Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science Part 6

I.--"THE FLYING COACH."

II.--THE STEPHENSONS: FATHER AND SON.

III.--THE GROWTH OF RAILWAYS.

The Railway and the Locomotive

I.--"THE FLYING COACH."

It is the grey dawn of a fine spring morning in the year 1669, and early though it be, there are many folks astir and gathering in cl.u.s.ters before the ancient, weather-stained front of All Souls' College, Oxford.

The "Flying Coach" which has been so much talked about, and which has been solemnly considered and sanctioned by the heads of the University, is to make its first journey to the metropolis to-day, and to accomplish it between sunrise and sunset. Hitherto the journey has occupied two days, the travellers sleeping a night on the road; and the new undertaking is regarded as very bold and hazardous. A buzz rises from the knots of people as they discuss its prospects,--some very sanguine, some very doubtful, not a few very angry at the presumption of the enterprise. But six o'clock is on the strike--all the pa.s.sengers are seated, some of them rather wishful to be safe on the pavement again--the driver has got the reins in his hand--the guard sounds his bugle, and off goes the "Flying Coach" at a rattling pace, amidst the cheering of the crowd and the benedictions of the university "Dons," who have come down to honour the event with their presence. Learned, liberal-minded men these "Dons" are for the times they live in; but only fancy what they would think if some old seer, whose meditation and research had

"Pierced the future, far as human eye could see, Seen the vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be,"

were to come forth and tell them, that before two centuries were over men would think far less of travelling from Oxford to London in one hour than they then did of doing so in a day, by means of a machine of iron, mounted upon wheels, which should rush along the ground, and drag a load, which a hundred horses could not move, as though it were a feather. Roger Bacon had prophesied as much four centuries before; the Marquis of Worcester was propounding the same theory at that very day, and yet who can blame them if they treated the notion as the falsehood of an impostor, or the hallucination of a lunatic?

In these days when railways traverse the country in every direction, and are still multiplying rapidly, when no two towns of the least size and consideration are unprovided with this mode of mutual communication--when we step into a railway carriage as readily as into an omnibus, and breakfasting comfortably in London, are whisked off to Edinburgh, almost in time for the fashionable dinner hour,--it requires no little effort to realize the incredulity and contempt with which the idea of superseding the stage-coach by the steam locomotive, and having lines of iron railways instead of the common highways, was regarded for many years after the beginning of the present century. Even after the practicability of the project had been proved, and steam-engines had been seen puffing along the rails, with a train of carriages attached, even so late as 1825, we find one of the leading periodicals--the _Quarterly Review_--denouncing the gross exaggeration of the powers of the locomotive which its promoters were guilty of, and predicting that though it might delude for a time, it must end in the mortification of all concerned. The fact was, said the writer, that people would as soon suffer themselves to be fired off like a Congreve rocket, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate--the rate of eighteen miles an hour, which people now-a-days, accustomed to dash along in express trains at two or three times that speed, would deem a perfect snail-pace.

The "railway" had the start of the locomotive by a couple of centuries, and derives its parentage from the clumsy wooden way-leaves or tram-roads which were laid down to lessen the labour of dragging the coal-waggons to and from the place of shipment in the Newcastle colleries. These were in use from the beginning of the seventeenth century, but it was not till the beginning of the nineteenth that the locomotive steam-engine made its appearance. Watt himself took out a patent for a locomotive in 1784, but nothing came of it; and the honour of having first proved the practicability of applying steam to the purposes of locomotion is due to a Cornishman named Trevithick, who devised a high-pressure engine of very ingenious construction, and actually set it to work on one of the roads in South Wales. At first, therefore, there was no alliance between the engine and the rail; and though afterwards Trevithick adapted it to run on a tram-way, something went wrong with it, and the idea was for the time abandoned. There was a long-headed engine-man in one of the Newcastle collieries about this time, in whose mind the true solution of the problem was rapidly developing, but Trevithick had nearly forestalled him. The stories of these two men afford a most instructive lesson. A man of undoubted talent and ingenuity, with influential friends both in Cornwall and London, Trevithick had a fair start in life, and every opportunity of distinguishing himself. But he lacked steadiness and perseverance, and nothing prospered with him. He had no sooner applied himself to one scheme than he threw it up, and became engrossed in another, to be abandoned in turn for some new favourite. He was always beginning some novelty, and never ending what he had begun, and the consequence was an almost constant succession of failures. He was always unhappy and unsuccessful. If now and then a gleam of success did brighten on his path, it was but temporary, and was speedily absorbed in the gloom of failure. He found a man of capital to take up his high-pressure engine, got his locomotive built and set to work, brought his ballast engine into use, and stood in no want of praise and encouragement; and yet, one after another his schemes went wrong. Not one of them did well, because he never stuck to any of them long enough. "The world always went wrong with him," he said himself. "He always went wrong with the world," said more truly those who knew him. His haste, impatience, and want of perseverance ruined him. After actually witnessing his steam engine at work in Wales, dragging a train of heavy waggons at the rate of five miles an hour, he lost conceit of his invention, went away to the West Indies, and did not return to England till Stephenson had solved the difficulty of steam locomotion, and was laying out the Stockton and Darlington Railway. The humble engine-man, without education, without friends, without money, with countless obstacles in his way, and not a single advantage, save his native genius and resolution, had won the day, and distanced his more favoured and accomplished rival. It was reserved for GEORGE STEPHENSON to bring about the alliance of the locomotive and the railroad--"man and wife," as he used to call them--whose union, like that of heaven and earth in the old mythology, was to bear an offspring of t.i.tanic might--the modern railway.

