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Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science
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 – passed 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 illustration 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 associated, 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 pass 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 massive stone, containing some 8000 tons each of solid masonry."
After the completion of the Britannia Bridge, and again after the opening of the High Level Bridge, Robert Stephenson was offered the honour of knighthood, which, like his father before him, he respectfully declined. In 1857 he received the title of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford; and for many years before his death he represented Whitby in Parliament. He was passionately fond of yachting, and almost immediately after a trip to Norway in the summer of 1859, he was seized with a mortal illness, and died in the beginning of October. On the 14th October he was buried in Westminster, amongst the illustrious dead of England.
No man could be more beloved than Robert Stephenson was by a wide circle of friends, and none better deserved it. "In society," writes one who had opportunities of intercourse with him, "he was simply charming and fascinating in the highest degree, from his natural goodness of heart and the genial zest with which he relished life himself and participated its enjoyment with others. He was generous and even princely in his expenditure – not upon himself, but on his friends. On board the Titania, or at his house in Gloucester Square, his frequent and numerous guests found his splendid resources at all times converted to their gratification with a grace of hospitality which, although sedulous, was never oppressive. There was nothing of the patron in his manner, or of the Olympic condescension which is sometimes affected by much lesser men. A friend (and how many friends he had!) was at once his equal, and treated with republican freedom, yet with the most high-bred courtesy and happy considerateness… His payment of half the debt of £6000, which weighed like an incubus on an institution at Newcastle, is generally known; but his private charities were as boundless as his nature was generous, and as quietly performed as that nature was unostentatious. Such, then, was Robert Stephenson, as complete a character in the multifarious relations of life as probably any man has met or will meet in the course of his experience. Not unlike, or rather exceedingly like, his father in some respects, especially in the easy, unimposing manner in which he went about his life's work, he was hardly to be accounted his father's inferior, except perhaps in the heroic quality of combativeness. Father and son, independently of each other, and both in conjunction, have left grand and beneficent results to posterity, and both recall to us Monckton Milnes's men of old, who
"'Went about their gravest tasksLike noble boys at play.'"III. – THE GROWTH OF RAILWAYS
It was about the year 1818 that Thomas Gray of Nottingham, travelling in the north of England, happened to visit one of the collieries. As he stood watching a train of loaded waggons being propelled by steam along the tram-road which led from the mouth of the pit to the wharf where the coals were shipped, the idea flashed through his mind that the same system was applicable to the ordinary purposes of locomotion.
"Why!" he exclaimed to the engineer who was showing him over the place, – "why are there not tram-roads laid down all over England so as to supersede our common roads, and steam engines employed to drag waggons full of goods, and carriages full of passengers along them, instead of horse-power?"
"Propose that to the nation," replied his companion, "and see what you will get by it. Why, sir, you would be worried to death for your pains."
Gray was not to be balked, however. The idea took firm possession of his mind, and became the one great subject of his thoughts and conversation. He talked about it to everybody whom he met, and who had patience to listen to him, wrote letters and memorials to public men, and afterwards appealed to the people at large. He was laughed at as a whimsical, crochetty fellow, and no one gave any serious attention to his views. Mr. Jones of Gromford Manor, and Mr. Pease of Darlington, also distinguished themselves by their agitation in favour of railways, at a time when they were regarded with suspicion and alarm. The growing trade of Liverpool and Manchester, and other large towns, however, spoke more imperatively and forcibly in favour of the new project than any amount of individual agitation. The means of communication between the various manufacturing towns had fallen far behind their wants; and it was at length felt that some new system must be adopted. The railroad and the locomotive got a trial; and before long the carriers' carts and the stage coaches were driven off the road for want of custom, although the conveyance of goods and passengers throughout the country went on multiplying an hundred-fold. One can fancy the astonishment and awe with which the country-folk watched the progress of the first railway train through their peaceful acres, – how old and young left their work and rushed out to see the marvellous spectacle, – how the "oldest inhabitants" shook their heads, and muttered about changed times, – how the horses in the field trembled with fear, and threw up their heels at their iron rival as it went snorting past – a strange, iron monster, the handicraft of man, able to drag the heaviest burdens, and yet outstrip Flying Childers or Eclipse, as fresh at the end of a journey as at the beginning, and never to be tired out by any toil, if only kept in meat and drink. Just as in the days of Charles the First, honest, short-sighted folk prophesied the ruin of the empire and a judgment upon the use of coaches, and bewailed the misfortunes of the hundreds of able-bodied men who would be thrown out of employment; so in the early days of the railroad, great fears were entertained that the horses' occupation would be gone, and that the noble breed would quickly become extinct. There was no measure to the lamentations over the ruin of that great institution of English life – the stage-coach, with its gallant driver and guard, and spanking team.
