptance thereof (167). Committee for sale of the Carrack
goods appointed (174). Bonds for sale to be sealed (196)....
Committee to audit accounts of a former adventure (224 b.)."
[19] There were three sisters in all, the eldest of whom (Abigail) fell
a victim to the cruelty of Nunn, who struck her across the head with
the fire-tongs, from the effects of which she died in three days. Nunn
was tried and convicted of manslaughter. He died shortly after. Mrs.
Nunn, Phineas's mother, was already dead.
[20] It would seem, from a paper hereafter to be more particularly
referred to, that the government encouraged the owners of ships and
others to clear the seas of these pirates, agreeing to pay them for
their labours. In 1622, Pett fitted out an expedition against these
pests of navigation, but experienced some difficulty in getting his
expenses repaid.
[21] See grant S.P.O., 29th May, 1605.
[22] An engraving of this remarkable ship is given in Charnock's
History of Marine Architecture, ii. p. 199.
[23] The story of the Three, or rather Two Ravens, is as follows:--The
body of St. Vincent was originally deposited at the Cape, which still
bears his name, on the Portuguese coast; and his tomb, says the legend,
was zealously guarded by a couple of ravens. When it was determined,
in the 12th century, to transport the relics of the Saint to the
Cathedral of Lisbon, the two ravens accompanied the ship which
contained them, one at its stem and the other at its stern. The relics
were deposited in the Chapel of St. Vincent, within the Cathedral, and
there the two ravens have ever since remained. The monks continued to
support two such birds in the cloisters, and till very lately the
officials gravely informed the visitor to the Cathedral that they were
the identical ravens which accompanied the Saint's relics to their
city. The birds figure in the arms of Lisbon.
[24] The evidence taken by the Commissioners is embodied in a
voluminous report. State Paper Office, Dom. James I., vol. xli. 1608.
[25] The Earl of Northampton, Privy Seal, was Lord Warden of the Cinque
Ports; hence his moving in the matter. Pett says he was his "most
implacable enemy." It is probable that the earl was jealous of Pett,
because he had received his commission to build the great ship directly
from the sovereign, without the intervention of his lordship.
[26] This Royal investigation took place at Woolwich on the 8th May,
1609. The State Paper Office contains a report of the same date, most
probably the one presented to the King, signed by six ship-builders and
Captain Waymouth, and counter signed by Northampton and four others.
The Report is headed "The Prince Royal: imperfections found upon view
of the new work begun at Woolwich." It would occupy too much space to
give the results here.
[27] Alas! for the uncertainties of life! This noble young prince--the
hope of England and the joy of his parents, from whom such great things
were anticipated--for he was graceful, frank, brave, active, and a
lover of the sea,--was seized with a serious illness, and died in his
eighteenth year, on the 16th November, 1612.
[28] Pett says she was to be 500 tons, but when he turned her out her
burthen was rated at 700 tons.
[29] This conduct of Raleigh's was the more inexcusable, as there is in
the State Paper Office a warrant dated 16th Nov., 1617, for the payment
to Pett of 700 crowns "for building the new ship, the Destiny of
London, of 700 tons burthen." The least he could have done was to have
handed over to the builder his royal and usual reward. In the above
warrant, by the way, the title "our well-beloved subject," the ordinary
prefix to such grants, has either been left blank or erased (it is
difficult to say which), but was very significant of the slippery
footing of Raleigh at Court.
[30] Sir Giles Overreach, in the play of "A new way to pay old debts,"
by Philip Massinger. It was difficult for the poet, or any other
person, to libel such a personage as Mompesson.
[31] Pett's method is described in a paper contained in the S.P.O.,
dated 21st Oct., 1626. The Trinity Corporation adopted his method.
[32] Memoirs of the Life and Services of Rear-Admiral Sir William
Symonds, Kt., p. 94.
[33] Pett's dwelling-house at Rochester is thus described in an
anonymous history of that town (p. 337, ed. 1817):--"Beyond the
Victualling Office, on the same side of the High Street, at Rochester,
is an old mansion, now occupied by a Mr. Morson, an attorney, which
formerly belonged to the Petts, the celebrated ship-builders. The
chimney-piece in the principal room is of wood, curiously carved, the
upper part being divided into compartments by caryatydes. The central
compartment contains the family arms, viz., Or, on a fesse, gu.,
between three pellets, a lion passant gardant of the field. On the
back of the grate is a cast of Neptune, standing erect in his car, with
Triton blowing conches, &c., and the date 1650."
[34] Symonds, Memoirs of Life and Services, 94.
CHAPTER II.
FRANCIS PETTIT SMITH: PRACTICAL INTRODUCER OF THE SCREW PROPELLER.
"The spirit of Paley's maxim that 'he alone discovers who proves,' is
applicable to the history of inventions and discoveries; for certainly
he alone invents to any good purpose, who satisfies the world that the
means he may have devised have been found competent to the end
proposed."--Dr. Samuel Brown.
"Too often the real worker and discoverer remains unknown, and an
invention, beautiful but useless in one age or country, can be applied
only in a remote generation, or in a distant land. Mankind hangs
together from generation to generation; easy labour is but inherited
skill; great discoveries and inventions are worked up to by the efforts
of myriads ere the goal is reached."--H. M. Hyndman.
Though a long period elapsed between the times of Phineas Pett and
"Screw" Smith, comparatively little improvement had been effected in
the art of shipbuilding. The Sovereign of the Seas had not been
excelled by any ship of war built down to the end of last century.[1]
At a comparatively recent date, ships continued to be built of timber
and plank, and impelled by sails and oars, as they had been for
thousands of years before.
But this century has witnessed many marvellous changes. A new material
of construction has been introduced into shipbuilding, with entirely
new methods of propulsion. Old things have been displaced by new; and
the magnitude of the results has been extraordinary. The most
important changes have been in the use of iron and steel instead of
wood, and in the employment of the steam-engine in impelling ships by
the paddle or the screw.
So long as timber was used for the construction of ships, the number of
vessels built annually, especially in so small an island as Britain,
must necessarily have continued very limited. Indeed, so little had the
cultivation of oak in Great Britain been attended to, that all the
royal forests could not have supplied sufficient timber to build one
line-of-battle ship annually; while for the mercantile marine, the
world had to be ransacked for wood, often of a very inferior quality.
Take, for instance, the seventy-eight gun ship, the Hindostan, launched
a few years ago. It would have required 4200 loads of timber to build
a ship of that description, and the growth of the timber would have
occupied seventy acres of ground during eighty years.[2] It would have
needed something like 800,000 acres of land on which to grow the timber
for the ships annually built in this country for commercial purposes.
And timber ships are by no means lasting. The average durability of
ships of war employed in active service, has been calculated to be
about thirteen years, even when built of British oak.
Indeed, years ago, the building of shipping in this country was much
hindered by the want of materials.
The trade was being rapidly transferred to Canada and the United
States. Some years since, an American captain said to an Englishman,
Captain Hall, when in China, "You will soon have to come to our country
for your ships: your little island cannot grow wood enough for a large
marine." "Oh!" said the Englishman, "we can build ships of iron!"
"Iron?" replied the American in surprise, "why, iron sinks; only wood
can float!" "Well! you will find I am right." The prophecy was
correct. The Englishman in question has now a fleet of splendid iron
steamers at sea.
The use of iron in shipbuilding had small beginnings, like everything
else. The established prejudice--that iron must necessarily sink in
water--long continued to prevail against its employment. The first
iron vessel was built and launched about a hundred years since by John
Wilkinson, of Bradley Forge, in Staffordshire. In a letter of his,
dated the 14th July, 1787, the original of which we have seen, he
writes: "Yesterday week my iron boat was launched. It answers all my
expectations, and has convinced the unbelievers, who were 999 in 1000.
It will be only a nine days' wonder, and afterwards a Columbus's egg."
It was, however, more than a nine days' wonder; for wood long continued
to be thought the only material capable of floating.
Although Wilkinson's iron vessels continued to ply upon the Severn,
more than twenty years elapsed before another shipbuilder ventured to
follow his example. But in 1810, Onions and Son, of Brosely, built
several iron vessels, also for use upon the Severn. Then, in 1815, Mr.
Jervons, of Liverpool, built a small iron boat for use on the Mersey.
Six years later, in 1821, Mr. Aaron Manby designed an iron steam
vessel, which was built at the Horsley Company's Works, in
Staffordshire. She sailed from London to Havre a few years later,
under the command of Captain (afterwards Sir Charles) Napier, RN. She
was freighted with a cargo of linseed and iron castings, and went up
the Seine to Paris. It was some time, however, before iron came into
general use. Ten years later, in 1832, Maudslay and Field built four
iron vessels for the East India Company. In the course of about twenty
years, the use of iron became general, not only for ships of war, but
for merchant ships plying to all parts of the world.
When ships began to be built of iron, it was found that they could be
increased without limit, so long as coal, iron, machinery, and strong
men full of skill and industry, were procurable. The trade in
shipbuilding returned to Britain, where iron ships are now made and
exported in large numbers; the mercantile marine of this country
exceeding in amount and tonnage that of all the other countries of the
world put together. The "wooden walls"[3] of England exist no more,
for iron has superseded wood. Instead of constructing vessels from the
forest, we are now digging new navies out of the bowels of the earth,
and our "walls," instead of wood, are now of iron and steel.
The attempt to propel ships by other means than sails and oars went on
from century to century, and did not succeed until almost within our
own time. It is said that the Roman army under Claudius Codex was
transported into Sicily in boats propelled by wheels moved by oxen.
Galleys, propelled by wheels in paddles, were afterwards attempted.
The Harleian MS. contains an Italian book of sketches, attributed to
the 15th century, in which there appears a drawing of a paddle-boat,
evidently intended to be worked by men. Paddle-boats, worked by
horse-power, were also tried. Blasco Garay made a supreme effort at
Barcelona in 1543. His vessel was propelled by a paddle-wheel on each
side, worked by forty men. But nothing came of the experiment.
Many other efforts of a similar kind were made,--by Savery among
others,[4]--until we come down to Patrick Miller, of Dalswinton, who,
in 1787, invented a double-hulled boat, which he caused to be propelled
on the Firth of Forth by men working a capstan which drove the paddles
on each side. The men soon became exhausted, and on Miller mentioning
the subject to William Symington, who was then exhibiting his road
locomotive in Edinburgh, Symington at once said, "Why don't you employ
steam-power?"
There were many speculations in early times as to the application of
steam-power for propelling vessels through the water. David Ramsay in
1618, Dr. Grant in 1632, the Marquis of Worcester in 1661, were among
the first in England to publish their views upon the subject. But it
is probable that Denis Papin, the banished Hugnenot physician, for some
time Curator of the Royal Society, was the first who made a model
steam-boat. Daring his residence in England, he was elected Professor
of Mathematics in the University of Marburg. It was while at that city
that he constructed, in 1707, a small steam-engine, which he fitted in
a boat--une petite machine d'un, vaisseau a roues--and despatched it to
England for the purpose of being tried upon the Thames. The little
vessel never reached England. At Munden, the boatmen on the River
Weser, thinking that, if successful, it would destroy their occupation,
seized the boat, with its machine, and barbarously destroyed it. Papin
did not repeat his experiment, and died a few years later.
The next inventor was Jonathan Hulls, of Campden, in Gloucestershire.
