The three weeks I’ve been writing about powered road
transport in Greenwich and the surrounding area. One of the last steam cars to run
experimentally on Kent roads was that built by the man who later became shipbuilder,
Sir Alfred Yarrow. He was born in
Islington and trained in London as an engineer, later he came to live in
Greenwich. Later as it will be seen
future articles powered road transport was taken on the rather larger firms,
although many individual experimenters remained.
At the age of fifteen Yarrow was apprenticed to the firm of Ravenhill
& Salkeld who made marine steam engines for naval vessels. As a boy, along with a friend, he had invented
the first private electric telegraph, which ran between the two homes. When he
was eighteen, he founded a society with friends which included James Hilditch.
This was called thr Civil and Engineering Society and they held discussions on
papers about engineering. . In May, 1861, he read a paper, entitled “Steam on
Common Roads," before the Society of Engineers at Exeter Hall.
Alfred Yarrow and James Hilditch seem to have had little
time outside their engineering hobbies for the usual things young men get up to
– although there were, and are, many now whose main interest is cars. However Yarrow and Hilditch looked at vehicles
beyond fast cars and while still in their teens they patented a steam plough –
this was later manufactured by Coleman’s, agricultural engineers, of Chelmsford. They also He became one of a group of young
men interested in building a car. With Hilditch, Yarrow designed and patented a
steam carriage for use on the road. The invention was taken up by a Mr T W
Cowan, of Greenwich
I have written in Weekender before about Kent Wharf and I
hope people don’t mind if I briefly recap. In Creek Road at the end of Norway
Street is a wide strip of pavement with a flower bed on it. This tiny area was once Kent Wharf which, as
might be expected in the 19th century, was used for coal
transhipment until the late 1850s when it had become the Kent Iron Works and in occupation by Todd &
Co.
In 1860
the site was sold by auction. “The
Kent Iron Works ... fit for many other purposes” together with a
list of machinery on the site was to be disposed of.
Todd’s successor at the Kent Iron Works was Thomas Cowan,
who had been born in Russia, where his father worked, but by 1861 was living in
Deptford with his mother and sister, aged about 20 and described as a ‘Civil Engineer’.
Cowan seems to have been one of the group of young men
interested in building a car. In
1861 Yarrow and Hilditch steam car was built and ran between Greenwich
and Bromley - a distance of ten miles - once a week, late in the evening. It was
shown at the International Exhibition of 1862, where it attracted a good deal
of attention. It did not receive an award because the jury deputed to deal with
engines considered it to be a Carriage, while the jury dealing with a carriages
regarded it as an Engine!
In Bromley
they party would stop for 'some refreshment' before returning to Greenwich. People
along the route were clearly disturbed by the noise of the engine. It is said
that one old lady seeing it go past ran to her window and the flames and smoke meant
she thought the devil was there. It has
not proved easy to discover the truth of this of this story Many of the early road vehicles are supposed
to have led to stories of how people thought
they were 'the devil' . It is
hard to believe that by 1862 there could have been any old ladies left on the
roads around Bromley who did not know what a steam
vehicle looked like! She probably had
good reason for disliking the smoke and noise - perhaps 'the devil' is the term
she was using for Yarrow and his noisy young friends!
They
later took a longer trip, to Horsham –‘a distance of nearly forty miles ... in
which its capability at ascending hills was severely tried’ and in which it ‘acquitted
itself in manner which fully justifies its maker in believing that its usefulness
will generally acknowledged’. This must
have been a difficult journey and there must have been a good reason for
undertaking it. Surely it cannot be a
co-incidence that a year later Thomas Cowan married Fanny Mitchell, from
Horsham.
In Yarrow’s biography it says that on another occasion the
carriage met a mounted policeman. His horse took fright and threw him, breaking
his leg. His biographer comments that
it was this incident which led to the notorious 'red flag' act where all steam
vehicles had to proceed at the pace of man who had to walk in front holding a
red flag. Again this story has not been
easy to prove. The Act of Parliament in
question was the Highways and Locomotive Act of 1861 and as usual this was not
quite what it seemed. Many of these
road vehicles were very big and heavy. We have seen how many of them were in
fact the size of small buses or coaches and they were being joined by some
enormous stream traction engines. Local
Authorities were becoming concerned as to who was to pay for damage to road
surfaces. In the Parliamentary Committee
which took place before the Act was passed and in the House of Commons
discussions Members of Parliament were very concerned about road surfaces and
about giving the various local authorities control over where these vehicles
were allowed to go and where not. Many
Members were at pains to say that horses could be frightened by them but that
they soon got used to them passing and that sensible grooms held a horses’ head
as the steam vehicle went past.
In the back of
Parliament's mind must also have been the dangers involved in these very young
men (Yarrow, like Cowan, was
only 20) driving heavy
vehicles over ordinary roads at night while fuelled with drink from the
numerous 'entertainment' stops. However
Sir Alfred Yarrow clearly remembered his accident in later life and believed
that it was a trigger for the 1861 Act.
All this excitement didn't last long. By 1866 Cowan was bankrupt
and the Kent Iron Works and its contents were offered for auction. In 1871 it
was in the hands of a Thomas Cook, engineer, who was also bankrupt it a year.
By the 1880s the site was in the hands of coal merchants, Dowells, like all the
other sites in this part of the Creek.
Yarrow went on to found the shipbuilding company for which
he became famous. On the Isle of Dogs he
built torpedo boats and destroyers although his firm was eventually to move to
a Scottish site on the River Clyde. He lived in Greenwich for a while, first in
113 Blackheath Park and later at Woodlands – once the Greenwich Local History
Library and now the Steiner School. In Greenwich he became involved with
Alexander Duckham who was to found the Duckham lubricants business.
After the passing of the 1861 Act steam vehicles were very
limited on Kentish roads and many of the glamorous and exciting experimental
runs stopped. Development of steam road
vehicles began to concentrate on heavy haulage and on vehicles for public
transport undertakings. Some extremely
heavy haulage and agricultural vehicles were developed from these steam carriages -
one firm not too far away in Kent was Aveling and Porter, who became a
major manufacturer of these in Rochester.
But other developments were afoot in Greenwich.
GW January 29023
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