II.--THE STEPHENSONS: FATHER AND SON.

Towards the close of the last century, a bare-legged herd-laddie, about eight years old, might have been seen, in a field at Dewley Burn, a little village not far from Newcastle, amusing himself by making clay-engines, with bits of hemlock-stalk for imaginary pipes. The child is father of the man; and in after years that little fellow became the inventor of the pa.s.senger locomotive, and as the founder of the gigantic railway system which now spreads its fibres over the length and breadth, not only of our own country, but of the civilized world, the true hero of the half-century.

The second son of a fireman to one of the colliery engines, who had six children and a wife to support on an income of twelve shillings a-week, George Stephenson had to begin work while quite a child. At first he was set to look after a neighbour's cows, and keep them from straying; and afterwards he was promoted to the work of leading horses at the plough, hoeing turnips, and such like, at a salary of fourpence a-day. The lad had always been fond of poking about in his father's engine house; and his great ambition at this time was to become a fireman like his father.

And at length, after being employed in various ways about the colliery, he was, at the age of fourteen, appointed his father's a.s.sistant at a shilling a-day. The next year he got a situation as fireman on his own account; and "now," said he, when his wages were advanced to twelve shillings a-week--"now I'm a made man for life."

The next step he took was to get the place of "plugman" to the same engine that his father attended as fireman, the former post being rather the higher of the two. The business of the plugman, the uninitiated may be informed, is to watch the engine, and see that it works properly--the name being derived from the duty of plugging the tube at the bottom of the shaft, so that the action of the pump should not be interfered with by the exposure of the suction-holes. George now devoted himself enthusiastically to the study of the engine under his care. It became a sort of pet with him; and he was never weary of taking it to pieces, cleaning it, putting it together again, and inspecting its various parts with admiration and delight, so that he soon made himself thoroughly master of its method of working and construction.

Eighteen years old by this time, George Stephenson was wholly uneducated. His father's small earnings, and the large family he had to feed, at a time when provisions were scarce and at war prices, prevented his having any schooling in his early years; and he now set himself to repair his deficiencies in that respect. His duties occupied him twelve hours a-day, so that he had but little leisure to himself; but he was bent on improving himself, and after the duties of the day were over, went to a night-school kept by a poor teacher in the village of Water-row, where he was now situated, on three nights during the week, to take lessons in reading and spelling, and afterwards in the science of pot-hooks and hangers as well; so that by the time he was nineteen he was able to read clearly, and to write his own name. Then he took to arithmetic, for which he showed a strong predilection. He had always a sum or two by him to work out while at the engine side, and soon made great progress.

The next year he was appointed brakesman at Black Collerton Colliery, with six shillings added to his wages, which were now nearly a pound a-week, and he was always making a few shillings extra by mending his fellow-workmen's shoes, a job at which he was rather expert. Busy as he was with his various tasks, he found time to fall in love. Pretty f.a.n.n.y Henderson, a servant at a neighbouring farm, caught his fancy; and getting her shoes to mend, it cost him a great effort to return them to the comely owner after they were patched up. He carried them about with him in his pocket for some time, and would pull them out, and then gaze fondly at them with as much emotion as the old story tells us the sight of the dainty gla.s.s slipper, which Cinderella dropped at the ball, excited in the breast of the young prince. Bent upon taking up house for himself, with f.a.n.n.y as presiding genius, Stephenson now began to save up, and declared himself a "rich man" when he put his first guinea in the box.