He patented a steamboat in 1736, and worked the paddle-wheel placed at
the stern of the vessel by means of a Newcomen engine. He tried his
boat on the River Avon, at Evesham, but it did not succeed, and the
engine was taken on shore again. A local poet commemorated his failure
in the following lines, which were remembered long after his steamboat
experiment had been forgotten:--
"Jonathan Hull,
With his paper skull,
Tried hard to make a machine
That should go against wind and tide;
But he, like an ass,
Couldn't bring it to pass,
So at last was ashamed to be seen."
Nothing of importance was done in the direction of a steam-engine able
to drive paddles, until the invention by James Watt, in 1769, of his
double-acting engine--the first step by which steam was rendered
capable of being successfully used to impel a vessel. But Watt was
indifferent to taking up the subject of steam navigation, as well as of
steam locomotion. He refused many invitations to make steam-engines
for the propulsion of ships, preferring to confine himself to his
"regular established trade and manufacture," that of making condensing
steam-engines, which had become of great importance towards the close
of his life.
Two records exist of paddle-wheel steamboats having been early tried in
France--one by the Comte d'Auxiron and M. Perrier in 1774, the other by
the Comte de Jouffroy in 1783--but the notices of their experiments are
very vague, and rest on somewhat doubtful authority.
The idea, however, had been born, and was not allowed to die. When Mr.
Miller of Dalswinton had revived the notion of propelling vessels by
means of paddle-wheels, worked, as Savery had before worked them, by
means of a capstan placed in the centre of the vessel, and when he
complained to Symington of the fatigue caused to the men by working the
capstan, and Symington had suggested the use of steam, Mr. Miller was
impressed by the idea, and proceeded to order a steam-engine for the
purpose of trying the experiment. The boat was built at Edinburgh, and
removed to Dalswinton Lake. It was there fitted with Symington's
steam-engine, and first tried with success on the 14th of October,
1788, as has been related at length in Mr. Nasmyth's 'Autobiography.'
The experiment was repeated with even greater success in the charlotte
Dundas in 1801, which was used to tow vessels along the Forth and Clyde
Canal, and to bring ships up the Firth of Forth to the canal entrance
at Grangemouth.
The progress of steam navigation was nevertheless very slow.
Symington's experiments were not renewed. The Charlotte Dundas was
withdrawn from use, because of the supposed injury to the banks of the
Canal, caused by the swell from the wheel. The steamboat was laid up
in a creek at Bainsford, where it went to ruin, and the inventor
himself died in poverty. Among those who inspected the vessel while at
work were Fulton, the American artist, and Henry Bell, the Glasgow
engineer. The former had already occupied himself with model
steamboats, both at Paris and in London; and in 1805 he obtained from
Boulton and Watt, of Birmingham, the steam-engine required for
propelling his paddle steamboat on the Hudson. The Clermont was first
started in August, 1807, and attained a speed of nearly five miles an
hour. Five years later, Henry Bell constructed and tried his first
steamer on the Clyde.
It was not until 1815 that the first steamboat was seen on the Thames.
This was the Richmond packet, which plied between London and Richmond.
The vessel was fitted with the first marine engine Henry Maudslay ever
made. During the same year, the Margery, formerly employed on the
Firth of Forth, began plying between Gravesend and London; and the
Thames, formerly the Argyll, came round from the Clyde, encountering
rough seas, and making the voyage of 758 miles in five days and two
hours. This was thought extraordinarily rapid--though the voyage of
about 3000 miles, from Liverpool to New York, can now be made in only
about two days' more time.
In nearly all seagoing vessels, the Paddle has now almost entirely
given place to the Screw. It was long before this invention was
perfected and brought into general use. It was not the production of
one man, but of several generations of mechanical inventors. A
perfected invention does not burst forth from the brain like a poetic
thought or a fine resolve. It has to be initiated, laboured over, and
pursued in the face of disappointments, difficulties, and
discouragements.
Sometimes the idea is born in one generation, followed out in the next,
and perhaps perfected in the third. In an age of progress, one
invention merely paves the way for another. What was the wonder of
yesterday, becomes the common and unnoticed thing of to-day.
The first idea of the screw was thrown out by James Watt more than a
century ago. Matthew Boulton, of Birmingham, had proposed to move
canal boats by means of the steam-engine; and Dr. Small, his friend,
was in communication with James Watt, then residing at Glasgow, on the
subject. In a letter from Watt to Small, dated the 30th September,
1770, the former, after speaking of the condenser, and saying that it
cannot be dispensed with, proceeds: "Have you ever considered a spiral
oar for that purpose [propulsion of canal boats], or are you for two
wheels?" Watt added a pen-and-ink drawing of his spiral oar, greatly
resembling the form of screw afterwards patented. Nothing, however,
was actually done, and the idea slept.
It was revived again in 1785, by Joseph Bramah, a wonderful projector
and inventor.[5] He took out a patent, which included a rotatory
steam-engine, and a mode of propelling vessels by means either of a
paddle-wheel or a "screw propeller." This propeller was "similar to
the fly of a smoke-jack"; but there is no account of Bramah having
practically tried this method of propulsion.
Austria, also, claims the honour of the invention of the screw steamer.
At Trieste and Vienna are statues erected to Joseph Ressel, on whose
behalf his countrymen lay claim to the invention; and patents for some
sort of a screw date back as far as 1794.
Patents were also taken out in England and America--by W. Lyttleton in
1794; by E. Shorter in 1799; by J. C. Stevens, of New Jersey, in 1804;
by Henry James in 1811--but nothing practical was accomplished.
Richard Trevethick, the anticipator of many things, also took out a
patent in 1815, and in it he describes the screw propeller with
considerable minuteness. Millington, Whytock, Perkins, Marestier, and
Brown followed, with no better results.
The late Dr. Birkbeck, in a letter addressed to the 'Mechanics'
Register,' in the year 1824, claimed that John Swan, of 82, Mansfield
Street, Kingsland Road, London, was the practical inventor of the screw
propeller. John Swan was a native of Coldingham, Berwickshire. He had
removed to London, and entered the employment of Messrs. Gordon, of
Deptford. Swan fitted up a boat with his propeller, and tried it on a
sheet of water in the grounds of Charles Gordon, Esq., of Dulwich Hill.
"The velocity and steadiness of the motion," said Dr. Birkbeck in his
letter, "so far exceeded that of the same model when impelled by
paddle-wheels driven by the same spring, that I could not doubt its
superiority; and the stillness of the water was such as to give the
vessel the appearance of being moved by some magical power."
Then comes another claimant--Mr. Robert Wilson, then of Dunbar (not far
from Coldingham), but afterwards of the Bridgewater Foundry,
Patricroft. In his pamphlet, published a few years ago, he states that
he had long considered the subject, and in 1827 he made a small model,
fitted with "revolving skulls," which he tried on a sheet of water in
the presence of the Hon. Capt. Anthony Maitland, son of the Earl of
Lauderdale. The experiment was successful--so successful, that when
the "stern paddles" were in 1828 used at Leith in a boat twenty-five
feet long, with two men to work the machinery, the boat was propelled
at an average speed of about ten miles an hour; and the Society of Arts
afterwards, in October, 1882, awarded Mr. Wilson their silver medal for
the "description, drawing, and models of stern paddles for propelling
steamboats, invented by him." The subject was, in 1833, brought by Sir
John Sinclair under the consideration of the Board of Admiralty; but
the report of the officials (Oliver Lang, Abethell, Lloyd, and
Kingston) was to the effect that "the plan proposed (independent of
practical difficulties) is objectionable, as it involves a greater loss
of power than the common mode of applying the wheels to the side." And
here ended the experiment, so far as Mr. Wilson's "stern paddles" were
concerned.
It will be observed, from what has been said, that the idea of a screw
propeller is a very old one. Watt, Bramah, Trevethick, and many more,
had given descriptions of the screw. Trevethick schemed a number of
its forms and applications, which have been the subject of many
subsequent patents. It has been so with many inventions. It is not
the man who gives the first idea of a machine who is entitled to the
merit of its introduction, or the man who repeats the idea, and
re-repeats it, but the man who is so deeply impressed with the
importance of the discovery, that he insists upon its adoption, will
take no denial, and at the risk of fame and fortune, pushes through all
opposition, and is determined that what he thinks he has discovered
shall not perish for want of a fair trial. And that this was the case
with the practical introducer of the screw propeller will be obvious
from the following statement.
Francis Pettit Smith was born at Hythe, in the county of Kent, in 1808.
His father was postmaster of the town, and a person of much zeal and
integrity. The boy was sent to school at Ashford, and there received a
fair amount of education, under the Rev. Alexander Power. Young Smith
displayed no special characteristic except a passion for constructing
models of boats. When he reached manhood, he adopted the business of a
grazing farmer on Romney Marsh. He afterwards removed to Hendon, north
of London, where he had plenty of water on which to try his model
boats. The reservoir of the Old Welsh Harp was close at hand--a place
famous for its water-birds and wild fowl.
Smith made many models of boats, his experiments extending over many
years. In 1834, he constructed a boat propelled by a wooden screw
driven by a spring, the performance of which was thought extraordinary.
Where he had got his original idea is not known. It was floating about
in many minds, and was no special secret. Smith, however, arrived at
the conclusion that his method of propelling steam vessels by means of
a screw was much superior to paddles--at that time exclusively
employed. In the following year, 1835, he constructed a superior
model, with which he performed a number of experiments at Hendon. In
May 1836, he took out a patent for propelling vessels by means of a
screw revolving beneath the water at the stern. He then openly
exhibited his invention at the Adelaide Gallery in London. Sir John
Barrow, Secretary to the Admiralty, inspected the model, and was much
impressed by its action. During the time it was publicly exhibited, an
offer was made to purchase the invention for the Pacha of Egypt; but
the offer was declined.
At this stage of his operations, Smith was joined by Mr. Wright,
banker, and Mr. C. A. Caldwell, who had the penetration to perceive
that the invention was one of much promise, and were desirous of
helping its introduction to general use. They furnished Smith with the
means of constructing a more complete model. In the autumn of 1836, a
small steam vessel of 10 tons burthen and six horse-power was built,
further to test the advantages of the invention. This boat was fitted
with a wooden screw of two whole turns. On the 1st of November the
vessel was exhibited to the public on the Paddington Canal, as well as
on the Thames, where she continued to ply until the month of September
1837.
During the trips upon the Thames, a happy accident occurred, which
first suggested the advantage of reducing the length of the screw. The
propeller having struck upon some obstacle in the water, about one-half
of the length of the screw was broken off, and it was found that; the
vessel immediately shot ahead and attained a much greater speed than
before. In consequence of this discovery, a new screw of a single turn
was fitted to her, after which she was found to work much better.
Having satisfied himself as to the eligibility of the propeller in
smooth water, Mr. Smith then resolved to take his little vessel to the
open sea, and breast the winds and the waves. Accordingly, one Saturday
in the month of September 1837, he proceeded in his miniature boat,
down the river, from Blackwall to Gravesend. There he took a pilot on
board, and went on to Ramsgate. He passed through the Downs, and
reached Dover in safety. A trial of the vessel's performance was made
there in the presence of Mr. Wright, the banker, and Mr. Peake, the
civil engineer. From Dover the vessel went on to Folkestone and Hythe,
encountering severe weather. Nevertheless, the boat behaved admirably,
and attained a speed of over seven miles an hour.
Though the weather had become stormy and boisterous, the little vessel
nevertheless set out on her return voyage to London. Crowds of people
assembled to witness her departure, and many nautical men watched her
progress with solicitude as she steamed through the waves under the
steep cliffs of the South Foreland. The courage of the undertaking, and
the unexpected good performance of the little vessel, rendered her an
object of great interest and excitement as she "screwed" her way along
the coast.
