George Stephenson (17 page)

When Robert arrived in London during early 1824, to do some parliamentary work for the Darlington railway but spinning out his stay as long as possible, he was also making his departure plans for South America, though from a letter to Longridge written in March he is obviously trying to keep his latest plans secret from his father. This is the first mention of Colombia and Robert is clearly very excited.

Imperial Hotel, Covent Garden:

March 9, 1824

DEAR SIR, – Your letter the other day gave me pleasure in hearing you were going on (I suppose, of course, at Forth Street) pretty regularly. I wrote to my father this morning, but positively I durst not mention how long it would be before I should be able to reach once more the North. Indeed, I scarcely dare give it a thought myself. I saw Mr. Newburn yesterday, and he informed me it would at least be fourteen days before I could get my liberty. For heaven's sake don't mention this to my father. Joseph Pease will perhaps give him the information: it will, I know, make him extremely dissatisfied, but you know I cannot by any means avoid it. There are some new prospects here in agitation, which I look forward to with great satisfaction. It is the making of a road in Colombia. What a place London is for prospects! This new scheme of the road or railway is also connected with four silver mines at Mariquita. The road is projected between La Guayra and the city of Caracas. You may find La Guayra on the coast, I believe, of the Gulf of Mexico. The climate, from Humboldt, is not quite so salubrious as that of Mexico. Mr. Powles is the head of the concern, and he assures me there is no one to meddle with us. We are to have all the machinery to make, and we are to construct the road in the most advisable way we may think, after making surveys and levellings.

The date of this letter, 9 March 1824, shows that Robert was making plans for Colombia long
before
George got the Liverpool job (in May 1824), which should disprove once and for all that he rushed to Colombia out of pique for the displacement of James. He also admits in this letter that the Colombian climate cannot be described as an attraction. The big attraction of South America must simply have been to do something new and exciting well away from his father.

Apart from a need to create his own identity, having been well and truly trained and educated and, indeed, used by his father for so long, emotionally and practically, Robert felt that at twenty the last thing he wanted to do was to join a family firm up in Newcastle, in however important a position. He must have felt that he was being forced into a corner. This was it, for ever, a lifetime's occupation. And he'd better be duly grateful for what his father and his father's friends were doing for him.

For all his integrity and high principles, Robert pulled a slight fast one over his father and business partners. He did eventually get permission, however reluctantly it was given, from his father and partner to have leave of absence from the Newcastle locomotive works, telling them that he'd signed a contract for only one year. It was only after his departure that they discovered that in fact he'd signed on for three years. It was no doubt fear that he would never get away, rather than deceit, which made him mislead them. A slight feeling of fear of his father, mixed with awe, comes through in many of his letters.

George finally realised that his son wanted to go off and stretch his wings in a new country and there was nothing more he could do about it, no further inducements he could offer. As it was to be only for a year, so he thought, he might as well make the best of it, though it couldn't have come at a worse time – with the Darlington and Liverpool lines now both under way – and though he had personally been very hurt and saddened by his son's decision.

In a letter written to Longridge on 7 June, eleven days before Robert's departure, George sounds distinctly miserable, even bitter, though trying hard to hide it, at the prospect of travelling to Liverpool in time to see Robert off. ‘I am a little more cheerful to night as I have quite come to a conclusion that there is nothing for me but hard work in this world therefore I may as well be

cheerful as not.'

After he arrived in Liverpool and met up with Robert to bid him farewell, George wrote to Longridge, this time on 15 June, saying what a pleasure it has been to see Robert again. He describes the smart dinner parties that he and Robert have been to together.

