Read Ebook: The Rocket: The Story of the Stephensons Father and Son by Knight Helen C Helen Cross

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Ebook has 313 lines and 26605 words, and 7 pages

Andrew was proud of his pupil, and when George removed to another pit, the old schoolmaster shifted his quarters and followed him. His books did not damage his interest in business. Was the plugman going to stay plugman? No. Bill Coe, a friend of his advanced to be a brakeman, offered to show George. The other workmen objected. And one in particular stopped the working of the engine when George took hold of it; "for," he cried angrily, "Stephenson can't brake, and is too clumsy ever to learn."

A brakeman has charge of an engine for raising coal from a pit. The speed of the ascending coal, brought up in large hazel-wood baskets, is regulated by a powerful wooden brake, acting on the rim of the fly-wheel, which must be stopped just when the baskets reach the settle-board, where they are to be emptied. Brakemen were generally chosen from experienced engine-men of steady habits; and in spite of the grumbling of older colliers, envious perhaps at his rise, it was not long before George learned, and was appointed brakeman at the Dolly Pit. This was in 1801.

MENDING AND MAKING--LITTLE BOB.

George was now twenty--sober, faithful, and expert. Finding a little spare time on his hands, he took to cobbling to increase his gains, and from this source contrived to save his first guinea. To this greater diligence he was urged by his love for Fanny Henderson, a fine sweet-tempered girl, whom he shortly married, and began housekeeping in the upper room of a small cottage in Wellington, six miles from Newcastle. Happy were they in each other, and in their simple, industrious, and frugal habits; and when a little son was born to them, George, who loved birds, rabbits, and dogs so well, welcomed with all the tenderness of a father's heart the little Bobby.

Robert he was named, after the old fireman his grandfather.

Accidents, they say, will happen in the best-regulated families. Fanny's family was not an exception. One day the cottage chimney got on fire, and the neighbours, with friendly zeal, not only poured water enough down the chimney to put out a much bigger and more alarming fire, but enough to deluge the poor little home of the brakeman with soot and water, making a pitiful sight to the young husband when he reached it. His eight-day clock, the choicest bit of furniture the young couple had, was completely smothered by ashes. What was to be done? Sending it to a clock-maker for repairs was quite out of the question--it would cost too much.

The young man's reputation for business soon won him a situation in Killingworth--the best and largest colliery in the region. But his brightened worldly prospects were soon clouded by a dark sorrow--the death of his young wife, after three happy years of married life. Poor George felt it deeply, which was perhaps one reason for accepting a situation in Scotland, hoping in a change of scene to change the mournful current of his thoughts.

Those were dark days, however, for the working-men of England. War was draining the country of men and money. Taxes were high, wages low, bread scarce, and able-bodied men were liable at any time to be impressed for the army or naval service. George himself was drawn; and go he must, or find a substitute. He found one, but it cost all he had to hire him.

Poor George was in straits. His spirits were much damped by the prospect of things around and before him. All business was in a discouraging condition. Some of his friends were about to emigrate to America, and he at one time nearly concluded to join them. It was a sore trial to the young man. He loved his English home; and bitter tears did he in secret shed as he visited old haunts--the fields and lanes and scenes of his boyhood--feeling and fearing that all too soon the wide Atlantic might roll between him and them. But the necessary funds for such an enterprise were not forthcoming. George gave it up, therefore, and went to work for what wages the times would allow. Better times would come.

The thing nearest his heart was to afford his little son an education. Keenly alive to his own early deficiencies and disadvantages, he determined to make them up in Robert. Every spare moment was of two-fold value to him, and all the work he could pick up he cheerfully did. Besides tinkering old clocks and cobbling old shoes, he took to cutting out the pitmen's clothes. Never was there such a fit, for George acted fully up to the principle that everything which was worth doing was worth doing well.

Busy as were his hands, his mind was no less busy, catching up and using every scrap of knowledge which came in his way. And it was a perpetual surprise to his fellow-workmen to see what a knack he had at bettering things. Everything improved in his hands. There was always progress on his track.

A new pit was opened at one of the collieries. Streams of water rushed in, which the most vigorous strokes of the pump could not lower. On the engine went pumping, pumping, pumping for a year, and the water continued to flow in, until it was nearly concluded to give up the pit as a failure. George's curiosity and interest were much excited, and always, on seeing the men, he asked how matters were coming on.