Instead of spending the Sat.u.r.day afternoon with his fellow-workmen in the public-house, Stephenson employed himself in taking the engine to pieces, and cleaning it; but besides his attention to work, he was also remarkable for his skill at putting and wrestling, in which he beat most of his comrades. And he was not without pluck either, as he let a great hulking fellow, who was the bully of the village, know to his cost, by giving him such a drubbing as made him a "sadder and wiser man" for some time afterwards. He still continued his attendance at the night-school, till he had got out of the master as much instruction in arithmetic as he was able to supply.

By the time he was of age he had saved up enough to take a little cottage and furnish it comfortably, though, of course, very humbly; and in the winter of 1802, f.a.n.n.y, now Mrs. George Stephenson, rode home from church on horseback, seated on a pillion behind her husband, with her arms round his waist; and very proud and happy, we may be sure, he was that day, as the neighbours came to their doors to wish him "G.o.d speed"

in his new mode of life.

Having learned all he could from the village teacher, George Stephenson now began to study mensuration and mathematics at home by himself; but he also found time to make a number of experiments in the hope of finding out the secret of perpetual motion, and to make shoe-lasts and shoes, as well as mend them. At the end of 1803 his only son, Robert, was born; and soon after the family removed to Killingworth, seven miles from Newcastle, where George got the place of brakesman. They had not been settled long here when f.a.n.n.y died--a loss which affected George deeply, and attached him all the more intensely to the offspring of their union. At this time everything seemed to go wrong with him. As if his wife's death was not grief enough, his father met with an accident which deprived him of his eye-sight, and shattered his frame; George himself was drawn for the militia, and had to pay a heavy sum of money for a subst.i.tute; and with his father, and mother, and his own boy to support, at a time when taxes were excessive and food dear, he had only a salary of 50 or 60 a-year to meet all claims. He was on the verge of despair, and would have emigrated to America, if, fortunately for our country, he had not been unable to raise sufficient money for his pa.s.sage. So he had to stay in the old country, where a bright and glorious future awaited him, dark and desperate as the prospect then appeared.

He still went on making models and experiments, and perfecting his knowledge of his own engine. To add to his earnings he also took to clock-cleaning, with the view of saving up enough to give his boy the best education it was in his power to bestow. "In the earlier period of my career," he used afterwards to say, "when Robert was a little boy, I saw how deficient I was in education, and I made up my mind that he should not labour under the same defect, but that I would put him to a good school, and give him a liberal training. I was, however, a poor man, and how do you think I managed? I betook myself to mending my neighbours' clocks and watches at nights, after my daily labour was done, and thus I procured the means of educating my son." George began by teaching his son to work with him; and when the little chap could not reach so high as to put a clock-hand on, would set him on a chair for the purpose, and very proud Robert was whenever he could "help father"

in any of his jobs.

About this time a new pit having been sunk in the district where he worked, the engine fixed for the purpose of pumping the water out of the shaft was found a failure. This soon reached George's ears. He walked over to the pit, carefully examined the various parts of the machinery, and turned the matter over in his mind. One day when he was looking at it, and almost convinced that he had discovered the cause of the failure, one of the workmen came up, and asked him if he could tell what was wrong.

"Yes," said George; "and I think I could alter it, and in a week's time send you to the bottom."

George offered his services to the engineer. Every expedient had been tried to repair the engine, and all had failed. There could be no harm, if no good, in Stephenson trying his hand at it. So he got leave, and set to work. He took the engine entirely to pieces, and in four days had repaired it thoroughly, so that the workmen could get to the bottom and proceed with their labours. George Stephenson's skill as an engine-doctor began to be noised abroad, and secured him the post of engine-wright at Killingworth, with a salary of 100 a-year. Robert was now old enough to go to school, and was sent to one in Newcastle, to which, dressed in a suit of coa.r.s.e grey stuff cut out by his father, he rode every day upon a donkey. Robert spent much of his spare time in the Literary and Philosophical Inst.i.tute of Newcastle; and would sometimes take home a volume from the library, which father and son would eagerly peruse together. Occasionally they tried chemical experiments together; and now and then Robert would try his hand by himself. On one occasion he electrified the cows in an adjacent enclosure by means of an electric kite, making the bewildered animals dash madly about the field, with their tails erect on end; and another time he administered a severe electric shock to his father's Galloway pony, which nearly knocked it over, and drew down upon him the affected wrath of his father, who, coming out at the instant, shook his whip at him and called him a mischievous scoundrel, though pleased all the while at the lad's ingenuity and enterprise. As an early proof of the former, there still stands over the cottage door at Killingworth a sun-dial, constructed by Robert when he was thirteen years old, with some little help from his father.