The tiny vessel reached her destination in safety. Surely the
difficulty of a testing trial, although with a model screw, had at
length been overcome. But no! The paddle still possessed the
ascendency; and a thousand interests--invested capital, use and wont,
and conservative instincts--all stood in the way.
Some years before--indeed, about the time that Smith took out his
patent--Captain Ericsson, the Swede, invented a screw propeller. Smith
took out his patent in May, 1836; and Ericsson in the following July.
Ericsson was a born inventor. While a boy in Sweden, he made saw mills
and pumping engines, with tools invented by himself. He learnt to
draw, and his mechanical career began. When only twelve years old, he
was appointed a cadet in the Swedish corps of mechanical engineers, and
in the following year he was put in charge of a section of the Gotha
Ship Canal, then under construction. Arrived at manhood, Ericsson went
over to England, the great centre of mechanical industry. He was then
twenty-three years old. He entered into partnership with John
Braithwaite, and with him constructed the Novelty, which took part in
the locomotive competition at Rainhill on the 6th October, 1829. The
prize was awarded to Stephenson's Rocket on the 14th; but it was
acknowledged by The Times of the day that the Novelty was Stephenson's
sharpest competitor.
Ericsson had a wonderfully inventive brain, a determined purpose, and a
great capacity for work. When a want was felt, he was immediately
ready with an invention. The records of the Patent Office show his
incessant activity. He invented pumping engines, steam engines, fire
engines, and caloric engines. His first patent for a "reciprocating
propeller" was taken out in October 1834. To exhibit its action, he
had a small boat constructed of only about two feet long. It was
propelled by means of a screw; and was shown at work in a circular bath
in London. It performed its voyage round the basin at the rate of
about three miles an hour. His patent for a "spiral propeller," was
taken out in July 1836. This was the invention, to exhibit which he
had a vessel constructed, of about 40 feet long, with two propellers,
each of 5 feet 3 inches diameter.
This boat, the Francis B. Ogden, proved extremely successful. She moved
at a speed of about ten miles an hour. She was able to tow vessels of
140 tons burthen at the rate of seven miles an hour. Perceiving the
peculiar and admirable fitness of the screw-propeller for ships of war,
Ericsson invited the Lords of the Admiralty to take an excursion in tow
of his experimental boat. "My Lords" consented; and the Admiralty
barge contained on this occasion, Sir Charles Adam, senior Lord, Sir
William Symonds, surveyor, Sir Edward Parry, of Polar fame, Captain
Beaufort, hydrographer, and other men of celebrity. This distinguished
company embarked at Somerset House, and the little steamer, with her
precious charge, proceeded down the river to Limehouse at the rate of
about ten miles an hour. After visiting the steam-engine manufactory
of Messrs. Seawood, where their Lordships' favourite apparatus, the
Morgan paddle-wheel, was in course of construction, they re-embarked,
and returned in safety to Somerset House.
The experiment was perfectly successful, and yet the result was
disappointment. A few days later, a letter from Captain Beaufort
informed Mr. Ericsson that their Lordships had certainly been "very
much disappointed with the result of the experiment." The reason for
the disappointment was altogether inexplicable to the inventor. It
afterwards appeared, however, that Sir William Symonds, then Surveyor
to the Navy, had expressed the opinion that "even if the propeller had
the power of propelling a vessel, it would be found altogether useless
in practice, because the power being applied at the stern, it would be
absolutely impossible to make the vessel steer!" It will be remembered
that Francis Pettit Smith's screw vessel went to sea in the course of
the same year; and not only faced the waves, but was made to steer in a
perfectly successful manner.
Although the Lords of the Admiralty would not further encourage the
screw propeller of Ericsson, an officer of the United States Navy,
Capt. R. F. Stockton, was so satisfied of its success, that after
making a single trip in the experimental steamboat from London Bridge
to Greenwich, he ordered the inventor to build for him forthwith two
iron boats for the United States, with steam machinery and a propeller
on the same plan. One of these vessels--the Robert F.
Stockton--seventy feet in length, was constructed by Laird and Co., of
Birkenhead, in 1838, and left England for America in April 1839. Capt.
Stockton so fully persuaded Ericsson of his probable success in
America, that the inventor at once abandoned his professional
engagements in England, and set out for the United States. It is
unnecessary to mention the further important works of this great
engineer.
We may, however, briefly mention that in 1844, Ericsson constructed for
the United States Government the Princeton screw steamer--though he was
never paid for his time, labour, and expenditure.[6] Undeterred by
their ingratitude, Ericsson nevertheless constructed for the same
government, when in the throes of civil war, the famous Monitor, the
iron-clad cupola vessel, and was similarly rewarded! He afterwards
invented the torpedo ship--the Destroyer--the use of which has
fortunately not yet been required in sea warfare. Ericsson still
lives--constantly planning and scheming--in his house in Beach Street,
New York. He is now over eighty years old having been born in 1803.
He is strong and healthy. How has he preserved his vigorous
constitution? The editor of Scribner gives the answer: "The hall
windows of his house are open, winter and summer, and none but open
grate-fires are allowed. Insomnia never troubles him, for he falls
asleep as soon as his head touches the pillow. His appetite and
digestion are always good, and he has not lost a meal in ten years.
What an example to the men who imagine it is hard work that is killing
them in this career of unremitting industry!"
To return to "Screw" Smith, after the successful trial of his little
vessel at sea in the autumn of 1837. He had many difficulties yet to
contend with. There was, first, the difficulty of a new invention, and
the fact that the paddle-boat had established itself in public
estimation. The engineering and shipbuilding world were dead against
him. They regarded the project of propelling a vessel by means of a
screw as visionary and preposterous. There was also the official
unwillingness to undertake anything novel, untried, and contrary to
routine. There was the usual shaking of the head and the shrugging of
the shoulders, as if the inventor were either a mere dreamer or a
projector eager to lay his hands upon the public purse. The surveyor
of the navy was opposed to the plan, because of the impossibility of
making a vessel steer which was impelled from the stern. "Screw" Smith
bided his time; he continued undaunted, and was determined to succeed.
He laboured steadily onward, maintaining his own faith unshaken, and
upholding the faith of the gentlemen who had become associated with him
in the prosecution of the invention.
At the beginning of 1838 the Lords of the Admiralty requested Mr. Smith
to allow his vessel to be tried under their inspection. Two trials were
accordingly made, and they gave so much satisfaction that the adoption
of the propeller for naval purposes was considered as a not improbable
contingency. Before deciding finally upon its adoption, the Lords of
the Admiralty were anxious to see an experiment made with a vessel of
not less than 200 tons. Mr. Smith had not the means of accomplishing
this by himself, but with the improved prospects of the invention,
capitalists now came to his aid. One of the most effective and
energetic of these was Mr. Henry Currie, banker; and, with the
assistance of others, the "Ship Propeller Company" was formed, and
proceeded to erect the test ship proposed by the Admiralty.
The result was the Archimedes, a wooden vessel of 237 tons burthen.
She was designed by Mr. Pasco, laid down by Mr. Wimshurst in the spring
of 1838, was launched on the 18th of October following, and made her
first trip in May 1839. She was fitted with a screw of one turn placed
in the dead wood, and propelled by a pair of engines of 80-horse power.
The vessel was built under the persuasion that her performance would be
considered satisfactory if a speed was attained of four or five knots
an hour, where as her actual speed was nine and a half knots. The
Lords of the Admiralty were invited to inspect the ship. At the second
trial Sir Edward Parry, Sir William Symonds, Captain Basil Hall, and
other distinguished persons were present.
The results were again satisfactory. The success of the Archimedes
astonished the engineering world. Even the Surveyor of the Royal Navy
found that the vessel could steer! The Lords of the Admiralty could no
longer shut their eyes. But the invention could not at once be
adopted. It must be tested by the best judges. The vessel was sent to
Dover to be tried with the best packets between Dover and Calais. Mr.
Lloyd, the chief engineer of the Navy, conducted the investigation, and
reported most favourably as to the manner of her performance. Yet
several years elapsed before the screw was introduced into the service.
In 1840 the Archimedes was placed at the disposal of Captain Chappell,
of the Royal Navy, who, accompanied by Mr. Smith, visited every
principal port in Great Britain. She was thus seen by shipowners,
marine engineers, and shipbuilders in every part of the kingdom. They
regarded her with wonder and admiration; yet the new mode of navigation
was not speedily adopted. The paddle-wheel still held its own. The
sentiment, if not the plant and capital, of the engineering world, were
against the introduction of the screw. After the vessel had returned
from her circumnavigation of Great Britain, she was sent to Oporto, and
performed the voyage in sixty-eight and a half hours, then held to be
the quickest voyage on record. She was then sent to the Texel at the
request of the Dutch Government. She went through the North Holland
Canal, visited Amsterdam, Antwerp, and other ports; and everywhere left
the impression that the screw was an efficient and reliable power in
the propulsion of vessels at sea.
Shipbuilders, however, continued to "fight shy" of the screw. The late
Isambard Kingdon Brunel is entitled to the credit of having first
directed the attention of shipbuilders to this important invention. He
was himself a man of original views, free from bias, and always ready
to strike out a fresh path in engineering works. He was building a
large new iron steamer at Bristol, the Great Britain, for passenger
traffic between England and America. He had intended to construct her
as a paddle steamer; but hearing of the success of the Archimedes, he
inspected the vessel, and was so satisfied with the performance of the
screw that he recommended his directors to adopt this method for
propelling the Great Britain. His advice was adopted, and the vessel
was altered so as to adapt her for the reception of the screw. The
vessel was found perfectly successful, and on her first voyage to
London she attained the speed of ten knots an hour, though the wind and
balance of tides were against her. A few other merchant ships were
built and fitted with the screw; the Princess Royal at Newcastle in
1840, the Margaret and Senator at Hull, and the Great Northern at
Londonderry, in 1841.
The Lords of the Admiralty made slow progress in adapting the screw for
the Royal Navy. Sir William Symonds, the surveyor and principal
designer of Her Majesty's ships, was opposed to all new projects. He
hated steam power, and was utterly opposed to iron ships. He speaks of
them in his journal as "monstrous."[7] So long as he remained in
office everything was done in a perfunctory way. A small vessel named
the Bee was built at Chatham in 1841, and fitted with both paddles and
the screw for the purposes of experiment. In the same year the
Rattier, the first screw vessel built for the navy, was laid down at
Sheerness. Although of only 888 tons burthen, she was not launched
until the spring of 1843. She was then fitted with the same kind of
screw as the Archimedes, that is, a double-headed screw of half a
convolution. Experiments went on for about three years, so as to
determine the best proportions of the screw, and the proportions then
ascertained have since been the principal guides of engineering
practice.
The Rattler was at length tried in a water tournament with the
paddle-steamer Alecto, and signally defeated her. Francis Pettit
Smith, like Gulliver, may be said to have dragged the whole British
fleet after him. Were the paddle our only means of propulsion, our
whole naval force would be reduced to a nullity. Hostile gunners would
wing a paddle-steamer as effectually as a sportsman wings a bird, and
all the plating in the world would render such a ship a mere helpless
log on the water.
The Admiralty could no longer defer the use of this important
invention. Like all good things, it made its way slowly and by
degrees. The royal naval authorities, who in 1833 backed the side
paddles, have since adopted the screw in most of the ships-of-war. In
all long sea-going voyages, also, the screw is now the favourite mode
of propulsion. Screw ships of prodigious size are now built and
launched in all the ship-building ports of Britain, and are sent out to
navigate in every part of the world.