"Drowned out, drowned out," was the one and the same answer.

Over he went to the poor pit, as often as he could, to see for himself; and over he turned in his mind again and again the whys and wherefores of the failure.

"Weel, George," said his friend Kit one day, "what do you mak' o' her? Do you think you could doctor her?"

"Man," answered George, "in a week's time I could send you to the bottom."

The regular engineers were in high dudgeon with the forth-putting brakeman. What right had he to know how to cure an evil that had baffled them? His words, however, were reported at head-quarters; and the contractor was not long in hastening over to see if he could make his words good.

"Well, George," he said, "they tell me you think you can put that engine to rights."

"Yes, sir," replied the young man modestly; "I think I can."

As matters could be no worse, Mr. Dodds was ready to let him try; and George agreed, on condition that he should choose his own men to help him. The old hands were highly indignant, but there was no help for it. So they were ordered off, and George with his gang went on.

Mr. Dodds, of course, was delighted. Over and above his wages he put a ten-pound note into the young man's hand, and engaged him to superintend his works for the future.

A profitable job was this.

The fame of this engineering exploit spread far and wide. As an engine doctor he took the lead, and many a wheezy old thing was brought him to cure. Envious engineers tried to put him down. But real merit cannot be put down. It is stern stuff.

George's cottage showed the bent of his tastes. It was like an old curiosity shop, full of models of engines, complete or in parts, hanging and standing round; for busy as he had need to be--eking out his means by engineering, by clocks, and by coats--the construction and improvement of machinery for the collieries was his hobby.

Likeness of taste drew a young farmer often to the cottage--John Wigham--who spent most of his evenings in George's society. John had a smattering of chemistry and philosophy, and a superior knowledge of mathematics, which made him a desirable companion. George put himself under his tuition, and again took to "figuring." Tasks set him in the evening were worked out among the rough toils of the day. And so much honest purpose did not fail to secure progress. Drawing was another new line of effort. Sheets of plans and sections gave his rude desk the air of mind-work somewhere. Thus their winter evenings passed away.

Bobby was growing up in a little thought-world by himself; for he could not fail to be interested in all that interested his father--that father always making his son the companion of his studies, and early introducing him into the curious and cunning power of machinery.

Ah, that was a proud day when little Bob was old enough, and knew enough, to be sent to the academy at Newcastle. He was thirteen. His father's means had happily been increased. The old engine-wright of the colliery having died, George Stephenson was promoted to the post, on the salary of a hundred pounds a year. This was in 1812.

The new office relieving him from incessant hard work, and the necessity of earning a shilling by extra labours, he had more time for study and for verifying his plans of practical improvement; and the consequence was very considerable improvement in the machinery of the colliery to which he was attached.

Meanwhile Robert's education went on apace. The boy was hungry for knowledge, not only for himself, but to satisfy the voracious appetite of his father, and the no less keen one of John Wigham.

We can well imagine Saturday afternoon was as much a holiday to father as to son. Robert's coming was hailed with delight. John did not lag far behind. Some of the neighbours dropped in to listen to discussions which made the little room a spot of lively interest and earnest toil. A wide-awake mind allows nothing stagnant around it.

Among the borrowed books of the day was Ferguson's "Astronomy," which put father and son to calculating and constructing a sun-dial for the latitude of Killingworth. It was wrought in stone, and fixed over the cottage door; and there it is still, with its date, August 11, 1816--a year or two before Robert left school--a fair specimen of the drift of his boyish tastes.

WHO BEGAN RAILROADS?--"PUFFING BILLY."

Familiar as it has become to us, who does not stop to look with interest at the puffing, snorting, screaming steam-horse? And who does not rejoice in the iron-rail, which binds together, with its slender threads, the north and the south, and makes neighbours of the east and the west?

The first idea of the modern railroad had its birth at a colliery nearly two hundred years ago. In order to lighten the labour of the horses, the colliers laid straight pieces of wood into the road leading from the pit to the river, where the coal was discharged; and the waggons were found to run so much easier, that one horse could draw four or five chaldrons. As wood quickly wore out, and moreover was liable to rot, the next step was nailing plates of iron on the wooden rails; which gave them for a time the name of "plate-way roads." A Mr. Outram making still further improvements, they were called "Outram roads," or, for shortness' sake, "tram-roads;" and tram-roads came into general use at the English collieries.