The idea of constructing a steam-engine to run on the colliery tram-roads leading to the shipping-place was now receiving considerable attention from the engineering community. Several schemes had been propounded, and engines actually made; but none of them had been brought into use. A mistaken notion prevailed that the plain round wheels of an engine would slip round without catching hold of the rails, and that thus no progress would be made; but George Stephenson soon became convinced that the weight of the engine would of itself be sufficient to press the wheels to the rails, so that they could not fail to bite. He turned the subject over and over in his mind, tested his conceptions by countless experiments, and at length completed his scheme. Money for the construction of a locomotive engine on his plan having been supplied by Lord Ravensworth, one was made after many difficulties, and placed upon the tram-road at Killingworth, where it drew a load of 30 tons up a somewhat steep gradient at the rate of four miles an hour. Still there was very little saving in cost, and little advance in speed as compared with horse-power; but in a second one, which Stephenson quickly set about constructing, he turned the waste steam into the chimney to increase the draught, and thus puff the fuel into a brisker flame, and create a larger volume of steam to propel the locomotive. The fundamental principles of the engine thus formed remain in operation to this day; and it may in truth be termed the progenitor of the great locomotive family.

In 1821 George Stephenson got the appointment of engineer, with 300 of salary, to the Stockton and Darlington Railway Company, in the Act of Parliament for which power was given to use locomotive engines, if needful, either for the conveyance of goods or pa.s.sengers. When the line was opened, it was worked partly by horses and partly by locomotive and stationary engines. This led to a partnership between Mr. Edward Pease of Darlington, the chief projector of the line, and Stephenson, in a locomotive manufactory in Newcastle,--for many years the only one of the kind in existence.

Meanwhile, young Robert Stephenson, having spent a year or two in gaining a practical acquaintance with the machinery and working of a colliery, went to the University of Edinburgh, where he spent a session in attending the courses of lectures on chemistry, natural philosophy, and geology. He made the best of his opportunities; and that he might profit to the utmost by the lectures, he studied short-hand, and took them all down _verbatim_, transcribing his notes every evening before he went to bed. Robert brought home the prize for mathematics, and showed he had made so much progress at college that, though the 80 which the session cost was a large sum to his father at that time, George never failed, then or afterwards, to declare that it was one of the best investments he had ever made.

After a year or two in his father's locomotive factory, Robert spent two or three years in charge of the machinery of a mining company in Columbia, and returned to England at the close of 1827, to find the great question, "Whether locomotives can be successfully and profitably applied to pa.s.senger traffic?" hotly agitated, his father, almost alone, taking the side of the travelling, against that of the fixed engines, and insisting that the wheel and the rail were clearly and closely part of one system.

The success of the Darlington line induced the Liverpool merchants to project a line between that town and Manchester; and George Stephenson was almost unanimously chosen engineer, though it was still undetermined whether the new line should be worked by steam or horse power. But, apart from that question, a great, and, as it appeared to most of the engineers of the time, an insurmountable difficulty existed in the quagmire of Chat Moss,--an enormous ma.s.s of watery pulp, which rose in height in wet, and sank in dry weather like a sponge, and over whose treacherous depths it was p.r.o.nounced impossible to form a firm road. It was perfect madness to think of such a thing, said the engineers, and none of them would support Stephenson's scheme; but he resolved to see what could be done. Truck-load after truck-load of stuff was emptied into the moss, and still the insatiable bog kept gaping as though it had not had half a feed. The directors, alarmed, would have abandoned the project, had they not been so deeply involved that they were obliged to let Stephenson continue. But he never doubted himself--not for a moment.

He only pushed on the works more vigorously; and, before six months were over, the directors found themselves whirling along over the very bog they expected all their capital was to be fruitlessly sunk to the bottom of. Still, no decision had been come to as to whether locomotive or fixed engines were to be adopted; and the Stephensons were still battling bravely in favour of the locomotive against a host of opponents. Robert did his father good service by the able and pithy pamphlets which he wrote on the subject; and at length their perseverance was rewarded by the directors consenting to employ a locomotive, if they could get one that would run at the rate of ten miles an hour, and not weigh more than six tons, including tender; and offering a reward of 500 for the best engine fulfilling these conditions. George Stephenson and his son set to work immediately, and the product of their united skill and ingenuity was the celebrated _Rocket_, which carried off the prize, and attained a speed of twenty-nine miles on the opening day. The practicability and success of the locomotive was now beyond a doubt; from that day forward public opinion began to turn. Of course, for many a long year afterwards there were not wanting numbers of bigoted men of the old school who cried down the new-fangled system, and would hear of no means of transit but the stage-coach and the ca.n.a.l-boat. But shrewd folk, like the old Duke of Bridgewater, whose faculties were sharpened by their pockets being in danger, could not help crying out, "There's mischief in these tram-ways!