The extension of the railway system is one of the wonders of our time. The few score miles of railroad planted in 1825 have put forth offshoots and branches, till now a mighty net-work of some ten thousand miles in all, is spread over the three kingdoms, with many fresh shoots in bud. Up to the end of 1834, when not a hundred miles of railway were open, the annual average of travellers by coach was some six millions a year; ten years afterwards there were more than four times that number, and to-day the annual average is more than a hundred millions! The number of persons employed upon the working railroads of the United Kingdom amount to about one hundred and thirty thousand, while nearly half as many find employment in the construction of new lines.
A few facts, stated by the late Mr. Robert Stephenson, illustrate in a very striking manner the gigantic proportion of the railway system of Great Britain: – The railway has pierced the earth with tunnels to the extent of more than fifty miles, and there are about twelve miles of viaducts in the vicinity of London alone. The earthworks which have been thrown up would measure 550,000,000 cubic yards, beside which St. Paul's would shrink to a pigmy, for it would form a pyramid a mile and a half high, with a base larger than the whole of St. James's Park. Every moment four tons of coal flashes into steam twenty tons of water – as much water as would suffice to supply the domestic and other wants of a town the size of Liverpool, and as much coal as equals half the consumption of the metropolis. The wear and tear is so great that twenty thousand tons of iron have to be replaced annually, and three hundred thousand trees, or as much as five thousand acres could produce, have to be felled for sleepers.
When George Stephenson was planning the Liverpool and Manchester line, the directors entreated him, when they went to Parliament, not to talk of going at a faster rate than ten miles an hour, or he "would put a cross on the concern." George was sanguine, however, and spoke of fifteen miles an hour, to the astonishment of the committee, who began to think him crazy. The average speed is now twenty-five miles an hour, and a mile a minute can be done, if need be. The wind is hard pushed to keep ahead of a good engine at its fullest speed.3 The express trains on the "broad gauge" of the Great Western travel at the rate of fifty-one miles an hour, or forty-three, including stoppages. To attain this rate, a speed of sixty miles an hour is adopted midway between some of the stations, and even seventy miles an hour have been reached in certain experimental trips. The engines on this line can draw a passenger-train weighing one hundred and twenty tons at a speed of sixty miles an hour, the engine and tender themselves weighing an additional fifty-two tons. The ordinary luggage-trains weigh some six hundred tons each. The locomotive, however, goes on the principle that the labourer is worthy of his hire; if it works hard, it eats voraciously. At ordinary mail speed the engine consumes about twenty lbs. of coke per mile; so that, costing £2500 to begin with, and spending an allowance of £2000 a year – as much as an under-secretary of state – the locomotive is rather an extravagant customer – only, it works very hard for the money, and earns it over and over again. With all its strength and size, the locomotive is a much more delicate concern than would be supposed; the 5416 different pieces of which it is composed must be put together as carefully as a watch, and, though guaranteed to go two years without a doctor, exacts the most devoted attention from its guardians to keep it in order.
It would fill a volume of huge dimensions to dilate on all the phases of the social revolution which the modern railway has wrought in our own and other countries; how it is daily annihilating time and space, and making the Land's End and John o'Groat's House next door neighbours; rubbing down old prejudices and jealousies, both national and provincial, promoting commerce, developing manufacture, transforming poor little villages into flourishing towns, and industrious towns into mighty cities; carrying civilization into the heart of the jungle and the desert, and, with its twin-brother, the steam-ship, joining hands and hearts in peace and amity all the world over. After the wonders of the last thirty years, who can doubt that our children, at the close of the century, will regard us as little less backward than we now do our fathers at its dawn?