"There's mischief in those tram-roads," said a large canal owner, foreseeing they would one day drive canal stock quite out of the market.

Improvements thus far had centred on the roads. To convoy heavy loads easier and faster was the point aimed at. Nobody had yet thought of self-going trains. Watt, the father of steam-engines, said steam-carriages might be built. He, however, never tried one, but rather left the idea to sprout in the brain of an old pupil of his, William Murdock, who did construct a very small one, running on thin wheels, and heated by a lamp. It was a curious success in its way, and set other minds thinking.

One of these was a tin-miner of Cornwall, Captain Trovethick, a friend of Murdock, who joined a cousin of his in getting a patent for building a steam-carriage. It was built, and an odd piece of machinery it was. It ran on four wheels over a common road, looked like a stage-coach, and delighted both the inventor and his friends.

They determined to exhibit it at London. While on its journey, driving it one day at the top of its speed, they saw a toll-gate in the distance. Not being able to check it in time, bump it went against the gate, which flew open in a trice, leaving the affrighted toll-man, in answer to their inquiry, "How much to pay?" only able to gasp out, "No--nothing to pay! Drive off as fast as you can! Nothing to pay!"

It reached London in safety, and was some time on exhibition. Multitudes flocked to see it, and some called it a fiery dragon.

"Ah," said Sir Humphrey Davy, very much interested in the invention, "I hope to see the captain's dragons on all the roads of England yet."

But the captain exhibited it only as a curiosity, the unevenness of the roads rendering it for all practical purposes a failure; and he had neither pluck nor genius enough to lay or clear a track for it himself. This was in 1803.

George carried "Black Billy" back in his mind to Killingworth, studying its defects, and laying plans to improve it. I do not know how long he was in coming to it, but he at length gave it as his opinion that he could make a better "travelling engine" than that.

Tidings came to Killingworth about this time that the trial of a new engine was to take place on a certain day at Leeds, and George did not lose the chance of being present. Though the engine moved no faster than three miles an hour, its constructer counted it a success. It proved, however, unsteady and unreliable, and at last blew up, which was the end of it.

Although the best yet made, it was awkward and slow. It carried eight loaded waggons of thirty tons weight at a speed not above four miles an hour. The want of springs occasioned a vast deal of jolting, which damaged the machinery, and at the close of a year's trial it was found about as costly as horse-power.

How to increase the power of his engine? that was the puzzling question which George studied to answer. He wrestled with it day and night, and at length determined to try again. In due time another was built, "Puffing Billy," which most persons looked upon as a marvel; but, shaking their heads, they prophesied it would make a terrible blow-up some day. "Puffing Billy," however, went to work, and worked steadily on--a vast advance on all preceding attempts. It attracted little or no attention outside the narrow circle of the collieries. The great men of England did not know that, in a far-off nook of the realm, there was slowly generating a power, under the persistent thought of an humble working-man, which before many years would revolutionize the trade of the kingdom, and create a new source of wealth.

"Puffing Billy," in fact, humble as its pretensions were, has proved to have been the type of all locomotives since.

Had George Stephenson satisfied himself? No. His evenings were chiefly spent at home with his son Robert, now under him in the colliery, studying and discussing together how to evoke the hidden power yet pent up in "Puffing Billy." The son was even more sanguine than his father, and many an amendment had "Billy" to undergo to satisfy the quick intellect and practical judgment of the youth.

Mr. Stephenson, delighted with Robert's scientific tastes and skill, and ever alive to the deficiencies of his own education, was anxious to give him still further advantages. For this purpose he took him from a promising post at the colliery, and sent him to the University of Edinburgh.

Here he enjoyed a six months' course of study; and so well prepared was he for it by his well-formed habits of application and thinking, that he gained in six months as much as many a student did in three years. Certain it was his father felt amply repaid for the draft it made on his purse, when Robert reappeared at the cottage, in the spring, with a prize for successful scholarship in mathematics. He was eighteen then.

TWO CITIES THAT WANTED TO GET NEAR EACH OTHER--A NEW FRIEND.

Manchester, thirty miles north-east of Liverpool, is the great centre of the cotton trade in England. Its cloths are found in every market of the world. Cotton coming to Liverpool is sent to the Manchester mills; and the goods which the mills turn out are returned to Liverpool to be shipped. The two cities, therefore, are intimately connected by constant intercourse and mutual interest.

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