Bessemer

 

As we continue down river we continue down past Bay Wharf where Maudslay built his big sailing ships – and I intend to come back to them later. The next wharf, which today is ‘safeguarded’, and used industrially by Hansons, was called until recently ‘Victoria Deep Water Wharf’.  There were a number of really interesting works there over the years – and the earliest, and most surprising,was a steel works belonging to the great name in 19^th century steel production – Henry Bessemer.

 

Henry Bessemer and the Bessemer converter are usually associated with the north of England, and Sheffield in particular.  However Bessemer himself lived for many years in South London and had a works at Greenwich. Nevertheless no one seems to expect to find his works in Greenwich – and indeed I have never found it mentioned in any article, book or talk about Bessemer.

 

Bessemer came from a French background and was an ingenious inventor who took out numerous patents on all sorts of devices and processes, from which he made a lot of money.  One of the earliest was 'bronze powder', which he made in a factory in the St. Pancras area.  He described some of the lengths he went to in order to keep the process secret and his, unfinished and discursive , autobiography sometimes seems much the same and it is often very difficult to disentangle from the narrative exactly what he said and did at any one time.

 

He had been in France working, at the suggestion of Louis Napoleon, with the French military authorities when he came to the conclusion that a new sort of metal was needed. In due course he developed a process and works were opened in Sheffield and elsewhere from the late 1850s.

 

To cut a very long story very short indeed Bessemer eventually became involved with the Royal Arsenal and plans began to be made to build a plant for the manufacture of his steel in Woolwich. It soon became apparent that this did not suit the Minister of War and the plans were abandoned.  When his steel was rejected for use in the Arsenal  Bessemer was very bitter  'it was quite clear that neither I, nor my steel, was wanted at Woolwich, and I made up my mind to leave the place severely alone in future.' 

 

The position at Woolwich was further complicated by the appointment in 1859 of William Armstrong, the Newcastle based arms manufacturer, to the position of Director of Rifled Ordnance at Woolwich.  As we continue down the Greenwich peninsula riverside we will come to an abortive gun foundry belonging to Alexander Theophilus Blakeley who also had had issues with the Royal Arsenal. Bessemer had discovered Blakeley and his patented process for making guns at around the same time as he began to develop his steel making process. Clearly they had a common cause.

 

Bessemer's biography is not a particular easy book to read.   By the time he wrote it he was an old man, Blakeley was long dead and many of the differences with other people had been patched up or forgotten.  He died before the biography was completed and a final chapter was added by his son.  In a short paragraph, Henry Bessemer Jnr, mentions that a works was built at Greenwich in the mid-1860s. 

 

Bessemer’s works was on the site later known as Victoria Wharf  and dated from around 1865.. The first reference in the public archives is an application to the Thames Conservators in June 1865 from 'Bessemer Brothers' for permission to build a jetty. It is also listed in the Greenwich Commission of Sewers rate books of 1865. Also in 1865 an advertisement in the Kentish Mercury mentions the closeness of the Bessemer works and its thirsty workers to the Star in the East pub – the pub's successor is now Ranburn's alongside the Blackwall Tunnel entrance.

The note in his autobiography by Bessemer’s son says very little about this Greenwich works except that he intended it for his sons. "It had", says Bessemer Jnr., "two 2½ ton converters and all the plant necessary.  Including one 2½-ton steam hammer and another, the size of which is not given. The buildings were carefully designed, with the intention that the establishment should be in all respects be a model one".  The works was set up and initially managed by Percival Parsons, who had his own small foundry in Banning Street, where he later developed Manganese Bronze.

 

Some of the proprietors of neighbouring industries seem to have had connections with Bessemer. There were the cable works of Glass Elliott – and Bessemer had showed an interest in telegraph cables. Next door, were Maudslay Son and Field and they built Bessemer's prototype anti-sea sickness boat. Nearby was artificial stone works owned by Frederick and Ernest Ransome, from the Ipswich family who Bessemer knew. To the north was John Bethel's specialist tar distillery and Bessemer mentions 'Bethel's patent coke' in connection with steel making. More about both Ramsome and Bethel later

 

What happened to the works? Bessemer Jnr. says that they kept the lease and later bought the freehold. I is implied that work never started there and that the works never opened. Both works and plant were let to London Steel and Ordnance – who are shown on site on the Ordnance Survey dated 1869 – and what is quite clear from the archives is that the authorities thought that this firm was in fact Bessemer’s.

 

In 1872 there was a complaint from Morden College that the 'Bessemer Steel Co.' had encroached on their land and discussions later began for the company to lease 'a small field in the marshes adjoining this property for 21 years' and  they said that the Bessemers were offering more than the market value of the site.  As late as 1891 Morden College's surveyor was still dealing with Bessemer Brothers.

 

Bessemer Jnr. said that Steel and Ordnance 'did not achieve much success' and that the works was then let to Messrs. Appleby Bros. Their tenancy can be confirmed from the Morden College records from about 1878.  When they left, almost twenty years later, the site was let to Frederick Walton’s Greenwich Linoleum work, who later bought the freehold from the Bessemers.

 

Walton knew Henry Bessemer – another of Bessemer's interests was linoleum. Walton said how pleased he was to get the site because it was 'where Bessemer proved his widely known steel process'.  Did Walton know something about the site that Bessemer wanted kept quiet?  Walton had something called the ‘First Flash’ – the first piece of steel made in a Bessemer converter.  This was exhibited in the foyer of the lino works until it closed in the 1940s having been taken over by Nairn’s of Kirkaldy. Nairn’s gave the ‘first flash to the Science Museum.   

 

Now – I was sitting on a train some 20 years ago with someone who was on the staff at the Science Museum and talked to him about my researches on Greenwich industry.  I mentioned Bessemer – had they still got ‘the first flash’.  He said he knew about it but they didn’t know what it was and that the label sai ‘from Greenwich’ or something and they know what to think or believe. I am pleased to see that it is now properly labelled in the Science Museum store and if you look on Getty Images web site there is a photo of it – for which Getty want ££££££ to reproduce.  So perhaps I am some use after all.

 

Bessemer himself lived in South London – although not in Greenwich but in a very very grand mansion in Denmark Hill.  Its possible to go by train – maybe changing once - from Charlton to Denmark Hill. Perhaps he also thought that a steel works near his home would be useful. It would be tucked away from the prying eyes of his licensees and those at his works in the north of England.

 

We may probably never know what Bessemer actually did at Greenwich but had Blakeley been more lucky in his backers, continued to sell his guns around the world, made a success of his Greenwich gun foundry - and had stayed in business, that he and Henry Bessemer might have turned Greenwich into a great steel town – Sheffield on Thames.  Instead we have records of a works which everyone – as far as I am aware – who has written about Bessemer and his steel process  have chosen to ignore.