Liverpool: June 15, 1824

DEAR SIR,– I arrived here on Saturday afternoon, and found Mr. Sanders, Robert, and Charles, waiting for me at the coach office. It gave me great pleasure to see Robert again before he sails. He expects to leave the country on Thursday next. We dined with Mr. Sanders on Saturday, and with Mr. Ellis yesterday. He had three men servants waiting in the entrance hall to show us to the drawing-room. There was a party to meet us, and kindly we were received. The dinner was very sumptuous, and the wine costly. We had claret, hock, champagne, and madeira, and all in great plenty; but no one took more than was proper. It is a good custom not to press people to take so much as does them harm. We dined at seven and left at twelve o'clock. Sanders and Ellis are magnificent fellows, and are very kind; Mrs. Sanders is a fine woman, and Mrs. Ellis very elegant. I believe she is niece to Sir James Graham, M.P.; I must say that we have been very kindly received by all parties. I am teased with invitations to dine with them, but each indulgence cannot be attended by me. What changes one sees! – this day in the highest life, and the next in a cottage – one day turtle soup and champagne, and the next bread and milk, or anything that one can catch. Liverpool is a splendid place – some of the streets are equal to London. The merchants are clever chaps, and perseverance is stamped upon every brow. There is a Doctor Trail, a clever mineralogist, and some famous mathematicians that we have dined with. I was much satisfied to find that Robert could acquit himself so well amongst them. He was much improved in expressing himself since I had seen him before; the poor fellow is in good spirits about going abroad, and I must make the best of it. It was singular good fortune that brought us together at this time, but the weather is very bad; it has poured with rain for the last three days. Today I am going over part of the line, but have not been able to commence yet. Robert will endeavour to write to you before he sails, and desires his kindest remembrance.

God bless you, Sir!

Believe me to remain

Yours sincerely,

G.S.

There is not the slightest hint in this letter of any row between George and Robert. According to George, they were both enjoying their farewell dinner parties. They appear the best of friends, if George a rather sad one.

As for Robert himself, he was probably not at all pleased to be hanging around Liverpool. He had had every intention of going straight to South America without having to come north and wishing any sort of farewell to his father. The main baggage party for Colombia had already left England, sailing from Falmouth. Robert himself had earlier left London in a coach for Falmouth and South America, complete with all his luggage and instruments, when he received orders to turn around and start from Liverpool instead. This was George's singular good fortune, but not Robert's.

On his log during his first day at sea, Robert betrays neither sadness nor relief. He busies himself with recording the winds and the temperatures.

June 18, 1824. – Set sail from Liverpool in the ‘Sir William Congreve,' at three o'clock in the afternoon: wind from the south-east, sea smooth, day beautiful; temperature of the air towards evening in the shade, 58°. Made some experiments with ‘Register Thermometer' to ascertain the temperature of the sea at various depths, but failed on account of the velocity of the vessel through the water not allowing the instrument to sink. The temperature of the surface water appeared to be 54° at seven o'clock in the evening – this ascertained by lifting a bucket of water on board and immediately immersing the thermometer. This was considered as sufficiently accurate, as the temperature could not sensibly change in the time occupied by the experiment.

Meanwhile, George was left behind on his own, having bravely waved goodbye at Liverpool's Pier head, a spot from which many hundreds of thousands have set sail for the New World before and since, most of them never to return. Then he went sadly home. Liverpool was now his home. He had moved there a few days previously, as Liverpool had become the centre of his activities. The Darlington line was yet to open but the Liverpool job was obviously on a much bigger scale and was much more important. The problems and the disasters to come were also on a much bigger scale, the worst he would ever face in his career. He certainly needed to be cheerful, having to face them all without his beloved Robert.

8

L
IVERPOOL:
T
HE
S
TORY
S
O
F
AR

T
he Stockton–Darlington Railway, for all its achievements, was in many ways the pinnacle of the centuries old colliery railways. It was the most highly developed line of its time, using steam locomotives as the main power (though horses were used for passenger coaches until 1833) and in being open to the public, but it had been planned essentially to be a colliery line, and a little local one at that. The opening banquet at Stockton had been suitably jolly but the dignitaries were simply County Durham dignitaries plus representatives of other railways then being planned. We realise now, looking back, that it marked the beginning of a new era, but at the time the Stockton and Darlington Railway was not greeted as a national event.