The Lighthouse
I. – THE EDDYSTONE
When worthy Mr. Phillips, the Liverpool Quaker, taking thought in what way he could best benefit his fellow-creatures, built the beacon on the Smalls Rock in 1772, he could hardly have made a happier selection of "a great good to serve and save humanity." There are few enterprises more heroic or beneficent than those connected with the construction and management of lighthouses. From first to last, from the rearing of the column on the rock to the monotonous, nightly vigil in attendance on the lamps – from the setting to the rising of the sun – the valour, intrepidity, and endurance, of all concerned are called into play, and the wild perils and stirring adventures they experience impart to the story of their labours a thrilling and romantic interest. In the case of the Smalls Lighthouse, for instance, Whiteside, the self-taught engineer, and his party of Cornish miners had no sooner landed, and got a long iron shaft worked a few feet into the rock, than a storm arose that drove away their cutter, and kept them clinging with the tenacity of despair to the half-fastened rod for three days and two nights, when the wind fell and the sea calmed, and they were rescued, rather dead than alive, numbed from their long immersion in the water, which rose almost to their necks, and exhausted from want of food. And after the lighthouse had been erected, the engineer and some of his men again found themselves, as a paper in a bottle they had cast into the sea revealed to those on shore, in a "most dangerous and distressed condition on the Smalls," cut off from the mainland by the stormy weather, without fuel, and almost at the end of their stock of food and water – in which alarming situation they had to remain some time before their friends could get out to their relief. Most sea-girt beacons have their own legends of similar perils and fortitude; and the narratives of the erection of the three great lighthouses of Eddystone, Inchcape, and Skerryvore, which may be selected as the types of the rest, are full of incidents as exciting as any "hair breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach."
About fourteen miles south from Plymouth, and ten from the Ram's Head, on the Cornish coast, lies a perilous reef of rocks, against which the long rolling swell of the Atlantic waves dashes with appalling force, and breaks up into those swirling eddies from which the reef is named – the Eddystone. Upon these treacherous crags many a gallant vessel has foundered and gone down within sight of the shore it had scarcely quitted or was just about to reach; and situated in the midst of a much frequented track, the rapid succession of calamities at the Eddystone was not long in awakening men's minds to the necessity of some warning light. The exposure of the reef to the wild fury of the Atlantic, and the small extent of the surface of the chief rock, however, rendered the construction of a lighthouse in such a situation a work of great and (as it was long considered) insuperable difficulty. The project was long talked of before any one was found daring enough to attempt the task; and when at length in 1696 Henry Winstanley stepped forward to undertake it, he might have been thought of all others the very last from whose brain so serious a conception would have emanated. The great hobby of his life had been to fill his house at Littlebury, in Essex, with mechanical devices of the most absurd and fantastic kind. If a visitor, retiring to his bedroom, kicked aside an old slipper on the floor, purposely thrown in his way, up started a ghost of hideous form. If, startled at the sight, he fell back into an arm chair placed temptingly at hand, a pair of gigantic arms would instantly spring forth and clasp him a prisoner in their rude embrace. Tired of these disagreeable surprises, the astonished guest perhaps took refuge in the garden, and sought repose in a pleasant arbour by the side of a canal; but he had scarcely seated himself, when he found himself suddenly set adrift on the water, where he floated about till his whimsical host came to his relief. Such was the man who now entered upon one of the most formidable engineering enterprises in the world.
Although Winstanley's lighthouse was but a slight affair compared with its successors, it occupied six years in the erection – the frequent rising of the sea over the rock, and the difficulty and danger of passing to and from it greatly retarding the operations, and rendering them practicable only during a short summer season. For ten or fourteen days after a storm had passed, and when all was calm elsewhere, the ground-swell from the Atlantic was often so heavy among these rocks that the waves sprang two hundred feet, and more, in the air, burying the works from sight. The first summer was spent in boring twelve holes in the rock, and fixing therein twelve large irons as a holdfast for the works that were to be reared. The next season saw the commencement of a round pillar, which was to form the steeple of the tower, as well as afford protection to the workmen while at their labours. When Winstanley bade farewell to the rock for that year, the tower had risen to the height of twelve feet; and resuming operations next spring, he built at it till it reached the height of eighty feet. Having got the apartments fit for occupation, and the lantern set up, Winstanley determined to take up his abode there with his men, in order that no time might be lost in going to and from the rock. The first night they spent on the rock a great storm arose, and for eleven days it was impossible to hold any communication with the shore. "Not being acquainted with the height of the sea's rising," writes the architect, "we were almost drowned with wet, and our provisions in as bad a condition, though we worked night and day as much as possible to make shelter for ourselves." The storm abating, they went on shore for a little repose; but soon returning, set to work again with undiminished energy.
On the 14th November of the same year (1698), Winstanley lighted his lantern for the first time. A long spell of boisterous weather followed, and it was not till three days before Christmas that they were able to quit their desolate abode, being "almost at the last extremity for want of provisions; but by good Providence then two boats came with provisions and the family that was to take care of the light; and so ended this year's work."
