Lives of the Engineers Part 3

Since that time great changes have taken place on the Tyne. When wood for firing became scarce and dear, and the forests of the South of England were found inadequate to supply the increasing demand for fuel, attention was turned to the rich stores of coal lying underground in the neighbourhood of Newcastle and Durham. It then became an article of increasing export, and "seacoal" fires gradually supplanted those of wood. Hence an old writer described Newcastle as "the Eye of the North, and the Hearth that warmeth the South parts of this kingdom with Fire."

Fuel has become the staple product of the district, the quant.i.ty exported increasing from year to year, until the coal raised from these northern mines amounts to upwards of sixteen millions of tons a year, of which not less than nine millions are annually conveyed away by sea.

Newcastle has in the mean time spread in all directions far beyond its ancient boundaries. From a walled mediaeval town of monks and merchants, it has been converted into a busy centre of commerce and manufactures inhabited by nearly 100,000 people. It is no longer a Border fortress-a "shield and defence against the invasions and frequent insults of the Scots," as described in ancient charters-but a busy centre of peaceful industry, and the outlet for a vast amount of steam-power, which is exported in the form of coal to all parts of the world. Newcastle is in many respects a town of singular and curious interest, especially in its older parts, which are full of crooked lanes and narrow streets, wynds, and chares, {4} formed by tall, antique houses, rising tier above tier along the steep northern bank of the Tyne, as the similarly precipitous streets of Gateshead crowd the opposite sh.o.r.e.

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

From the necessity which existed for facilitating the transport of coals from the pits to the shipping places, it is easy to understand how the railway and the locomotive should have first found their home in such a district as we have thus briefly described. At an early period the coal was carried to the boats in panniers, or in sacks upon horses' backs.

Then carts were used, to facilitate the progress of which tramways of flag-stone were laid down. This led to the enlargement of the vehicle, which became known as a waggon, and it was mounted on four wheels instead of two. A local writer about the middle of the seventeenth century says, "Many thousand people are engaged in this trade of coals; many live by working of them in the pits; and many live by conveying them in waggons and wains to the river Tyne."

Still further to facilitate the haulage of the waggons, pieces of planking were laid parallel upon wooden sleepers, or imbedded in the ordinary track, by which friction was still further diminished. It is said that these wooden rails were first employed by one Beaumont, about 1630; and on a road thus laid, a single horse was capable of drawing a large loaded waggon from the coal-pit to the shipping staith. Roger North, in 1676, found the practice had become extensively adopted, and he speaks of the large sums then paid for way-leaves; that is, the permission granted by the owners of lands lying between the coal-pit and the river-side to lay down a tramway between the one and the other. A century later, Arthur Young observed that not only had these roads become greatly multiplied, but important works had been constructed to carry them along upon the same level. "The coal-waggon roads from the pits to the water," he says, "are great works, carried over all sorts of inequalities of ground, so far as the distance of nine or ten miles. The tracks of the wheels are marked with pieces of wood let into the road for the wheels of the waggons to run on, by which one horse is enabled to draw, and that with ease, fifty or sixty bushels of coals." {5}

Similar waggon-roads were laid down in the coal districts of Wales, c.u.mberland, and Scotland. At the time of the Scotch rebellion in 1745, a tramroad existed between the Tranent coal-pits and the small harbour of c.o.c.kenzie in East Lothian; and a portion of the line was selected by General Cope as a position for his cannon at the battle of Prestonpans.

In these rude wooden tracks we find the germ of the modern railroad.

Improvements were gradually made in them. Thus, at some collieries, thin plates of iron were nailed upon their upper surface, for the purpose of protecting the parts most exposed to friction. Cast-iron rails were also tried, the wooden rails having been found liable to rot. The first rails of this kind are supposed to have been used at Whitehaven as early as 1738. This cast-iron road was denominated a "plate-way," from the plate-like form in which the rails were cast. In 1767, as appears from the books of the Coalbrookdale Iron Works, in Shropshire, five or six tons of rails were cast, as an experiment, on the suggestion of Mr.