The Liverpool–Manchester Railway was something different. From the beginning of its construction the eyes of the world were upon it. In every way, it was a gigantic venture, arguably the greatest feat of engineering which had ever been attempted. It was in every way bigger, more expensive and more dangerous an undertaking than the Darlington line. The locomotives, when they came to be unveiled, were four times as fast as the primitive engines on the Darlington line and from the very beginning passengers were a vital element. It set the pattern for almost a hundred years of railway. Not the least of its problems was the size and power of the opposition. George Stephenson couldn't possibly have known what he'd let himself in for.

The growth of the cities of Liverpool and Manchester in the first two decades of the nineteenth century can only be described as phenomenal. The population of Liverpool increased from 55,000 in 1790, to 119,000 in 1821 and that of Manchester from 57,000 to 133,000. Until the 1780s, cotton for the water-powered Lancashire mills had come from Turkey, plus some from the West Indies, all of it arriving at the port of London which meant a laborious and expensive road journey on pack horses up to Lancashire. When steam power came in with the industrial revolution, new and bigger supplies were needed and they turned to the USA, bringing it direct to the port of Liverpool. In 1792, 503 bags of raw cotton from the USA were landed at Liverpool. In 1823 the number was 412,020, another phenomenal increase for those interested in phenomenal increases. The
Liverpool Mercury
certainly was. In an article in July 1824, looking at the increase in shipping in the port of Liverpool where the tonnage had gone up from 450,000 in 1800 to 1,224,000 in 1824, a
Liverpool Mercury
correspondent said that in his opinion ‘so rapid an advance is unexampled in the history of the world'. Perhaps an overstatement but his excitement was certainly understandable.

The big problem was transport – how to get all that raw cotton quickly from Liverpool inland to Manchester and the surrounding cotton mills. The big answer was water. The long established Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company was making a fortune by shipping the cotton by river upstream. In 1825 shares in the company, originally purchased at £70, were selling at £1,250 and paying an annual dividend of £35.

They had naturally not been very pleased when James BrindIey, on behalf of the Duke of Bridgwater, had come along in 1759 and started to build a canal. The Bridgwater canal opened the canal age in Britain and the Duke himself made a fortune from the Liverpool–Manchester trade. Unlike his rival, the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company, which had thirty-nine different proprietors, the duke was the sole owner of his canal. In 1822 it was estimated that his family were still making an annual profit from the canal of £100,000 – a canal that had cost only £250,000 to build.

There were such rich pickings for both the river and the canal operators that they'd learned happily to live with each other. They had their own monopolies and made sure the prices were kept up even if the industrialists waiting for the cotton and other materials had to suffer. There was so much trade that raw cotton was left for weeks in Liverpool before being transported inland. Samuel Smiles reckoned that it was common for cotton to take longer to travel the thirty miles or so from Liverpool to Manchester than it took for it to cross the Atlantic in the first place. Liverpool was of course the home of transatlantic steamships, which was why Robert Stephenson had been sent up to Liverpool to get a better, faster boat to South America. It took until 1825 and the Darlington line for steam power to be successfully harnessed to railways, but steam had been at work on the high seas for at least a decade. (The first steam boat to cross the Atlantic, the
Savannah
, arrived in Liverpool in 1819, another landmark in the rise of Liverpool.)

The Darlington line had been in some ways a stab in the dark. They weren't quite sure of the trade that would be available or the profits to be made, which was why Edward Pease had always insisted on a modest 5 per cent. But in Liverpool, everyone was more than aware of the enormous amount of trade crying out to be transported. It was a pleasant situation for the canal men to be in. In the 1820s they were still relatively new and were sure their best days were to come. The river men were equally confident, in fact they'd recently spent £250,000 on deepening and widening the Mersey and Irwell. Both the river and canal interests, having invested a million or so pounds and made themselves several millions in return, were certainly not going to welcome any newcomers,