The introduction of iron as the material for shipbuilding has immensely
advanced the interests of steam navigation, as it enables the builders
to construct vessels of great size with the finest lines, so as to
attain the highest rates of speed.
One might have supposed that Francis Pettit Smith would derive some
substantial benefit from his invention, or at least that the Ship
Propeller Company would distribute large dividends among their
proprietors. Nothing of the kind. Smith spent his money, his labour,
and his ingenuity in conferring a great public benefit without
receiving any adequate reward; and the company, instead of distributing
dividends, lost about 50,000L. in introducing this great invention;
after which, in 1856, the patent-right expired. Three hundred and
twenty-seven ships and vessels of all classes in the Royal Navy had
then been fitted with the screw propeller, and a much larger number in
the merchant service; but since that time the number of screw
propellers constructed is to be counted by thousands.
In his comparatively impoverished condition it was found necessary to
do something for the inventor. The Civil Engineers, with Robert
Stephenson, M.P., in the chair, entertained him at a dinner and
presented him with a handsome salver and claret jug. And that he might
have something to put upon his salver and into his claret jug, a number
of his friends and admirers subscribed over 2000L. as a testimonial.
The Government appointed him Curator of the Patent Museum at South
Kensington; the Queen granted him a pension on the Civil List for 200L.
a year; he was raised to the honour of knighthood in 1871, and three
years later he died.
Francis Pettit Smith was not a great inventor. He had, like many
others, invented a screw propeller. But, while those others had given
up the idea of prosecuting it to its completion, Smith stuck to his
invention with determined tenacity, and never let it go until he had
secured for it a complete triumph. As Mr. Stephenson observed at the
engineer's meeting: "Mr. Smith had worked from a platform which might
have been raised by others, as Watt had done, and as other great men
had done; but he had made a stride in advance which was almost
tantamount to a new invention. It was impossible to overrate the
advantages which this and other countries had derived from his untiring
and devoted patience in prosecuting the invention to a successful
issue." Baron Charles Dupin compared the farmer Smith with the barber
Arkwright: "He had the same perseverance and the same indomitable
courage. These two moral qualities enabled him to triumph over every
obstacle." This was the merit of "Screw" Smith--that he was determined
to realize what his predecessors had dreamt of achieving; and he
eventually accomplished his great purpose.
Footnotes for Chapter II.
[1] In the Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects for
1860, it was pointed out that the general dimensions and form of bottom
of this ship were very similar to the most famous line-of-battle ships
built down to the end of last century, some of which were then in
existence.
[2] According to the calculation of Mr. Chatfield, of Her Majesty's
dockyard at Plymouth, in a paper read before the British Association in
1841 on shipbuilding.
[3] The phrase "wooden walls" is derived from the Greek. When the city
of Athens was once in danger of being attacked and destroyed, the
oracle of Delphi was consulted. The inhabitants were told that there
was no safety for them but in their "wooden walls,"--that is their
shipping. As they had then a powerful fleet, the oracle gave them
rational advice, which had the effect of saving the Athenian people.
[4] An account of these is given by Bennet Woodcraft in his Sketch of
the Origin and Progress of Steam Navigation, London, 1848.
[5] See Industrial Biography, pp. 183-197,
[6] The story is told in Scribner's Monthly Illustrated Magazine, for
April 1879. Ericsson's modest bill was only $15,000 for two years'
labour. He was put off from year to year, and at length the Government
refused to pay the amount. "The American Government," says the editor
of Scribner, "will not appropriate the money to pay it, and that is
all. It is said to be the nature of republics to be ungrateful; but
must they also be dishonest?"
[7] Memoirs of the Life and Services of Rear-Admiral Sir William
Symonds, Kt., p. 332.
CHAPTER III.[1]
JOHN HARRISON: INVENTOR OF THE MARINE CHRONOMETER.
"No man knows who invented the mariner's compass, or who first hollowed
out a canoe from a log. The power to observe accurately the sun, moon,
and planets, so as to fix a vessel's actual position when far out of
sight of land, enabling long voyages to be safely made; the marvellous
improvements in ship-building, which shortened passages by sailing
vessels, and vastly reduced freights even before steam gave an
independent force to the carrier--each and all were done by small
advances, which together contributed to the general movement of
mankind.... Each owes all to the others. The forgotten inventors live
for ever in the usefulness of the work they have done and the progress
they have striven for."--H. M. Hyndman.
One of the most extraordinary things connected with Applied Science is
the method by which the Navigator is enabled to find the exact spot of
sea on which his ship rides. There may be nothing but water and sky
within his view; he may be in the midst of the ocean, or gradually
nearing the land; the curvature of the globe baffles the search of his
telescope; but if he have a correct chronometer, and can make an
astronomical observation, he may readily ascertain his longitude, and
know his approximate position--how far he is from home, as well as from
his intended destination. He is even enabled, at some special place,
to send down his grappling-irons into the sea, and pick up an
electrical cable for examination and repair.
This is the result of a knowledge of Practical Astronomy. "Place an
astronomer," says Mr. Newcomb, "on board a ship; blindfold him; carry
him by any route to any ocean on the globe, whether under the tropics
or in one of the frigid zones; land him on the wildest rock that can be
found; remove his bandage, and give him a chronometer regulated to
Greenwich or Washington time, a transit instrument with the proper
appliances, and the necessary books and tables, and in a single clear
night he can tell his position within a hundred yards by observations
of the stars. This, from a utilitarian point of view, is one of the
most important operations of Practical Astronomy."[2]
The Marine Chronometer was the outcome of the crying want of the
sixteenth century for an instrument that should assist the navigator to
find his longitude on the pathless ocean. Spain was then the principal
naval power; she was the most potent monarchy in Europe, and held half
America under her sway. Philip III. offered 100,000 crowns for any
discovery by means of which the longitude might be determined by a
better method than by the log, which was found very defective. Holland
next became a great naval power, and followed the example of Spain in
offering 30,000 florins for a similar discovery. But though some
efforts were made, nothing practical was done, principally through the
defective state of astronomical instruments. England succeeded Spain
and Holland as a naval power; and when Charles II. established the
Greenwich Observatory, it was made a special point that Flamsteed, the
Astronomer-Royal, should direct his best energies to the perfecting of
a method for finding the longitude by astronomical observations. But
though Flamsteed, together with Halley and Newton, made some progress,
they were prevented from obtaining ultimate success by the want of
efficient chronometers and the defective nature of astronomical
instruments.
Nothing was done until the reign of Queen Anne, when a petition was
presented to the Legislature on the 25th of May, 1714, by "several
captains of Her Majesty's ships, merchants in London, and commanders of
merchantmen, in behalf of themselves, and of all others concerned in
the navigation of Great Britain," setting forth the importance of the
accurate discovery of the longitude, and the inconvenience and danger
to which ships were subjected from the want of some suitable method of
discovering it. The petition was referred to a committee, which took
evidence on the subject. It appears that Sir Isaac Newton, with his
extraordinary sagacity, hit the mark in his report. "One is," he said,
"by a watch to keep time exactly; but, by reason of the motion of a
ship, and the variation of heat and cold, wet and dry, and the
difference of gravity in different latitudes, such a watch hath not yet
been made."
An Act was however passed in the Session of 1714, offering a very large
public reward to inventors: 10,000L. to any one who should discover a
method of determining the longitude to one degree of a great circle, or
60 geographical miles; 15,000L. if it determined the same to two-thirds
of that distance, or 40 geographical miles; and 20,000L. if it
determined the same to one-half of the same distance, or 30
geographical miles. Commissioners were appointed by the same Act, who
were instructed that "one moiety or half part of such reward shall be
due and paid when the said commissioners, or the major part of them, do
agree that any such method extends to the security of ships within 80
geographical miles of the shore, which are places of the greatest
danger; and the other moiety or half part when a ship, by the
appointment of the said commissioners, or the major part of them, shall
actually sail over the ocean, from Great Britain to any such port in
the West Indies as those commissioners, or the major part of them,
shall choose or nominate for the experiment, without losing the
longitude beyond the limits before mentioned."
The terms of this offer indicate how great must have been the risk and
inconvenience which it was desired to remedy. Indeed, it is almost
inconceivable that a reward so great could be held out for a method
which would merely afford security within eighty geographical miles!
This splendid reward for a method of discovering the longitude was
offered to the world--to inventors and scientific men of all
countries--without restriction of race, or nation, or language. As
might naturally be expected, the prospect of obtaining it stimulated
many ingenious men to make suggestions and contrive experiments; but
for many years the successful construction of a marine time-keeper
seemed almost hopeless. At length, to the surprise of every one, the
prize was won by a village carpenter--a person of no school, or
university, or college whatever.
Even so distinguished an artist and philosopher as Sir Christopher Wren
was engaged, as late in his life as the year 1720, in attempting to
solve this important problem. As has been observed, in the memoir of
him contained in the 'Biographia Britannica,'[3] "This noble invention,
like some others of the most useful ones to human life, seems to be
reserved for the peculiar glory of an ordinary mechanic, who, by
indefatigable industry, under the guidance of no ordinary sagacity,
hath seemingly at last surmounted all difficulties, and brought it to a
most unexpected degree of perfection." Where learning and science
failed, natural genius seems to have triumphed.
The truth is, that the great mechanic, like the great poet, is born,
not made; and John Harrison, the winner of the famous prize, was a born
mechanic. He did not, however, accomplish his object without the
exercise of the greatest skill, patience, and perseverance. His
efforts were long, laborious, and sometimes apparently hopeless.
Indeed, his life, so far as we can ascertain the facts, affords one of
the finest examples of difficulties encountered and triumphantly
overcome, and of undaunted perseverance eventually crowned by success,
which is to be found in the whole range of biography.
No complete narrative of Harrison's career was ever written. Only a
short notice of him appears in the 'Biographia Britannica,' published
in 1766, during his lifetime'--the facts of which were obtained from
himself. A few notices of him appear in the 'Annual Register,' also
published during his lifetime. The final notice appeared in the volume
published in 1777, the year after his death. No Life of him has since
appeared. Had he been a destructive hero, and fought battles by land
or sea, we should have had biographies of him without end. But he
pursued a more peaceful and industrious course. His discovery
conferred an incalculable advantage on navigation, and enabled
innumerable lives to be saved at sea; it also added to the domains of
science by its more exact measurement of time. But his memory has been
suffered to pass silently away, without any record being left for the
benefit and advantage of those who have succeeded him. The following
memoir includes nearly all that is known of the life and labours of
John Harrison.
He was born at Foulby, in the parish of Wragby, near Pontefract,
Yorkshire, in March, 1693. His father, Henry Harrison, was carpenter
and joiner to Sir Rowland Winn, owner of the Nostell Priory estate.
The present house was built by the baronet on the site of the ancient
priory. Henry Harrison was a sort of retainer of the family, and long
continued in their Service.
Little is known of the boy's education. It was certainly of a very
inferior description. Like George Stephenson, Harrison always had a
great difficulty in making himself understood, either by speech or
writing. Indeed, every board-school boy now receives a better
education than John Harrison did a hundred and eighty years ago. But
education does not altogether come by reading and writing. The boy was
possessed of vigorous natural abilities. He was especially attracted
by every machine that moved upon wheels. The boy was 'father to the
man.' When six years old, and lying sick of small-pox, a going watch
was placed upon his pillow, which afforded him infinite delight.