It was soon found that the sea rose to a much greater height than had been anticipated, the lantern, although sixty feet above the rock, being often "buried under water." Winstanley was, therefore, under the necessity of enlarging the tower and carrying it to a greater elevation. The fourth season, accordingly, was spent in encasing the tower with fresh outworks, and adding forty feet to its height. This proved too high for its strength to bear; and in the course of three years the winds and waves had made sad havoc in the unstable fabric.
In November 1703, Winstanley went out to the rock himself, accompanied by his workmen, to institute the repairs. As he was putting off in the boat from Plymouth, a friend who had for some time before been watching the condition of the lighthouse with much anxiety, mentioned to him his suspicion that it was in a bad way, and could not last long. Winstanley, full of faith in the stability of his work, replied that "he only wished to be there in the greatest storm that ever blew under the face of the heavens, that he might see what effect it would have on his structure." And with these words he shoved off from the beach, and made for the rock.
With the last gleams of daylight, before the night fell and shrouded it from view, the tower was seen rising proudly from the midst of the waters. Before the dawn it had disappeared for ever, and the waves were lashing fiercely round the bare bleak ledge of the fatal rock. Poor Winstanley had had his presumptuous wish only too fully realized. The storm of the 26th November was one of the most fearful that ever ravaged our shores. The whole coast suffered severely from its fury, and when the morning came, not a sign remained of the lighthouse, architect, or workmen, save a fragment of chain-cable wedged firmly into a crevice of the rock. The disappearance of the warning light was quickly followed by the wreck of a large homeward-bound man-of-war, and the loss of nearly all her crew, upon the rocks.
This first Eddystone lighthouse was a strange, fantastic looking structure, deficient in every element of stability, and the wonder was not that it fell in pieces as it did, but that it was able to withstand so long the boisterous weather of the Channel. But if of little merit as an architect, Winstanley at least deserves respect, as Smeaton remarks, for the heroism he displayed in undertaking "a piece of work that before had been looked on as impossible."
For four years the Eddystone remained bare and untenanted, till, in the summer of 1706, the erection of a new lighthouse was commenced under the superintendence of John Rudyerd, by profession a silk-mercer in Ludgate Hill, but by natural genius an engineer of considerable merit. With such skill and energy did he apply himself to the work, that before two summers were over his tower was completed, and its friendly light beamed over the troubled waters and sunken crags. Rudyerd's lighthouse was entirely of wood, weighted at the base by a few courses of mason work, and 92 feet in height. In form, it was a smooth, solid cone of elegant simplicity, unbroken by any of those ornamental outworks, which offered the wind and sea so many points to lay hold of, in Winstanley's whimsical pagoda. Smeaton speaks of Rudyerd's tower as a masterly performance; and had it not been destroyed by fire, forty-six years after its erection, there seems little reason to suppose it might not have been standing to this day, – although no doubt the ravages of the worm in the wood would have demanded frequent repairs. On the 2d December 1755, some fishermen who happened to be on the beach very early in the morning preparing their nets, were startled by the sight of volumes of smoke issuing from the lighthouse. They instantly gave the alarm, and a boat was quickly manned for the relief of the sufferers. It did not reach the rock till about ten o'clock, and the fire had then been raging for eight hours. It was first discovered by the light-keeper upon watch who, going into the lantern about two o'clock in the morning to snuff the candles, found the place filled with smoke. He opened the door of the lantern into the balcony, and a mass of flame immediately burst from the inside of the cupola. He lost no time in seizing the buckets of water kept at hand, and dashing them over the fire, but without effect. His two companions were asleep, and it was some time before they heard his shouts for assistance. When at length they did bestir themselves, all the water in the house was exhausted. The light-keeper – an old man in his ninety-fourth year – urged them to replenish the buckets from the sea; but the difficulty of lowering the buckets to such a depth, and their confusion and terror at the sudden catastrophe and their impending fate, destroyed their presence of mind, and rendered them quite powerless. The old man did his best to prevent the advance of the flames; but, exhausted by the unavailing labour, and severely injured by the melting lead from the roof, he had to desist. As the fire spread from point to point, with rapid strides descending from the summit to the base, the poor wretches fled before it, retreating from room to room, till at last they were driven to seek shelter from the blazing timbers and red hot bars, in a cleft of the rock. There they were found by their preservers, crouching together half dead with suffering and fright. It was with the greatest difficulty that they were got into the boat; and they had no sooner reached the shore than one of them, crazed by the terrors he had undergone, ran away, and was never heard of more. The old man lingered on for a few days in great agony, and died from the injuries he had received.