Reynolds, one of the partners; and they were shortly after laid down to form a road.

In 1776, a cast-iron tramway, nailed to wooden sleepers, was laid down at the Duke of Norfolk's colliery near Sheffield. The person who designed and constructed this coal line was Mr. John Curr, whose son has erroneously claimed for him the invention of the cast-iron railway. He certainly adopted it early, and thereby met the fate of men before their age; for his plan was opposed by the labouring people of the colliery, who got up a riot in which they tore up the road and burnt the coal-staith, whilst Mr. Curr fled into a neighbouring wood for concealment, and lay there _perdu_ for three days and nights, to escape the fury of the populace. The plates of these early tramways had a ledge cast on their edge to guide the wheel along the road, after the manner shown in the annexed cut.

[Picture: f.l.a.n.g.e rail]

In 1789, Mr. William Jessop constructed a railway at Loughborough, in Leicestershire, and there introduced the cast-iron edge-rail, with flanches cast upon the tire of the waggon-wheels to keep them on the track, instead of having the margin or flanch cast upon the rail itself; and this plan was shortly after adopted in other places. In 1800, Mr.

Benjamin Outram, of Little Eaton, in Derbyshire (father of the distinguished General Outram), used stone props instead of timber for supporting the ends or joinings of the rails. Thus the use of railroads, in various forms, gradually extended, until they were found in general use all over the mining districts.

Such was the growth of the railway, which, it will be observed, originated in necessity, and was modified according to experience; progress in this, as in all departments of mechanics, having been effected by the exertions of many men, one generation entering upon the labours of that which preceded it, and carrying them onward to further stages of improvement. We shall afterwards find that the invention of the locomotive was made by like successive steps. It was not the invention of one man, but of a succession of men, each working at the proper hour, and according to the needs of that hour; one inventor interpreting only the first word of the problem which his successors were to solve after long and laborious efforts and experiments. "The locomotive is not the invention of one man," said Robert Stephenson at Newcastle, "but of a nation of mechanical engineers."

The same circ.u.mstances which led to the rapid extension of railways in the coal districts of the north tended to direct the attention of the mining engineers to the early development of the powers of the steam-engine as a useful instrument of motive power. The necessity which existed for a more effective method of hauling the coals from the pits to the shipping places was constantly present to many minds; and the daily pursuits of a large cla.s.s of mechanics occupied in the management of steam power, by which the coal was raised from the pits, and the mines were pumped clear of water, had the effect of directing their attention to the same agency as the best means for accomplishing that object.

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

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

The working of a Newcomen engine was a clumsy and apparently a very painful process, accompanied by an extraordinary amount of wheezing, sighing, creaking, and b.u.mping. When the pump descended, there was heard a plunge, a heavy sigh, and a loud b.u.mp: then, as it rose, and the sucker began to act, there was heard a croak, a wheeze, another b.u.mp, and then a strong rush of water as it was lifted and poured out. Where engines of a more powerful and improved description are used, the quant.i.ty of water raised is enormous-as much as a million and a half gallons in the twenty-four hours.

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

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

[Picture: Coal-Staith on the Tyne]

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

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

[Picture: Coal Waggons]

[Picture: Wylam Colliery and Village]

CHAPTER II.

WYLAM AND DEWLEY BURN-GEORGE STEPHENSON'S EARLY YEARS.

The colliery village of Wylam is situated on the north bank of the Tyne, about eight miles west of Newcastle. The Newcastle and Carlisle railway runs along the opposite bank; and the traveller by that line sees the usual signs of a colliery in the unsightly pumping-engines surrounded by heaps of ashes, coal-dust, and slag; whilst a neighbouring iron-furnace in full blast throws out dense smoke and loud jets of steam by day and lurid flames at night. These works form the nucleus of the village, which is almost entirely occupied by coal-miners and iron-furnacemen.