When seven years old he was taken by his father to Barrow, near
Barton-on-Humber, where Sir Rowland Winn had another residence and
estate. Henry Harrison was still acting as the baronet's carpenter and
joiner. In course of time young Harrison joined his father in the
workshop, and proved of great use to him. His opportunities for
acquiring knowledge were still very few, but he applied his powers of
observation and his workmanship upon the things which were nearest him.
He worked in wood, and to wood he first turned his attention.
He was still fond of machines going upon wheels. He had enjoyed the
sight of the big watch going upon brass wheels when he was a boy; but,
now that he was a workman in wood, he proposed to make an eight-day
clock, with wheels of this material. He made the clock in 1713, when
he was twenty years old,[4] so that he must have made diligent use of
his opportunities. He had of course difficulties to encounter, and
nothing can be accomplished without them; for it is difficulties that
train the habits of application and perseverance. But he succeeded in
making an effective clock, which counted the time with regularity.
This clock is still in existence. It is to be seen at the Museum of
Patents, South Kensington; and when we visited it a few months ago it
was going, and still marking the moments as they passed. It is
contained in a case about six feet high, with a glass front, showing a
pendulum and two weights. Over the clock is the following inscription:
"This clock was made at Barrow, Lincolnshire, in the year 1715, by John
Harrison, celebrated as the inventor of a nautical timepiece, or
chronometer, which gained the reward of 20,000L., offered by the Board
of Longitude, A.D. 1767.
"This clock strikes the hour, indicates the day of the month, and with
one exception (the escapement) the wheels are entirely made of wood."
This, however, was only a beginning. Harrison proceeded to make better
clocks; and then he found it necessary to introduce metal, which was
more lasting. He made pivots of brass, which moved more conveniently
in sockets of wood with the use of oil. He also caused the teeth of
his wheels to run against cylindrical rollers of wood, fixed by brass
pins, at a proper distance from the axis of the pinions; and thus to a
considerable extent removed the inconveniences of friction.
In the meantime Harrison eagerly improved every incident from which he
might derive further information. There was a clergyman who came every
Sunday to the village to officiate in the neighbourhood; and having
heard of the sedulous application of the young carpenter, he lent him a
manuscript copy of Professor Saunderson's discourses. That blind
professor had prepared several lectures on natural philosophy for the
use of his students, though they were not intended for publication.
Young Harrison now proceeded to copy them out, together with the
diagrams. Sometimes, indeed, he spent the greater part of the night in
writing or drawing.
As part of his business, he undertook to survey land, and to repair
clocks and watches, besides carrying on his trade of a carpenter. He
soon obtained a considerable knowledge of what had been done in clocks
and watches, and was able to do not only what the best professional
workers had done, but to strike out entirely new lights in the clock
and watch-making business. He found out a method of diminishing
friction by adding a joint to the pallets of the pendulum, whereby they
were made to work in the nature of rollers of a large radius, without
any sliding, as usual, upon the teeth of the wheel. He constructed a
clock on the recoiling principle, which went perfectly, and never lost
a minute within fourteen years. Sir Edmund Denison Beckett says that
he invented this method in order to save himself the trouble of going
so frequently to oil the escapement of a turret clock, of which he had
charge; though there were other influences at work besides this.
But his most important invention, at this early period of his life, was
his compensation pendulum. Every one knows that metals expand with
heat and contract by cold. The pendulum of the clock therefore
expanded in summer and contracted in winter, thereby interfering with
the regular going of the clock. Huygens had by his cylindrical checks
removed the great irregularity arising from the unequal lengths of the
oscillations; but the pendulum was affected by the tossing of a ship at
sea, and was also subject to a variation in weight, depending on the
parallel of latitude. Graham, the well-known clock-maker, invented the
mercurial compensation pendulum, consisting of a glass or iron jar
filled with quicksilver and fixed to the end of the pendulum rod. When
the rod was lengthened by heat, the quicksilver and the jar which
contained it were simultaneously expanded and elevated, and the centre
of oscillation was thus continued at the same distance from the point
of suspension.
But the difficulty, to a certain extent, remained unconquered until
Harrison took the matter in hand. He observed that all rods of metal
do not alter their lengths equally by heat, or, on the contrary, become
shorter by cold, but some more sensibly than others. After innumerable
experiments Harrison at length composed a frame somewhat resembling a
gridiron, in which the alternate bars were of steel and of brass, and
so arranged that those which expanded the most were counteracted by
those which expanded the least. By this means the pendulum contained
the power of equalising its own action, and the centre of oscillation
continued at the same absolute distance from the point of suspension
through all the variations of heat and cold during the year.[5]
Thus by the year 1726, when he was only thirty-three years old,
Harrison had furnished himself with two compensation clocks, in which
all the irregularities to which these machines were subject, were
either removed or so happily balanced, one metal against the other,
that the two clocks kept time together in different parts of his house,
without the variation of more than a single second in the month. One
of them, indeed, which he kept by him for his own use, and constantly
compared with a fixed star, did not vary so much as one whole minute
during the ten years that he continued in the country after finishing
the machine.[6]
Living, as he did, not far from the sea, Harrison next endeavoured to
arrange his timekeeper for purposes of navigation.
He tried his clock in a vessel belonging to Barton-on-Humber; but his
compensating pendulum could there be of comparatively little use; for
it was liable to be tossed hither or thither by the sudden motions of
the ship. He found it necessary, therefore, to mount a chronometer, or
portable timekeeper, which might be taken from place to place, and
subjected to the violent and irregular motion of a ship at sea, without
affecting its rate of going. It was evident to him that the first
mover must be changed from a weight and pendulum to a spring wound up
and a compensating balance.
He now applied his genius in this direction. After pondering over the
subject, he proceeded to London in 1728, and exhibited his drawings to
Dr. Halley, then Astronomer-Royal. The Doctor referred him to Mr.
George Graham, the distinguished horologer, inventor of the dead-beat
escapement and the mercurial pendulum. After examining the drawings and
holding some converse with Harrison, Graham perceived him to be a man
of uncommon merit, and gave him every encouragement. He recommended
him, however, to make his machine before again applying to the Board of
Longitude.
Harrison returned home to Barrow to complete his task, and many years
elapsed before he again appeared in London to present his first
chronometer.
The remarkable success which Harrison had achieved in his compensating
pendulum could not but urge him on to further experiments. He was no
doubt to a certain extent influenced by the reward of 20,000L. which
the English Government had offered for an instrument that should enable
the longitude to be more accurately determined by navigators at sea
than was then possible; and it was with the object of obtaining
pecuniary assistance to assist him in completing his chronometer that
Harrison had, in 1728, made his first visit to London to exhibit his
drawings.
The Act of Parliament offering this superb reward was passed in 1714,
fourteen years before, but no attempt had been made to claim it. It
was right that England, then rapidly advancing to the first position as
a commercial nation, should make every effort to render navigation less
hazardous. Before correct chronometers were invented, or good lunar
tables were prepared,[7] the ship, when fairly at sea, out of sight of
land, and battling with the winds and tides, was in a measure lost. No
method existed for accurately ascertaining the longitude. The ship
might be out of its course for one or two hundred miles, for anything
that the navigator knew; and only the wreck of his ship on some unknown
coast told of the mistake that he had made in his reckoning.
It may here be mentioned that it was comparatively easy to determine
the latitude of a ship at sea every day when the sun was visible. The
latitude--that is, the distance of any spot from the equator and the
pole--might be found by a simple observation with the sextant. The
altitude of the sun at noon is found, and by a short calculation the
position of the ship can be ascertained.
The sextant, which is the instrument universally used at sea, was
gradually evolved from similar instruments used from the earliest
times. The object of this instrument has always been to find the
angular distance between two bodies--that is to say, the angle
contained by two straight lines, drawn from those bodies to meet in the
observer's eye. The simplest instrument of this kind may be well
represented by a pair of compasses. If the hinge is held to the eye,
one leg pointed to the distant horizon, and the other leg pointed to
the sun, the position of the two legs will show the angular distance of
the sun from the horizon at the moment of observation.
Until the end of the seventeenth century, the instrument used was of
this simple kind. It was generally a large quadrant, with one or two
bars moving on a hinge,--to all intents and purposes a huge pair of
compasses. The direction of the sight was fixed by the use of a slit
and a pointer, much as in the ordinary rifle. This instrument was
vastly improved by the use of a telescope, which not only allowed
fainter objects to be seen, but especially enabled the sight to be
accurately directed to the object observed.
The instruments of the pre-telescopic age reached their glory in the
hands of Tycho Brahe. He used magnificent instruments of the simple
"pair of compasses" kind--circles, quadrants, and sextants. These were
for the most part ponderous fixed instruments of little or no use for
the purposes of navigation. But Tycho Brahe's sextant proved the
forerunner of the modern instrument. The general structure is the
same; but the vast improvement of the modern sextant is due, firstly,
to the use of the reflecting mirror, and, secondly, to the use of the
telescope for accurate sighting. These improvements were due to many
scientific men--to William Gascoigne, who first used the telescope,
about 1640; to Robert Hooke, who, in 1660, proposed to apply it to the
quadrant; to Sir Isaac Newton, who designed a reflecting quadrant;[8]
and to John Hadley, who introduced it. The modern sextant is merely a
modification of Newton's or Badley's quadrant, and its present
construction seems to be perfect.
It therefore became possible accurately to determine the position of a
ship at sea as regarded its latitude. But it was quite different as
regarded the longitude that is, the distance of any place from a given
meridian, eastward or westward. In the case of longitude there is no
fixed spot to which reference can be made. The rotation of the earth
makes the existence of such a spot impossible. The question of
longitude is purely a question of TIME. The circuit of the globe, east
and west, is simply represented by twenty-four hours. Each place has
its own time. It is very easy to determine the local time at any spot
by observations made at that spot. But, as time is always changing,
the knowledge of the local time gives no idea of the actual position;
and still less of a moving object--say, of a ship at sea. But if, in
any locality, we know the local time, and also the local time of some
other locality at that moment--say, of the Observatory at Greenwich we
can, by comparing the two local times, determine the difference of
local times, or, what is the same thing, the difference of longitude
between the two places. It was necessary therefore for the navigator to
be in possession of a first-rate watch or chronometer, to enable him to
determine accurately the position of his ship at sea, as respected the
longitude.
Before the middle of the eighteenth century good watches were
comparatively unknown. The navigator mainly relied, for his
approximate longitude, upon his Dead Reckoning, without any observation
of the heavenly bodies. He depended upon the accuracy of the course
which he had steered by the compass, and the mensuration of the ship's
velocity by an instrument called the Log, as well as by combining and
rectifying all the allowances for drift, lee-way, and so on, according
to the trim of the ship; but all of these were liable to much
uncertainty, especially when the sea was in a boisterous condition.
There was another and independent course which might have been
adopted--that is, by observation of the moon, which is constantly
moving amongst the stars from west to east. But until the middle of
the eighteenth century good lunar tables were as much unknown as good
watches.
Hence a method of ascertaining the longitude, with the same degree of
accuracy which is attainable in respect of latitude, had for ages been
the grand desideratum for men "who go down to the sea in ships." Mr.
Macpherson, in his important work entitled 'The Annals of Commerce,'
observes, "Since the year 1714, when Parliament offered a reward of
20,000L. for the best method of ascertaining the longitude at sea, many
schemes have been devised, but all to little or no purpose, as going
generally upon wrong principles, till that heaven-taught artist Mr.
John Harrison arose;" and by him, as Mr. Macpherson goes on to say, the
difficulty was conquered, having devoted to it "the assiduous studies
of a long life."
