Henry Cort
The multifarious use of iron in our day has given its name to the age. We have got far beyond the primitive applications of that metal—every day it is supplanting some other substance, and there is no saying where the wide-spread and varied service we exact from it will stop. The invention of the steam-engine, and the improvement of manufacturing machines, would be comparatively valueless, unless we had at command a cheap and abundant supply of iron for their construction. The land is covered with a net-work of iron rails, traversed by iron steeds—gulfs and valleys are spanned by iron arches and iron tubes—huge ships of iron ride upon the deep. Even stones and bricks are being discarded for this all-useful substance, and of iron we are building houses, palaces, theatres, churches, and spacious domes. There is no end to its uses.
And yet, it is only between seventy and eighty years ago since Britain, the richest of all countries in native ore, was dependent upon others for her supply of the manufactured metal. We wanted but little iron in those days, compared with the present demand, and yet that little we could not furnish ourselves with. As much as a million and a half a-year went out of our pockets to purchase wrought iron from Sweden alone, and we were good customers to Russia as well. All the iron that our country could then produce was some 17,000 tons. The man who showed us how to turn our own ore to account, who rendered us independent of all other countries for our supply, and made us the great purveyors of wrought iron to the world, who opened up to us this great source of national wealth, was Henry Cort of Gosport.
The great difficulty which he solved was how to get wrought iron out of the crude iron as it came from the smelting furnace, without using charcoal. With but a small tract of country, densely peopled, we had but a scant supply of wood at our command. The great forests which once overspread the land were gradually vanishing, partly before the spread of population and the growth of towns, and partly from the inroads made on them by the demand for timber. Formerly, the first transformation of the ore into pig iron (the crude form of the manufactured metal) was effected by means of wood; and the consumption was so great that an Act was passed in 1581 restraining its use. Soon afterwards Lord Dudley discovered that coal would answer the purpose just as well, and obtained a patent of monopoly. He reaped but little profit from his invention, however, for his iron-works were destroyed by a mob; and it was not till a century afterwards, when people got more alarmed at the growing scarcity of timber, and the increased demand for it, that the plan was generally adopted. This was one step in the right direction, but another yet remained to be made, for the manufacture was still hampered in our country by the want of wood for the second process—the conversion of crude into malleable iron, in which state alone it is fit for service.
About the year 1785, Henry Cort, iron-master, of Gosport, after many years of patient and wearisome research, of anxious thought, and indefatigable experiment, in which he spent a private fortune of some £20,000, perfected a couple of inventions of priceless value. The first was the process of converting pig iron into wrought iron by the flame of pit coal in a puddling furnace, thus dispensing with the use of charcoal,—the cost and scarcity of which had before formed such a dead weight on the trade, and placed us at such a disadvantage compared with Sweden and Russia. The second was a further process for drawing the iron into bars by means of grooved rollers. Till then, this operation had to be performed with hammer and anvil, and was very tedious and laborious. The new system not only reduced the cost and labour of producing iron to one-twentieth of what they were previously, but greatly improved the quality of the article produced.
It is not easy to estimate all that Henry Cort’s inventions have done for this country. Without them we should have lost an overflowing and inexhaustible source of national wealth, and, moreover, large sums would have been taken out of the country in the purchase of wrought metal; we should never have been able to give full scope to the great mechanical inventions brought forth towards the close of the last, and the opening of the present century; we should have been debarred from taking rank as the great engineers and engine-makers for the rest of the world. The direct gain to this country from the inventions of Henry Cort, which enabled us to work up our own iron, has been calculated as equal by this time to not less than a hundred millions; and it is hardly possible to exaggerate the benefits which it has conferred. Lord Sheffield’s prophecy, that the adoption of these processes would be worth more to Britain than a dozen colonies, may be said to have been fulfilled.
Like many another benefactor of his country, Cort got little good out of his invention for himself. He took out a patent for his process, and arranged with the leading iron-masters to accept a royalty of ten shillings a ton for the use of them. With a large fortune in prospect, his purse was just then exhausted by the expenses he had incurred in experiments and researches; and he had to look out for a capitalist to aid him in working the patent on his own account. As ill luck would have it, he entered into partnership with a certain Adam Jellicoe, then deputy-paymaster of the navy. Jellicoe was considered a man of substance, and a “thoroughly respectable” character. He was to advance the ready money, and to receive in return half of the profits of the trade, Cort assigning to him, by way of collateral security, his patent rights. For a year or two all went well. The patent was everywhere adopted, and Cort’s own iron works drove a lucrative and growing trade. He seemed in a fair way of getting back the fortune he had spent in bringing out the inventions, doubled or trebled, as he well deserved. The respectable Jellicoe was seized with a mortal sickness: at his death his desk was filled by another, his books were examined, and it turned out that he had been robbing the government for many a year back, and was a large defaulter. Cort, of course, had nothing to do with this villany, but he had to pay the penalty of it. As Jellicoe’s partner he was responsible, in those days of unlimited liability, for all Jellicoe’s debts; but that was not the worst of it. The treasurer of the navy was not content to exact only the payment of Jellicoe’s defalcations, as he had no doubt a right to do, but confiscated the whole of Cort’s patent rights, business, and property, which would have paid the debt seven or eight times over, had it been fairly valued.
This incident has never been properly cleared up, but what glimpses of its secret passages have been obtained, seem to indicate clearly enough that poor Cort was the victim, not of one, but of two or more swindlers. To the day of his death he never could obtain a distinct account of the proceedings; and when, after his death, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the matter, the treasurer of the navy and his deputy took care, a week or two before the Commission met, to indemnify each other by a joint release, and to burn their accounts for upwards of a million and a half of public money, for the application of which they were responsible, as well as all papers relating to Cort’s case. When the Commission met, and the treasurer and his deputy were called before it, they refused to answer questions which would criminate themselves.
His connection with Jellicoe was, of course, the ruin of Henry Cort. He had no means of re-establishing himself in business; he was robbed of all income from his patents; and he died ruined and broken-hearted ten years after, leaving a family of nine children, without a sixpence in the world. Four of these children now survive—old, infirm, and indigent—only saved from being dependent upon parish bounty by pensions, amounting in the aggregate to £90 per annum. Well may it be said, “There should be more gratitude in our Iron Age to the children of Henry Cort.”
— MR. COOKE.
— PROFESSOR WHEATSTONE.
— THE SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH.
“Speak the word and think the thought,
Quick ’tis as with lightning caught—
Over, under lands or seas,
To the far antipodes;
Here again, as soon as gone,
Making all the earth as one;
Moscow speaks at twelve o’clock,—
London reads ere noon the shock.”