Trevithick boiler explosion East Greenwich

 

200th Anniversary of an industrial accident on the Greenwich Peninsula

Last week I wrote about a tide mill built in 1801 on the Peninsula riverside near to where the Jetty stands today.  I explained how it was associated with the Pilot Pub and the cottages beside it.  I also said it was the scene of an industrial accident in 1803 and that this accident had consequences beyond the immediate ones, and it involved one of the heroes of steam technology, Richard Trevithick.

Because of developments, including the landscaping of the area, as part of the Dome site it is very difficult to find the area where this incident took place. Older residents will remember that the courtyard where the Pilot pub stands used to be a road called Riverway which went all the way down to the riverside. On the northern side of Riverway stood the Blackwall Point Power Station -- and this was roughly the site of the tide mill.  The accident here has been described in lots of histories of the steam engine but none of them really say where it happened – well I am telling you that it was here, near the site of The Jetty.

In 1803 Richard Trevithick had recently come to London from Cornwall to advertise his work. He was an engineer in the Cornish mining community – an area from which so much innovation on steam engine technology sprang in this period.  He had developed a high pressure steam engine which was in competition with, and avoided the royalties of, the Birmingham based Boulton and Watt Partnership. They were the market leaders then with their low pressure engine and the use of high pressure steam was thought dangerous and difficult to use. In Cornwall Trevithick had also developed a moving carriage using his steam technology.  . He had come to London with his ideas and famously demonstrated his locomotive on a circular track at Euston.  In 1802 he set up a London office and began to promote his engines. Sales were handled by Andrew Vivian

In 1803 a George Russell ordered an 8 horse power high pressure engine from Vivian and Trevithick. It was to be used during construction work of the mill and for pumping out water during building. It cost £75.12s.  As building work went on during 1803 the steam engine began to give some concern.  The fire was directly in contact with the cast iron boiler and on Sunday 4th September it overheated. The boiler became red hot and some joints burnt out.  Despite this the engine was kept working and was the responsibility of an, unnamed, apprentice. 

On the following Thursday, the 8th September, the boy was called away from minding the engine and asked to catch eels which were under the foundations of the building.  He went off and left the steam lever - which vented the waste stream - fastened down. He did this by wedging a piece of timber at the top of the safety value and then bent it down so that it could not rise to let the steam escape. 

A labourer was asked to mind the engine while the boy was gone and noticed that it had begun to run too fast. He was alarmed by this and shut it down but he did not remove the wedge jamming the safety valve.  The result was inevitable and fatal. The boiler burst 'with an explosion as sudden and as dreadful as a powder mill'.   One piece of the boiler, an inch thick and weighing 5 cwt was thrown 125 yards in the air and 'landing on the ground made a hole eighteen inches deep'. Bricks were thrown in a 'circle of two hundred, no two of them stayed together'.  Three men were killed instantly, and three more were injured.

Of the three who were injured, one went deaf but was soon to able to return to work. The boy who had been gone about an hour had actually returned ‘that instant and was then going to take the trig from the valve’. He was hurt but recovered. 

 

The third injured man, Thomas Nailor, had been showered with boiling water and was badly scalded.  A wherry was called and he was taken to St.Thomas Hospital – then still on its old site in the Borough. Thus Nailor went to one of the best hospitals in the country quickly and efficiently but despite the work of Mr. Bingham, the surgeon, Nailor died three days later.

The newspapers were quick to report the accident - although there is a suspicion that the story was given to them by those who did not wish Trevithick well.  He feared that Boulton and Watt, as rival engine manufactures, would be quick to point out the dangers involved. He said 'Boulton and Watt are about to do me every injury in their power for they have done the best to report the explosion both in the newspapers and in private letters very different to what it really was'. When The Times ran the story a week later it was with the rider that Mr. Watt's engines would not explode in this way and that the accident 'should be a warning to engineers to construct their safety valves so that common workmen cannot stop them at their pleasure’.

Trevithick quickly made some changes to the design of his boilers. In future his boilers had more than one safety vent and were constructed differently.

It seems that there was some sort of enquiry after the accident – and it is the sort of thing which ought to have happened. The only clue to this is found in a register of expenses submitted to the Court of Chancery after George Russell's death. One item concerns expenses to 'Daniel Vaux and Mr. Johnson for attending as a witness in a case respecting the steam engine in Greenwich' - What was this case? Was it about insurance? I have been never been able to find out and some knowledge of this case and its proceedings might throw a whole new light on the matter.

When I first wrote this up many years ago I got a very cross letter from a Cornish historian who seemed so be upset that I, a Londoner, was writing something which might put their hero in a bad light. But North West Kent – and that was where Greenwich was officially in 1803 - has a big claim on Trevithick whether they like that in Cornwall, or not.  In Dartford a Trevithick day is held every year.   

The east Greenwich accident had dealt a blow to Trevithick’s career although he continued with many successes. He went abroad, worked on many projects and eventually in the 1830s was commissioned to work at Hall’s engineering works in Dartford.   I am, incidentally, always very impressed with Halls – now J. & E.Hall with an HQ just outside Dartford at Hawley. Historians go on and on about all these early breakthrough firms of the industrial revolution in the north and midlands and ignore Halls, in North West Kent, and still going.  We will come back to their founder, John Hall, later – actually next week!

Trevithick worked for a year or so at Halls and was then taken ill and died at the Bull Inn in April 1833.  Many accounts will tell you he died penniless and in extreme poverty – well, all I can say is that if the Bull Inn is where people in extreme poverty lived and/or died, then they have a very different definition of poverty to me. Nice hotel with a room for the visiting consultant, more like.  

Trevithick’s funeral was held at the local church of St Edmund, King and Martyr, followed by burial in the upper graveyard. This is up on East Hill as you go towards The Brent and is above the road behind a massive brick retaining wall.  You have to go down Great Queen Street for the entrance.  Staff members from Hall’s) acted as pallbearers and the place was marked by an engraved headstone, though by 1898 this had apparently disappeared.  Burials in the graveyard stopped around 1857, and it became a St Edmund’s Pleasance in the 1960s. Some of the larger tombs remain in place surrounded by railings, but the space has been planted and landscaped.  there is an enormous wall plaque telling you “Approximately 25ft from this wall lie the remains of Richard Trevithick the great engineer and pioneer of high pressure steam he died at the Bull Inn Dartford and was carried here by his fellow workers of Halls Engineering Works to a paupers grave, born Illogan Cornwall April 13th 1771, died Dartford Kent April 22nd 1833”.

To return to the tide mill and east Greenwich. I’ve nothing like finished with its story yet and the next episode will involve the very same John Hall of Dartford, owner of the factory Trevithick was working in when he died.