The preamble of the Act of Parliament in question runs as follows:
"Whereas it is well known by all that are acquainted with the art of
navigation that nothing is so much wanted and desired at sea as the
discovery of the longitude, for the safety and quickness of voyages,
the preservation of ships and the lives of men," and so on. The Act
proceeds to constitute certain persons commissioners for the discovery
of the longitude, with power to receive and experiment upon proposals
for that purpose, and to grant sums of money not exceeding 2000L. to
aid in such experiments. It will be remembered from what has been
above stated, that a reward of 10,000L. was to be given to the person
who should contrive a method of determining the longitude within one
degree of a great circle, or 60 geographical miles; 15,000L. within 40
geographical miles; and 20,000L. within 30 geographical miles.
It will, in these days, be scarcely believed that little more than a
hundred and fifty years ago a prize of not less than ten thousand
pounds should have been offered for a method of determining the
longitude within sixty miles, and that double the amount should have
been offered for a method of determining it within thirty miles! The
amount of these rewards is sufficient proof of the fearful necessity
for improvement which then existed in the methods of navigation. And
yet, from the date of the passing of the Act in 1714 until the year
1736, when Harrison finished his first timepiece, nothing had been done
towards ascertaining the longitude more accurately, even within the
wide limits specified by the Act of Parliament. Although several
schemes had been projected, none of them had proved successful, and the
offered rewards therefore still remained unclaimed.
To return to Harrison. After reaching his home at Barrow, after his
visit to London in 1728, he began his experiments for the construction
of a marine chronometer. The task was one of no small difficulty. It
was necessary to provide against irregularities arising from the motion
of a ship at sea, and to obviate the effect of alternations of
temperature in the machine itself, as well as the oil with which it was
lubricated. A thousand obstacles presented themselves, but they were
not enough to deter Harrison from grappling with the work he had set
himself to perform.
Every one knows the beautiful machinery of a timepiece, and the perfect
tools required to produce such a machine. Some of these tools Harrison
procured in London, but the greater number he provided for himself; and
many entirely new adaptations were required for his chronometer. As
wood could no longer be exclusively employed, as in his first clock, he
had to teach himself to work accurately and minutely in brass and other
metals. Having been unable to obtain any assistance from the Board of
Longitude, he was under the necessity, while carrying forward his
experiments, of maintaining himself by still working at his trade of a
carpenter and joiner. This will account for the very long period that
elapsed before he could bring his chronometer to such a state as that
it might be tried with any approach to certainty in its operations.
Harrison, besides his intentness and earnestness, was a cheerful and
hopeful man. He had a fine taste for music, and organised and led the
choir of the village church, which attained a high degree of
perfection. He invented a curious monochord, which was not less
accurate than his clocks in the mensuration of time. His ear was
distressed by the ringing of bells out of tune, and he set himself to
remedy them. At the parish church of Hull, for instance, the bells
were harsh and disagreeable, and by the authority of the vicar and
churchwardens he was allowed to put them into a state of exact tune, so
that they proved entirely melodious.
But the great work of his life was his marine chronometer. He found it
necessary, in the first place, to alter the first mover of his clock to
a spring wound up, so that the regularity of the motion might be
derived from the vibrations of balances, instead of those of a pendulum
as in a standing clock. Mr. Folkes, President of the Royal Society,
when presenting the gold medal to Harrison in 1749, thus describes the
arrangement of his new machine. The details were obtained from
Harrison himself, who was present. He had made use of two balances
situated in the same plane, but vibrating in contrary directions, so
that the one of these being either way assisted by the tossing of the
ship, the other might constantly be just so much impeded by it at the
same time. As the equality of the times of the vibrations of the
balance of a pocket-watch is in a great measure owing to the spiral
spring that lies under it, so the same was here performed by the like
elasticity of four cylindrical springs or worms, applied near the upper
and lower extremities of the two balances above described.
Then came in the question of compensation. Harrison's experience with
the compensation pendulum of his clock now proved of service to him.
He had proceeded to introduce a similar expedient in his proposed
chronometer. As is well known to those who are acquainted with the
nature of springs moved by balances, the stronger those springs are,
the quicker the vibrations of the balances are performed, and vice
versa; hence it follows that those springs, when braced by cold, or
when relaxed by heat, must of necessity cause the timekeeper to go
either faster or slower, unless some method could be found to remedy
the inconvenience.
The method adopted by Harrison was his compensation balance, doubtless
the backbone of his invention. His "thermometer kirb," he himself
says, "is composed of two thin plates of brass and steel, riveted
together in several places, which, by the greater expansion of brass
than steel by heat and contraction by cold, becomes convex on the brass
side in hot weather and convex on the steel side in cold weather;
whence, one end being fixed, the other end obtains a motion
corresponding with the changes of heat and cold, and the two pins at
the end, between which the balance spring passes, and which it
alternately touches as the spring bends and unbends itself, will
shorten or lengthen the spring, as the change of heat or cold would
otherwise require to be done by hand in the manner used for regulating
a common watch." Although the method has since been improved upon by
Leroy, Arnold, and Earnshaw, it was the beginning of all that has since
been done in the perfection of marine chronometers. Indeed, it is
amazing to think of the number of clever, skilful, and industrious men
who have been engaged for many hundred years in the production of that
exquisite fabric--so useful to everybody, whether scientific or
otherwise, on land or sea the modern watch.
It is unnecessary here to mention in detail the particulars of
Harrison's invention. These were published by himself in his
'Principles of Mr. Harrison's Timekeeper.' It may, however, be
mentioned that he invented a method by which the chronometer might be
kept going without losing any portion of time. This was during the
process of winding up, which was done once in a day. While the
mainspring was being wound up, a secondary one preserved the motion of
the wheels and kept the machine going.
After seven years' labour, during which Harrison encountered and
overcame numerous difficulties, he at last completed his first marine
chronometer. He placed it in a sort of moveable frame, somewhat
resembling what the sailors call a 'compass jumble,' but much more
artificially and curiously made and arranged. In this state the
chronometer was tried from time to time in a large barge on the river
Humber, in rough as well as in smooth weather, and it was found to go
perfectly, without losing a moment of time.
Such was the condition of Harrison's chronometer when he arrived with
it in London in 1735, in order to apply to the commissioners appointed
for providing a public reward for the discovery of the longitude at
sea. He first showed it to several members of the Royal Society, who
cordially approved of it. Five of the most prominent members--Dr.
Bailey, Dr. Smith, Dr. Bradley, Mr. John Machin, and Mr. George
Graham--furnished Harrison with a certificate, stating that the
principles of his machine for measuring time promised a very great and
sufficient degree of exactness. In consequence of this certificate,
the machine, at the request of the inventor, and at the recommendation
of the Lords of the Admiralty, was placed on board a man-of-war.
Sir Charles Wager, then first Lord of the Admiralty, wrote to the
captain of the Centurion, stating that the instrument had been approved
by mathematicians as the best that had been made for measuring time;
and requesting his kind treatment of Mr. Harrison, who was to accompany
it to Lisbon. Captain Proctor answered the First Lord from Spithead,
dated May 17th, 1736, promising his attention to Harrison's comfort,
but intimating his fear that he had attempted impossibilities. It is
always so with a new thing. The first steam-engine, the first
gaslight, the first locomotive, the first steamboat to America, the
first electric telegraph, were all impossibilities!
This first chronometer behaved very well on the outward voyage in the
Centurion. It was not affected by the roughest weather, or by the
working of the ship through the rolling waves of the Bay of Biscay. It
was brought back, with Harrison, in the Orford man-of-war, when its
great utility was proved in a remarkable manner, although, from the
voyage being nearly on a meridian, the risk of losing the longitude was
comparatively small. Yet the following was the certificate of the
captain of the ship, dated the 24th June, 1737: "When we made the
land, the said land, according to my reckoning (and others), ought to
have been the Start; but, before we knew what land it was, John
Harrison declared to me and the rest of the ship's company that,
according to his observations with his machine, it ought to be the
Lizard--the which, indeed, it was found to be, his observation showing
the ship to be more west than my reckoning, above one degree and
twenty-six miles,"--that is, nearly ninety miles out of its course!
Six days later--that is, on the 30th June--the Board of Longitude met,
when Harrison was present, and produced the chronometer with which he
had made the voyage to Lisbon and back. The minute states: "Mr. John
Harrison produced a new invented machine, in the nature of clockwork,
whereby he proposes to keep time at sea with more exactness than by any
other instrument or method hitherto contrived, in order to the
discovery of the longitude at sea; and proposes to make another machine
of smaller dimensions within the space of two years, whereby he will
endeavour to correct some defects which he hath found in that already
prepared, so as to render the same more perfect; which machine, when
completed, he is desirous of having tried in one of His Majesty's ships
that shall be bound to the West Indies; but at the same time
represented that he should not be able, by reason of his necessitous
circumstances, to go on and finish his said machine without assistance,
and requested that he may be furnished with the sum of 500L., to put
him in a capacity to perform the same, and to make a perfect experiment
thereof."
The result of the meeting was that 500L. was ordered to be paid to
Harrison, one moiety as soon as convenient, and the other when he has
produced a certificate from the captain of one of His Majesty's ships
that he has put the machine on board into the captain's possession.
Mr. George Graham, who was consulted, urged that the Commissioners
should grant Harrison at least 1000L., but they only awarded him half
the sum, and at first only a moiety of the amount voted. At the
recommendation of Lord Monson, who was present, Harrison accepted the
250L. as a help towards the heavy expenses which he had already
incurred, and was again about to incur, in perfecting the invention.
He was instructed to make his new chronometer of less dimensions, as
the one exhibited was cumbersome and heavy, and occupied too much space
on board.
He accordingly proceeded to make his second chronometer. It occupied a
space of only about half the size of the first. He introduced several
improvements. He lessened the number of the wheels, and thereby
diminished friction. But the general arrangement remained the same.
This second machine was finished in 1739. It was more simple in its
arrangement, and less cumbrous in its dimensions. It answered even
better than the first, and though it was not tried at sea its motions
were sufficiently exact for finding the longitude within the nearest
limits proposed by Act of Parliament.
Not satisfied with his two machines, Harrison proceeded to make a
third. This was of an improved construction, and occupied still less
space, the whole of the machine and its apparatus standing upon an area
of only four square feet. It was in such forwardness in January, 1741,
that it was exhibited before the Royal Society, and twelve of the most
prominent members signed a certificate of "its great and excellent use,
as well for determining the longitude at sea as for correcting the
charts of the coasts." The testimonial concluded: "We do recommend
Mr. Harrison to the favour of the Commissioners appointed by Act of
Parliament as a person highly deserving of such further encouragement
and assistance as they shall judge proper and sufficient to finish his
third machine." The Commissioners granted him a further sum of 500L.
Harrison was already reduced to necessitous circumstances by his
continuous application to the improvement of the timekeepers. He had
also got into debt, and required further assistance to enable him to
proceed with their construction; but the Commissioners would only help
him by driblets.
Although Harrison had promised that the third machine would be ready
for trial on August 1, 1743, it was not finished for some years later.
In June, 1746, we find him again appearing before the Board, asking for
further assistance. While proceeding with his work he found it
necessary to add a new spring, "having spent much time and thought in
tempering them." Another 500L. was voted to enable him to pay his
debts, to maintain himself and family, and to complete his chronometer.
Three years later he exhibited his third machine to the Royal Society,
and on the 30th of November, 1749, he was awarded the Gold Medal for
the year. In presenting it, Mr. Folkes, the President, said to Mr.