I wish the ca.n.a.ls mayn't suffer;" and, within ten years of the day when the _Rocket_ went puffing triumphantly along the Liverpool and Manchester line, most sensible people had become convinced of the importance of the locomotive railway, and scarcely a princ.i.p.al town in the country but was supplied with a line.

The Stephensons had fought a hard fight for their protege, "rail and wheel," and now they were to reap the fruits of their enterprise and foresight. To nearly all the most important of the new lines George Stephenson acted as engineer; and thus, in the course of two years, above 321 miles of railway were constructed under his superintendence, at a cost of 11,000,000 sterling. Robert at first left his father to attend to the laying out of railways, and directed his attention to the improvement of the locomotive in all its details, experimenting incessantly, and trying now one new device, now another. "It was astonishing," says Mr. Smiles, "to observe the rapidity of the improvements effected,--every engine turned out of Stephenson's workshops exhibiting an advance upon its predecessor in point of speed, power, and working efficiency."

By this time George had taken up his residence at Tapton House, near Chesterfield, where he continued to reside for the remainder of his life. Close by were some extensive coal-pits, which he had taken in lease, and from which he supplied London with the first coals sent by railway. He was now a man of wealth and fame, known and honoured throughout his own country, and in many foreign ones, and blessed with many a staunch, true friend. More than once he was offered knighthood by Sir Robert Peel, but declined the honour. As he grew up in years, he gradually abandoned his railway business to the charge of his son, and settled down into a quiet country gentleman of agricultural tastes. He was very fond of gardening and farming, and spent many a long day superintending the operations in the fields. When a boy, he had always been very fond of taming birds and rabbits, and had once had flocks of robins, which, in the hard winter, used to come hopping round his feet for crumbs. And now, in his old age, he had special pets among his dogs and horses, and was proud of his superior breed of rabbits. There was scarcely a nest on his estate that he was not acquainted with; and he used to go round from day to day to look at them, and see that they were kept uninjured.

The year before his death he visited Sir Robert Peel at Drayton Manor.

Dr. Buckland, the geologist, was of the party. One Sunday, as they were returning from church, they observed a train speeding along the valley in the distance.

"Now, Buckland," said Mr. Stephenson, "I have a poser for you. Can you tell me what is the power that is driving that train?"

"Well," said the other, "I suppose it is one of your big engines."

"But what drives the engine?"

"Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver."

"What do you say to the light of the sun?"

"How can that be?" asked the professor.

"It is nothing else," said the engineer. "It is light bottled up in the earth for tens of thousands of years--light, absorbed by plants and vegetables, being necessary for the condensation of carbon during the process of their growth, if it be not carbon in another form; and now, after being buried in the earth for long ages in fields of coal, that latent light is again brought forth and liberated, made to work as in that locomotive, for great human purposes."

On the 12th of August 1848, this great, good man--one of the truest heroes that ever lived, and one of the greatest benefactors of our country--pa.s.sed from among us, leaving his son, Robert, to develop and extend the great work of which he had laid the foundation.

Among one of the first railways of any extent of which Robert Stephenson had the laying out, was the London and Birmingham; and it is related, as an ill.u.s.tration of his conscientious perseverance in executing the task, that in the course of the examination of the country he walked over the whole of the intervening districts upwards of twenty times. Many other lines, in England and abroad, were executed by him in rapid succession; and it was stated a few years ago, that the lines of railway constructed under his superintendence had involved an outlay of 70,000,000 sterling.

The three great works, however, with which his name will always be most intimately a.s.sociated, and which are the grandest monuments of his genius, are the High Level Bridge at Newcastle, the Britannia Bridge across the Menai Straits, and the Victoria Bridge across the St.

Lawrence at Montreal. The first two are sufficiently well known--the one springing across the valley of the Tyne, between the busy towns of Newcastle and Gateshead; the other spanning, in mid air, a wide arm of the sea, at such a height that vessels of large burden in full sail can pa.s.s beneath. The third great effort of Robert Stephenson's prolific brain he did not live to see the completion of. The Victoria Bridge at Montreal is constructed on the same principle as the Britannia Bridge, but on a much larger scale. "The Victoria Bridge," says Mr. Smiles, "with its approaches, is only sixty yards short of two miles in length.

In its gigantic strength and majestic proportions, there is no structure to compare with it in ancient or modern times. It consists of not less than twenty-five immense tubular bridges joined into one; the great central span being 332 feet, the others, 242 feet in length. The weight of the wrought iron on the bridge is about 10,000 tons, and the piers are of ma.s.sive stone, containing some 8000 tons each of solid masonry."