Coal tar and the Royal Dockyards

 

I went to a talk last week which was about dry rot and ways in the past of dealing with it in timber. I remembered how when I did my PhD on the early gas industry I looked at the use of coal gar as a preservative. This included tar sales to the Royal Dockyards in Deptford and Woolwich. I thought you might be interested in that and that I could write about it this week

Now you think you know what tar is!  In the later gas industry there were huge tar works like the big one at Ordnance Wharf in East Greenwich. Tar was used for all sorts of things, like, for example, road surfacing.  But back in 1800 ‘tar’ meant something different and much more aromatic. ‘Tar’ then was made from woods grown in the pine forests of Northern Europe and it was Sweden's most important export. For instance they sent 13,000 barrels of tar to England in 1615 where the largest user was the Royal Navy. It  was used in ship building by both the private and government shipyards.

From around 1812 coal gas for lighting was manufactured in London. initially by the Gaslight Coke – or ‘Chartered’ - Company based in Westminster. They quickly found that they were producing a lot of coal tar as a by-product. What were they to do with it?  Why not sell  it to the Navy to replace Swedish wood tar?

The discussion was not new and the dockyards must have known a great deal about coal tar and its potential already. The Earl of Dundonald - one day I’ll do an article about him - had tried to sell his tar to the Navy thirty years earlier.He thought it would e a preservative against gribble -teredo worm - which was a great scourge to wooden shops in tropical seas. From around 1810 designers of warships considered the use of a coating of coal tar on ships for structural reasons - to turn them into a 'solid body'.

The two inner London Royal Dockyards at Deptford and Woolwich had begun to concentrate on repair work during the 18^th century.  Deptford, was often used for experimental or new work and it was there that officers would make an assessment and then decide whether to place an order for the Chartered's coal tar.

In August 1816 a Thomas Dalton wrote to the Chartered Co. 'about tar'. He was foreman caulker at Wells, Wigram and Green's shipyard at Blackwall.  A caulker is, of course, the person who fills all the holes and places where then water might get in.  People might remember the Jolly Caulkers pub in Rotherhithe – closed a few years ago but the building is still there.

Dalton lived in Naval Row, next to the East India Dock itself. The area was still semi-rural and he had a large garden plot attached to his house. Like other Poplar residents of the time he kept a pig , which the Poplar Health Committee in 1833 recorded to be a 'clean' pig.

Leaving his domestic arrangements aside, Dalton was an expert on the use of coal tar in shipbuilding and gave evidence to the 1809 Parliamentary Enquiry about it. He told how Wigram had bought coal tar and it had been used in his shipyard, intermittently, for many years and he had supervised its use, as foreman caulker.  

The Chartered  Gas Company then employed him to sell tar for them on an agency basis. He wrote, on their behalf, to the Navy Board - the civilian body in charge of Naval purchasing. They agreed to let him undertake 'experiments' at Deptford Dockyard . He drew attention to the use of tar for caulking nd pointed out possible savings of '8/6d. per barrel. He suggested that they might like to take 100 tons 'for use on ships' bottoms' and offered to demonstrate  making up some rope using Chartered's tar.

He gained some success and in September 1817 the Navy Board officers discussed with him the purchase of coal tar 'in barrels similar to those in which [wood] tar is imported from Russia and Sweden'. But it was nearly a year before they placed an actual order for '10,000 tons of coal tar at Woolwich'.

In 1817 the Chartered Gas Co. decided to open its own tar works. Dalton was to be in charge and he set about setting up the new works in Orchard Place, Poplar -.just the other side of the River from todays  Millenniumn Village in Greenwich

Dalton bought a 'crane and pans' and other equipment and a special committee was appointed to oversee the works. And for them a  Pembroke table, and 8 mahogany chairs' were bought. The works expanded and over the next ten years more equipment was bought –‘’ a grinder for colouring material and, a deal plank to make a tub for washing spirits’.

Dalton worked hard to promote his products. He prepared information about the use of tar on ships, producing samples 'of felt dipped in first mineral tar and the other with Stockholm or Archangel tar' with which to show the difference. He wrote to the Board of Ordnance asking them 'to try the black varnish on gun carriages'. It must have seemed that there was an endless market for the new tar in the shipping industry on the banks of the Thames -but what neither they, nor Dalton, could have foreseen was that Thames shipbuilding had reached a peak. Many yards were building their last warships and would soon close. When they reopened it was to build ships of iron.

Not all the Chartered's tar sales were local. Messrs. Bayley, pitch tar and rosin merchants of Ford Street, Stonehouse, Devon, bought '70 barrels of prepared coal tar’; Von Dadeltzen and Co., on behalf of Peltzer of Hamburg bought tar, as did a 'Mr. Tucker of Boston', Massachusetts,

The relationship with the Navy Board continued. By 1819 naval shipbuilders were using coal tar as 'the best prevention against dry rot ... and every ship is now completely saturated with it by means of a forcing pump'.  By 1824 thirteen battleships had been injected but then linseed oil was used instead and the reason given by the Navy was the unacceptable smell of coal tar. In 1827 an offer by the gas company to sell 60,000 gallons of 'mineral tar' to the Navy fell.

After repeated failures in getting orders for tar from the Navy, the Company Secretary took over the job of replying to tenders. He succeeded in getting an order from the Navy Board Commissioners for 'mineral tar fit for making cordage.’ Rope making was a field which makers of gas tar could well expect to enter by providing a cheap substitute for Stockholm tar.

I have never written here about the great Woolwich rope works, which preceded Woolwich Dockyard, By the 1820s it was in its last years but still a considerable force,

Within three months of the first sale for rope making it appeared that the rope makers of Woolwich did not like the smell of coal tar. G.Smith of the Navy Office wrote to say that 'the use of mineral tar in the manufacture of cordage is having a pernicious effect on the workmen'. He 'desired the Superintendent at Poplar to remove what is left at the ropeyard at Woolwich'. Gas industry sources confirmed that gas tar was disliked for rope making 'because of the rawness and destructive nature of the ammonia’. The Gas Company quickly sent the Navy  Board '37,000 galls of tar that we feel confident will not be injurious to the health of the their workmen'. However the contract was cancelled and the Navy Board agreed to take the rest of the order under threat of legal action.

The Chartered Gas Co. decided that the tar works was not successful and that it should be disposed of. In 1823 the coal merchant, Davey Sawyer, Bankside, had made 'a proposal about Poplar which we cannot entertain' but the works remained in business for several more years. In 1827 more discussions were held on disposal of the works, this time to a Mr. Bromley. In 1828 bad debts of £41 13s. 8d from tar customers were written off.

Five years later the Company commissioned a report on the tar works from a Mr. Hopwood, described as 'the chemist'. His remit was to report 'concerning the results of his experiments on oil of tar..... and his opinions of the Poplar Station'. It was decided that there was 'not much advantage in his proposals' -whatever they were. The Court of Governors thought that 'despite the volume of business the works failed to pay its way'.

By 1833 Dalton, who had put so much energy into the works, must have been in his sixties. It may be that he no longer felt able to continue. Closure marked the end of the hopes of the flourishing tar derivatives business so confidently envisaged in 1809. As we will see, however, this was not the end of the story -the marketing role, which the gas companies had not been able to fulfil, was to be taken up by others.