Harrison, "I do here, by the authority and in the name of the Royal
Society of London for the improving of natural knowledge, present you
with this small but faithful token of their regard and esteem. I do,
in their name congratulate you upon the successes you have already had,
and I most sincerely wish that all your future trials may in every way
prove answerable to these beginnings, and that the full accomplishment
of your great undertaking may at last be crowned with all the
reputation and advantage to yourself that your warmest wishes may
suggest, and to which so many years so laudably and so diligently spent
in the improvement of those talents which God Almighty has bestowed
upon you, will so justly entitle your constant and unwearied
perseverance."
Mr. Folkes, in his speech, spoke of Mr. Harrison as "one of the most
modest persons he had ever known. In speaking," he continued, "of his
own performances, he has assured me that, from the immense number of
diligent and accurate experiments he has made, and from the severe
tests to which he has in many ways put his instrument, he expects he
shall be able with sufficient certainty, through all the greatest
variety of seasons and the most irregular motions of the sea, to keep
time constantly, without the variation of so much as three seconds in a
week,--a degree of exactness that is astonishing and even stupendous,
considering the immense number of difficulties, and those of very
different sorts, which the author of these inventions must have had to
encounter and struggle withal."
Although it is common enough now to make first-rate
chronometers--sufficient to determine the longitude with almost perfect
accuracy in every clime of the world--it was very different at that
time, when Harrison was occupied with his laborious experiments.
Although he considered his third machine to be the ne plus ultra of
scientific mechanism, he nevertheless proceeded to construct a fourth
timepiece, in the form of a pocket watch about five inches in diameter.
He found the principles which he had adopted in his larger machines
applied equally well in the smaller, and the performances of the last
surpassed his utmost expectations. But in the meantime, as his third
timekeeper was, in his opinion, sufficient to supply the requirements
of the Board of Longitude as respected the highest reward offered, he
applied to the Commissioners for leave to try that instrument on board
a royal ship to some port in the West Indies, as directed by the
statute of Queen Anne.
Though Harrison's third timekeeper was finished about the year 1758, it
was not until March 12, 1761, that he received orders for his son
William to proceed to Portsmouth, and go on board the Dorsetshire
man-of-war, to proceed to Jamaica. But another tedious delay occurred.
The ship was ordered elsewhere, and William Harrison, after remaining
five months at Portsmouth, returned to London. By this time, John
Harrison had finished his fourth timepiece--the small one, in the form
of a watch. At length William Harrison set sail with this timekeeper
from Portsmouth for Jamaica, on November 18th, 1761, in the Deptford
man-of-war. The Deptford had forty-three ships in convoy, and arrived
at Jamaica on the 19th of January, 1762, three days before the Beaver,
another of His Majesty's ships-of-war, which had sailed from Portsmouth
ten days before the Deptford, but had lost her reckoning and been
deceived in her longitude, having trusted entirely to the log.
Harrison's timepiece had corrected the log of the Deptford to the
extent of three degrees of longitude, whilst several of the ships in
the fleet lost as much as five degrees! This shows the haphazard way
in which navigation was conducted previous to the invention of the
marine chronometer.
When the Deptford arrived at Port Royal, Jamaica, the timekeeper was
found to be only five and one tenth seconds in error; and during the
voyage of four months, on its return to Portsmouth on March 26th, 1762,
it was found (after allowing for the rate of gain or loss) to have
erred only one minute fifty-four and a half seconds. In the latitude
of Portsmouth this only amounted to eighteen geographical miles,
whereas the Act had awarded that the prize should be given where the
longitude was determined within the distance of thirty geographical
miles. One would have thought that Harrison was now clearly entitled
to his reward of 20,000L.
Not at all! The delays interposed by Government are long and tedious,
and sometimes insufferable. Harrison had accomplished more than was
needful to obtain the highest reward which the Board of Longitude had
publicly offered. But they would not certify that he had won the
prize. On the contrary, they started numerous objections, and
continued for years to subject him to vexatious delays and
disappointments. They pleaded that the previous determination of the
longitude of Jamaica by astronomical observation was unsatisfactory;
that there was no proof of the chronometer having maintained a uniform
rate during the voyage; and on the 17th of August, 1762, they passed a
resolution, stating that they "were of opinion that the experiments
made of the watch had not been sufficient to determine the longitude at
sea."
It was accordingly necessary for Harrison to petition Parliament on the
subject. Three reigns had come and gone since the Act of Parliament
offering the reward had been passed. Anne had died; George I. and
George II. had reigned and died; and now, in the reign of George
III.--thirty-five years after Harrison had begun his labours, and after
he had constructed four several marine chronometers, each of which was
entitled to win the full prize,--an Act of Parliament was passed
enabling the inventor to obtain the sum of 5000L. as part of the
reward. But the Commissioners still hesitated. They differed about
the tempering of the springs. They must have another trial of the
timekeeper, or anything with which to put off a settlement of the
claim. Harrison was ready for any further number of trials; and in the
meantime the Commissioners merely paid him a further sum on account.
Two more dreary years passed. Nothing was done in 1763 except a
quantity of interminable talk at the Board of Commissioners. At
length, on the 28th of March, 1764, Harrison's son again departed with
the timekeeper on board the ship Tartar for Barbadoes. He returned in
about four months, during which time the instrument enabled the
longitude to be ascertained within ten miles, or one-third of the
required geographical distance. Harrison memorialised the
Commissioners again and again, in order that he might obtain the reward
publicly offered by the Government.
At length the Commissioners could no longer conceal the truth. In
September,1764, they virtually recognised Harrison's claim by paying
him 1000L. on account; and, on the 9th of February,1765, they passed a
resolution setting forth that they were "unanimously of opinion that
the said timekeeper has kept its time with sufficient correctness,
without losing its longitude in the voyage from Portsmouth to Barbadoes
beyond the nearest limit required by the Act 12th of Queen Anne, but
even considerably within the same." Yet they would not give Harrison
the necessary certificate, though they were of opinion that he was
entitled to be paid the full reward!
It is pleasant to contrast the generous conduct of the King of Sardinia
with the procrastinating and illiberal spirit which Harrison met with
in his own country. During the same year in which the above resolution
was passed, the Sardinian minister ordered four of Harrison's
timekeepers at the price of 1000L. each, at the special instance of the
King of Sardinia "as an acknowledgement of Mr. Harrison's ingenuity,
and as some recompense for the time spent by him for the general good
of mankind." This grateful attention was all the more praiseworthy, as
Sardinia could not in any way be regarded as a great maritime power.
Harrison was now becoming old and feeble. He had attained the age of
seventy-four. He had spent forty long years in working out his
invention. He was losing his eyesight, and could not afford to wait
much longer. Still he had to wait.
"Full little knowest thou, who hast not tried,
What hell it is in suing long to bide;
To lose good days, that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To spend to-day, to be put back to-morrow,
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow."
But Harrison had not lost his spirit. On May 30th, 1765, he addressed
another remonstrance to the Board, containing much stronger language
than he had yet used. "I cannot help thinking," he said, "that I am
extremely ill-used by gentlemen from whom I might have expected a
different treatment; for, if the Act of the 12th of Queen Anne be
deficient, why have I so long been encouraged under it, in order to
bring my invention to perfection? And, after the completion, why was
my son sent twice to the West Indies? Had it been said to my son, when
he received the last instruction, 'There will, in case you succeed, be
a new Act on your return, in order to lay you under new restrictions,
which were not thought of in the Act of the 12th of Queen Anne,'--I
say, had this been the case, I might have expected some such treatment
as that I now meet with.
"It must be owned that my case is very hard; but I hope I am the first,
and for my country's sake I hope I shall be the last, to suffer by
pinning my faith upon an English Act of Parliament. Had I received my
just reward--for certainly it may be so called after forty years' close
application of the talent which it has pleased God to give me--then my
invention would have taken the course which all improvements in this
world do; that is, I must have instructed workmen in its principles and
execution, which I should have been glad of an opportunity of doing.
But how widely different this is from what is now proposed, viz., for
me to instruct people that I know nothing of, and such as may know
nothing of mechanics; and, if I do not make them understand to their
satisfaction, I may then have nothing!
"Hard fate indeed to me, but still harder to the world, which may be
deprived of this my invention, which must be the case, except by my
open and free manner in describing all the principles of it to
gentlemen and noblemen who almost at all times have had free recourse
to my instruments. And if any of these workmen have been so ingenious
as to have got my invention, how far you may please to reward them for
their piracy must be left for you to determine; and I must set myself
down in old age, and thank God I can be more easy in that I have the
conquest, and though I have no reward, than if I had come short of the
matter and by some delusion had the reward!"
The Right Honourable the Earl of Egmont was in the chair of the Board
of Longitude on the day when this letter was read--June 13, 1765. The
Commissioners were somewhat startled by the tone which the inventor had
taken. Indeed, they were rather angry. Mr. Harrison, who was in
waiting, was called in. After some rather hot speaking, and after a
proposal was made to Harrison which he said he would decline to accede
to "so long as a drop of English blood remained in his body," he left
the room. Matters were at length arranged. The Act of Parliament (5
Geo. III. cap. 20) awarded him, upon a full discovery of the principles
of his time-keeper, the payment of such a sum, as with the 2500L. he
had already received, would make one half of the reward; and the
remaining half was to be paid when other chronometers had been made
after his design, and their capabilities fully proved. He was also
required to assign his four chronometers--one of which was styled a
watch--to the use of the public.
Harrison at once proceeded to give full explanations of the principles
of his chronometer to Dr. Maskelyne, and six other gentlemen, who had
been appointed to receive them. He took his timekeeper to pieces in
their presence, and deposited in their hands correct drawings of the
same, with the parts, so that other skilful makers might construct
similar chronometers on the same principles. Indeed, there was no
difficulty in making them; after his explanations and drawings had been
published. An exact copy of his last watch was made by the ingenious
Mr. Kendal; and was used by Captain Cook in his three years'
circumnavigation of the world, to his perfect satisfaction.
England had already inaugurated that series of scientific expeditions
which were to prove so fruitful of results, and to raise her naval
reputation to so great a height. In these expeditions, the officers,
the sailors, and the scientific men, were constantly brought face to
face with unforeseen difficulties and dangers, which brought forth
their highest qualities as men. There was, however, some intermixture
of narrowness in the minds of those who sent them forth. For instance,
while Dr. Priestley was at Leeds, he was asked by Sir Joseph Banks to
join Captain Cook's second expedition to the Southern Seas, as an
astronomer. Priestley gave his assent, and made arrangements to set
out. But some weeks later, Banks informed him that his appointment had
been cancelled, as the Board of Longitude objected to his theology.
Priestley's otherwise gentle nature was roused. "What I am, and what
they are, in respect of religion," he wrote to Banks, in December,
1771, "might easily have been known before the thing was proposed to me
at all. Besides, I thought that this had been a business of
philosophy, and not of divinity. If, however, this be the case, I
shall hold the Board of Longitude in extreme contempt."
Captain Cook was appointed to the command of the Resolution, and
Captain Wallis to the command of the Adventure, in November, 1771.
They proceeded to equip the ships; and amongst the other instruments
taken on board Captain Cook's ship, were two timekeepers, one made by
Mr. Larcum Kendal, on Mr. Harrison's principles, and the other by Mr.