The place is remarkable for its large population, but not for its cleanness or neatness as a village; the houses, as in most colliery villages, being the property of the owners or lessees, who employ them in temporarily accommodating the workpeople, against whose earnings there is a weekly set-off for house and coals. About the end of last century the estate of which Wylam forms part, belonged to Mr. Blackett, a gentleman of considerable celebrity in coal-mining, then more generally known as the proprietor of the 'Globe' newspaper.

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

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

Robert Stephenson, or "Old Bob," as the neighbours familiarly called him, and his wife Mabel, were a respectable couple, careful and hard-working.

It is said that Robert Stephenson's father was a Scotchman, and came into England as a gentleman's servant. Mabel, his wife, was the daughter of Robert Carr, a dyer at Ovingham. When first married, they lived at Walbottle, a village situated between Wylam and Newcastle, afterwards removing to Wylam, where Robert was employed as fireman of the old pumping engine at that colliery.

[Picture: High-street House, Wylam, the Birthplace of George Stephenson]

An old Wylam collier, who remembered George Stephenson's father, thus described him:-"Geordie's fayther war like a peer o' deals nailed thegither, an' a bit o' flesh i' th' inside; he war as queer as d.i.c.k's hatband-went thrice aboot, an' wudn't tie. His wife Mabel war a delicat'

boddie, an' varry flighty. Thay war an honest family, but sair hadden doon i' th' world." Indeed, the earnings of old Robert did not amount to more than twelve shillings a week; and, as there were six children to maintain, the family, during their stay at Wylam, were necessarily in very straitened circ.u.mstances. The father's wages being barely sufficient, even with the most rigid economy, for the sustenance of the household, there was little to spare for clothing, and nothing for education, so none of the children were sent to school.

Old Robert was a general favourite in the village, especially amongst the children, whom he was accustomed to draw about him whilst tending the engine-fire, and feast their young imaginations with tales of Sinbad the Sailor and Robinson Crusoe, besides others of his own invention; so that "Bob's engine-fire" came to be the most popular resort in the village.

Another feature in his character, by which he was long remembered, was his affection for birds and animals; and he had many tame favourites of both sorts, which were as fond of resorting to his engine-fire as the boys and girls themselves. In the winter time he had usually a flock of tame robins about him; and they would come hopping familiarly to his feet to pick up the crumbs which he had saved for them out of his humble dinner. At his cottage he was rarely without one or more tame blackbirds, which flew about the house, or in and out at the door. In summer-time he would go a-birdnesting with his children; and one day he took his little son George to see a blackbird's nest for the first time.

Holding him up in his arms, he let the wondering boy peep down, through the branches held aside for the purpose, into a nest full of young birds-a sight which the boy never forgot, but used to speak of with delight to his intimate friends when he himself had grown an old man.

The boy George led the ordinary life of working-people's children. He played about the doors; went birdnesting when he could; and ran errands to the village. He was also an eager listener, with the other children, to his father's curious tales; and he early imbibed from him that affection for birds and animals which continued throughout his life. In course of time he was promoted to the office of carrying his father's dinner to him while at work, and it was on such occasions his great delight to see the robins fed. At home he helped to nurse, and that with a careful hand, his younger brothers and sisters. One of his duties was to see that the other children were kept out of the way of the chaldron waggons, which were then dragged by horses along the wooden tramroad immediately in front of the cottage-door. This waggon-way was the first in the northern district on which the experiment of a locomotive engine was tried. But at the time of which we speak, the locomotive had scarcely been dreamt of in England as a practicable working power; horses only were used to haul the coal; and one of the first sights with which the boy was familiar was the coal-waggons dragged by them along the wooden railway at Wylam.

Thus eight years pa.s.sed; after which, the coal having been worked out, the old engine, which had grown "dismal to look at," as one of the workmen described it, was pulled down; and then Robert, having obtained employment as a fireman at the Dewley Burn Colliery, removed with his family to that place. Dewley Burn, at this day, consists of a few old-fashioned low-roofed cottages standing on either side of a babbling little stream. They are connected by a rustic wooden bridge, which spans the rift in front of the doors. In the central one-roomed cottage of this group, on the right bank, Robert Stephenson lived for a time with his family; the pit at which he worked standing in the rear of the cottages.