John Arnold, on his own. The expedition left Deptford in April, 1772;
and shortly afterwards sailed for the South Seas. "Mr. Kendal's watch"
is the subject of frequent notices in Captain Cook's account. At the
Cape of Good Hope, it is said to have "answered beyond all
expectation." Further south, in the neighbourhood of Cape Circumcision,
he says, "the use of the telescope is found difficult at first, but a
little practice will make it familiar. By the assistance of the watch
we shall be able to discover the greatest error this method of
observing the longitude at sea is liable to." It was found that
Harrison's watch was more correct than Arnold's, and when near Cape
Palliser in New Zealand, Cook says, "this day at noon, when we attended
the winding-up of the watches, the fusee of Mr. Arnold's would not turn
round, so that after several unsuccessful trials we were obliged to let
it go down." From this time, complete reliance was placed upon
Harrison's chronometer. Some time later, Cook says, "I must here take
notice that our longitude can never be erroneous while we have so good
a guide as Mr. Kendal's watch." It may be observed, that at the
beginning of the voyage, observations were made by the lunar tables;
but these, being found unreliable, were eventually discontinued.
To return to Harrison. He continued to be worried by official
opposition. His claims were still unsatisfied. His watch at home
underwent many more trials. Dr. Maskelyne, the Royal Astronomer, was
charged with being unfavourable to the success of chronometers, being
deeply interested in finding the longitude by lunar tables; although
this method is now almost entirely superseded by the chronometer.
Harrison accordingly could not get the certificate of what was due to
him under the Act of Parliament. Years passed before he could obtain
the remaining amount of his reward. It was not until the year 1773, or
forty-five years after the commencement of his experiments, that he
succeeded in obtaining it. The following is an entry in the list of
supplies granted by Parliament in that year: "June 14. To John
Harrison, as a further reward and encouragement over and above the sums
already received by him, for his invention of a timekeeper for
ascertaining the longitude at sea, and his discovery of the principles
upon which the same was constructed, 8570 pounds 0s. 0d."
John Harrison did not long survive the settlement of his claims; for he
died on the 24th of March, 1776, at the age of eighty-three. He was
buried at the south-west corner of Hampstead parish churchyard, where a
tombstone was erected to his memory, and an inscription placed upon it
commemorating his services. His wife survived him only a year; she
died at seventy-two, and was buried in the same tomb. His son, William
Harrison, F.R.S., a deputy-lientenant of the counties of Monmouth and
Middlesex, died in 1815, at the ripe age of eighty-eight, and was also
interred there. The tomb having stood for more than a century, became
somewhat dilapidated; when the Clock-makers' Company of the City of
London took steps in 1879 to reconstruct it, and recut the
inscriptions. An appropriate ceremony took place at the final
uncovering of the tomb.
But perhaps the most interesting works connected with John Harrison and
the great labour of his life, are the wooden clock at the South
Kensington Museum, and the four chronometers made by him for the
Government, which are still preserved at the Royal Observatory,
Greenwich. The three early ones are of great weight, and can scarcely
be moved without some bodily labour. But the fourth, the marine
chronometer or watch, is of small dimensions, and is easily handled.
It still possesses the power of going accurately; as does "Mr. Kendal's
watch," which was made exactly after it. These will always prove the
best memorials of this distinguished workman.
Before concluding this brief notice of the life and labours of John
Harrison, it becomes me to thank most cordially Mr. Christie,
Astronomer-Royal, for his kindness in exhibiting the various
chronometers deposited at the Greenwich Observatory, and for his
permission to inspect the minutes of the Board of Longitude, where the
various interviews between the inventor and the commissioners,
extending over many years, are faithfully but too procrastinatingly
recorded. It may be finally said of John Harrison, that by his
invention of the chronometer--the ever-sleepless and ever-trusty friend
of the mariner--he conferred an incalculable benefit on science and
navigation, and established his claim to be regarded as one of the
greatest benefactors of mankind.
POstscript.--In addition to the information contained in this chapter,
I have been recently informed by the Rev. Mr. Sankey, vicar of Wragby,
that the family is quite extinct in the parish, except the wife of a
plumber, who claims relationship with Harrison. The representative of
the Winn family was created Lord St. Oswald in 1885. Harrison is not
quite forgotten at Foulby. The house in which he was born was a low
thatched cottage, with two rooms, one used as a living room, and the
other as a sleeping room. The house was pulled down about forty years
ago; but the entrance door, being of strong, hard wood, is still
preserved. The vicar adds that young Harrison would lie out on the
grass all night in summer time, studying the details of his wooden
clock.
Footnotes to Chapter III.
[1] Originally published in Longmam's Magazine, but now rewritten and
enlarged.
[2] Popular Astronomy. By Simon Newcomb, LL.D., Professor U.S. Naval
Observatory.
[3] Biographia Britannica, vol. vi. part 2, p. 4375. This volume was
published in 1766, before the final reward had been granted to Harrison.
[4] This clock is in the possession of Abraham Riley, of Bromley, near
Leeds. He informs us that the clock is made of wood throughout,
excepting the escapement and the dial, which are made of brass. It
bears the mark of "John Harrison, 1713."
[5] Harrison's compensation pendulum was afterwards improved by Arnold,
Earnshaw, and other English makers. Dent's prismatic balance is now
considered the best.
[6] See Mr. Folkes's speech to the Royal Soc., 30th Nov., 1749.
[7] No trustworthy lunar tables existed at that time. It was not until
the year 1753 that Tobias Mayer, a German, published the first lunar
tables which could be relied upon. For this, the British Government
afterwards awarded to Mayer's widow the sum of 5000L.
[8] Sir Isaac Newton gave his design to Edmund Halley, then
Astronomer-Royal. Halley laid it on one side, and it was found among
his papers after his death in 1742, twenty-five years after the death
of Newton. A similar omission was made by Sir G. B. Airy, which led to
the discovery of Neptune being attributed to Leverrier instead of to
Adams.
CHAPTER IV.
JOHN LOMBE: INTRODUCER OF THE SILK INDUSTRY INTO ENGLAND.
"By Commerce are acquired the two things which wise men accompt of all
others the most necessary to the well-being of a Commonwealth: That is
to say, a general Industry of Mind and Hardiness of Body, which never
fail to be accompanyed with Honour and Plenty. So that, questionless,
when Commerce does not flourish, as well as other Professions, and when
Particular Persons out of a habit of Laziness neglect at once the
noblest way of employing their time and the fairest occasion for
advancing their fortunes, that Kingdom, though otherwise never so
glorious, wants something of being compleatly happy."--A Treatise
touching the East India Trade (1695).
Industry puts an entirely new face upon the productions of nature. By
labour man has subjugated the world, reduced it to his dominion, and
clothed the earth with a new garment. The first rude plough that man
thrust into the soil, the first rude axe of stone with which he felled
the pine, the first rude canoe scooped by him from its trunk to cross
the river and reach the greener fields beyond, were each the outcome of
a human faculty which brought within his reach some physical comfort he
had never enjoyed before.
Material things became subject to the influence of labour. From the
clay of the ground, man manufactured the vessels which were to contain
his food. Out of the fleecy covering of sheep, he made clothes for
himself of many kinds; from the flax plant he drew its fibres, and made
linen and cambric; from the hemp plant he made ropes and fishing nets;
from the cotton pod he fabricated fustians, dimities, and calicoes.
From the rags of these, or from weed and the shavings of wood, he made
paper on which books and newspapers were printed. Lead was formed by
him into printer's type, for the communication of knowledge without end.
But the most extraordinary changes of all were made in a heavy stone
containing metal, dug out of the ground. With this, when smelted by
wood or coal, and manipulated by experienced skill, iron was produced.
From this extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the
mainspring perhaps of civilised society--arms, hammers, and axes were
made; then knives, scissors, and needles; then machinery to hold and
control the prodigious force of steam; and eventually railroads and
locomotives, ironclads propelled by the screw, and iron and steel
bridges miles in length.
The silk manufacture, though originating in the secretion of a tiny
caterpillar, is perhaps equally extraordinary. Hundreds of thousands
of pounds weight of this slender thread, no thicker than the filaments
spun by a spider, give employment to millions of workers throughout the
world. Silk, and the many textures wrought from this beautiful
material, had long been known in the East; but the period cannot be
fixed when man first divested the chrysalis of its dwelling, and
discovered that the little yellow ball which adhered to the leaf of the
mulberry tree, could be evolved into a slender filament, from which
tissues of endless variety and beauty could be made. The Chinese were
doubtless among the first who used the thread spun by the silkworm for
the purposes of clothing. The manufacture went westward from China to
India and Persia, and from thence to Europe. Alexander the Great
brought home with him a store of rich silks from Persia Aristotle and
Pliny give descriptions of the industrious little worm and its
productions. Virgil is the first of the Roman writers who alludes to
the production of silk in China; and the terms he employs show how
little was then known about the article. It was introduced at Rome
about the time of Julius Caesar, who displayed a profusion of silks in
some of his magnificent theatrical spectacles. Silk was so valuable
that it was then sold for an equal weight of gold. Indeed, a law was
passed that no man should disgrace himself by wearing a silken garment.
The Emperor Heliogabalus despised the law, and wore a dress composed
wholly of silk. The example thus set was followed by wealthy citizens.
A demand for silk from the East soon became general.
It was not until about the middle of the sixth century that two Persian
monks, who had long resided in China, and made themselves acquainted
with the mode of rearing the silkworm, succeeded in carrying the eggs
of the insect to Constantinople. Under their direction they were
hatched and fed. A sufficient number of butterflies were saved to
propagate the race, and mulberry trees were planted to afford
nourishment to the rising generations of caterpillars. Thus the
industry was propagated. It spread into the Italian peninsula; and
eventually manufactures of silk velvet, damask, and satin became
established in Venice, Milan, Florence, Lucca, and other places.
Indeed, for several centuries the manufacture of silk in Europe was for
the most part confined to Italy. The rearing of silkworms was of great
importance in Modena, and yielded a considerable revenue to the State.
The silk produced there was esteemed the best in Lombardy. Until the
beginning of the sixteenth century, Bologna was the only city which
possessed proper "throwing" mills, or the machinery requisite for
twisting and preparing silken fibres for the weaver. Thousands of
people were employed at Florence and Genoa about the same time in the
silk manufacture. And at Venice it was held in such high esteem, that
the business of a silk factory was considered a noble employment.[1]
It was long before the use of silk became general in England. "Silk,"
said an old writer, "does not immediately come hither from the Worm
that spins and makes it, but passes many a Climate, travels many a
Desert, employs many a Hand, loads many a Camel, and freights many a
Ship before it arrives here; and when at last it comes, it is in return
for other manufactures, or in exchange for our money."[2] It is said
that the first pair of silk stockings was brought into England from
Spain, and presented to Henry VIII. He had before worn hose of cloth.
In the third year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, her tiring woman, Mrs.
Montagu, presented her with a pair of black silk stockings as a New
Year's gift; whereupon her Majesty asked if she could have any more, in
which case she would wear no more cloth stockings. When James VI. of
Scotland received the ambassadors sent to congratulate him upon his
accession to the throne of Great Britain, he asked one of his lords to
lend him his pair of silken hose, that he "might not appear a scrub
before strangers." From these circumstances it will be observed how
rare the wearing of silk was in England.
Shortly after becoming king, James I. endeavoured to establish the silk
manufacture in England, as had already been successfully done in
France. He gave every encouragement to the breeding of silkworms. He
sent circular letters to all the counties of England, strongly
recommending the inhabitants to plant mulberry trees. The trees were
planted in many places, but the leaves did not ripen in sufficient time
for the sustenance of the silkworms.
The same attempt was made at Inneshannon, near Bandon, in Ireland, by
the Hugnenot refugees, but proved
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