Young though he was, George was now of an age to be able to contribute something towards the family maintenance; for in a poor man's house, every child is a burden until his little hands can be turned to profitable account. That the boy was shrewd and active, and possessed of a ready mother wit, will be evident enough from the following incident.

One day his sister Nell went into Newcastle to buy a bonnet; and Geordie went with her "for company." At a draper's shop in the Bigg Market, Nell found a "chip" quite to her mind, but on pricing it, alas! it was found to be fifteen pence beyond her means, and she left the shop very much disappointed. But Geordie said, "Never heed, Nell; see if I canna win siller enough to buy the bonnet; stand ye there, till I come back." Away ran the boy and disappeared amidst the throng of the market, leaving the girl to wait his return. Long and long she waited, until it grew dusk, and the market people had nearly all left. She had begun to despair, and fears crossed her mind that Geordie must have been run over and killed; when at last up he came running, almost breathless. "I've gotten the siller for the bonnet, Nell!" cried he. "Eh Geordie!" she said, "but hoo hae ye gotten it?" "Haudin the gentlemen's horses!" was the exultant reply. The bonnet was forthwith bought, and the two returned to Dewley happy.

George's first regular employment was of a very humble sort. A widow, named Grace Ainslie, then occupied the neighbouring farmhouse of Dewley.

She kept a number of cows, and had the privilege of grazing them along the waggon-road. She needed a boy to herd the cows, to keep them out of the way of the waggons, and prevent their straying or trespa.s.sing on the neighbours' "liberties;" the boy's duty was also to bar the gates at night after all the waggons had pa.s.sed. George pet.i.tioned for this post, and, to his great joy, he was appointed at the wage of twopence a day.

It was light employment, and he had plenty of spare time on his hands, which he spent in birdnesting, making whistles out of reeds and scrannel straws, and erecting Lilliputian mills in the little water-streams that ran into the Dewley bog. But his favourite amus.e.m.e.nt at this early age was erecting clay engines in conjunction with his chosen playmate, Bill Thirlwall. The place is still pointed out where the future engineers made their first essays in modelling. The boys found the clay for their engines in the adjoining bog, and the hemlocks which grew about supplied them with imaginary steam-pipes. They even proceeded to make a miniature winding-machine in connexion with their engine, and the apparatus was erected upon a bench in front of the Thirlwalls' cottage. The corves were made out of hollowed corks; the ropes were supplied by twine; and a few bits of wood gleaned from the refuse of the carpenter's shop completed their materials. With this apparatus the boys made a show of sending the corves down the pit and drawing them up again, much to the marvel of the pitmen. But some mischievous person about the place seized the opportunity early one morning of smashing the fragile machinery, much to the grief of the young engineers.

As Stephenson grew older and abler to work, he was set to lead the horses when ploughing, though scarce big enough to stride across the furrows; and he used afterwards to say that he rode to his work in the mornings at an hour when most other children of his age were asleep in their beds.

He was also employed to hoe turnips, and do similar farm-work, for which he was paid the advanced wage of fourpence a day. But his highest ambition was to be taken on at the colliery where his father worked; and he shortly joined his elder brother James there as a "corf-bitter," or "picker," to clear the coal of stones, bats, and dross. His wages were then advanced to sixpence a day, and afterwards to eightpence when he was set to drive the gin-horse.

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

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

This went on for several years. George had also a stock of tame rabbits, for which he built a little house behind the cottage, and for many years he continued to pride himself upon the superiority of his breed.

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

But the coal at Dewley Burn being at length worked out, the pit was ordered to be "laid in," and old Robert and his family were again under the necessity of shifting their home; for, to use the common phrase, they must "follow the wark." They removed accordingly to a place called Jolly's Close, a few miles to the south, close behind the village of Newburn, where another coal-mine belonging to the Duke of Northumberland, called "the Duke's Winnin," had recently been opened out.