The Boyhood of Great Inventors

The Boyhood of Great Inventors.

by A. Fraser Robertson.

JOHN SMEATON.

People who have been on a long sea voyage, and have ended by sailing up the English Channel, tell us how their hearts beat high, after weary weeks and months at sea, when the cry went up while as yet land was a mere shadowy outline, "The Eddystone in sight!" For the gleaming lighthouse standing immovable in the midst of boiling waves and great mountains of blinding white spray spells "home" to the voyager.

To us the "stone" round which the waters ceaselessly churn and "eddy"

speaks of John Smeaton, the man who built it. The great engineer has been in his grave now for more than a century, but his most lasting monument stood for longer than that time firm as a rock.

John Smeaton was born in 1724, near Leeds. Not the Leeds of to-day--a bustling, smoky centre of manufacture--but a quaint little town hemmed in by green country fields and lanes. It was in one of these that Austhorpe Lodge stood, the house of Smeaton"s father, a lawyer in Leeds.

We shall yet come across many boyhoods tinged with shadow and struggle, and are not sorry to find this one happy, fondly tended, and bright with sunshine. There was no pinch in the lot of the Smeatons, no grinding poverty that we sometimes find to spur a boy to manhood before his time.

Little John was cradled, as it were, in love. As a child his parents taught him at home. He was not eager to mix with other boys in outdoor romp or play, and very early, while yet hardly more than a baby, he showed a strong love for pulling his toys to pieces to see what they were made of! Never was he happier than when he could get hold of a cutting-tool with which to shape toy pumps and houses and windmills.

Another amus.e.m.e.nt of his babyhood was to divide squares and circles!

As a boy he was rather quiet and thoughtful, though his tongue straightway loosed the moment anything in the shape of a workman came to his father"s house. He was then always to be found on the spot, and with eager eyes fixed on their every movement, he would unconsciously "pose" them with eager questions--such questions as from the boyish lips made them shake their heads and stare at him dumb and stupid.

And all the time the boyish brain was deeply plotting, and it was ever that he might "go and do likewise." One day, after watching a millwright at work, his anxious parents were alarmed by the sight of their boy perched on the top of the barn fastening a windmill to the roof! At another time, when a pump was being made in the village, by good luck a piece of bored lead came in little John"s way. He promptly set to work and made a toy one after the pattern of the big one, and even managed to make it raise water.

But his greatest childish feat took place on his discovering a fire-engine being erected at a colliery in the village to pump the water out of the mine. He was constantly on the spot, eagerly watching it as it slowly progressed, and quickly his boyish brain grasped the whole.

He went home and began with trembling fingers one day to copy it. His father had given him an outhouse with bench and tools to carry out his hobby, and soon the engine worked. He looked round to see what he could use it upon, and espied the fish-pond. So he began to pump out the water till he had pumped the whole place dry. When his father came home it was to find an empty pond, and all his fish lying dead at the bottom!

And now John had to leave his beloved workshop for school in Leeds.

And there it seemed as if the boy showed up quite a different side of himself. The bright, eager alertness that marked him at home or with the workmen about Austhorpe was gone. He was quiet with the boys--out of his element. He did not care for their rough play. He was like a fish out of water. Silent, shy, even stupid--the boys nicknamed him "Fooley Smeaton."

But though he might be dull at school, the boy"s real education was surely going on at home among his pumps and model engines, his lathes and chisels.

The boyish hands had begun to do that which all through life threw over him a very spell of fascination--_to construct_--to build up. The baby fingers were learning how to use tools in a way that was to give him one day, long years after, a skill that would place him on the very top of the ladder. And all the time the young mind was pondering great mechanical principles that were by-and-by to make the name of John Smeaton famed throughout the world. So it was not to games and boyish play that he gave his spare moments, but to his workshop. When he was fifteen he could use his turning-lathe to turn wood and ivory. When he was eighteen he could handle tools as deftly and cleverly as any workman who all his life had known no other trade.

When he was sixteen he left school and took his place in his father"s office, and tried to bring his mind to look forward to law as his life-work. He worked conscientiously day after day, coming home at evening to spend half the night in working--making--constructing things.

He had all the instincts of a born mechanic. It was almost as if he could not help it.

When his father sent him to London to study law, the boy tried again to stifle his longings, and to set himself to carry out his father"s wishes. But strive and struggle as he would, it was impossible to crush the desire of his heart. And so one day he sat down and wrote to his father that he could go on with law no longer. Nothing except to be a mechanic would satisfy him. His father, deeply disappointed though he was, quietly made up his mind to what could not be helped, and wrote to John that he must make his own choice.

The boy was delighted. He had chosen what was then the work of a common labourer, with a labourer"s wages. The term Civil Engineer was unknown.

With a heart beating high with hope he went off and engaged himself to a philosophical instrument-maker--a man who made instruments for navigation and astronomy. With him he worked steadily--eager to improve the instruments--eager to improve himself--so eager, indeed, that he divided out his time so as to make the most of it: so much for reading, so much for experiments, so much for business, and so much for rest and relaxation.

And so on the threshold of manhood--having got, as it were, "a free hand"--he made great strides onward. He may not have done much business at the time, but he read papers before the Royal Society, and he kept open a keen, mechanical eye for everything--from minute, delicate instruments to the building of ca.n.a.ls and bridges and waterworks. He thought no trouble too great to take if so it made him thorough. He set himself to study French and Italian, so as to read the works in these languages on mechanical subjects, and he even set off to Holland--that land of d.y.k.es and harbours and docks--that he might examine them for himself.

And while he looked about him, always at the same time busy with the work that lay nearest to his hand, the great work of his life was drawing close to his door.

Many years before Smeaton lived, England was in the custom of lighting up her rocky headlands with lights or beacons. First came "the candle in the cottage window" to light the sailor husband home, then stacks of blazing wood, piles of coal, oil, torches, pitch-pots. Guided by these flaring lights in the darkness, men and vessels plying round our coast were saved from shipwreck and death. Sometimes these beacons, flaming high from their pinnacles, warned the people inland that war was expected, the country was in danger of being invaded, or that pirates were about to swoop down upon them. At other times _false_ lights were shown by men known as "wreckers," and homeward-bound vessels, rich in goods and human souls, were dashed upon the rocks. So our coasts were lighted up in those old days, but it happened at times that the pitch would become drenched and drowned, the wood and coal fires would spurt up for a s.p.a.ce and then drop down and fade. Things were uncertain. It did not matter, perhaps, greatly, as long as England"s commerce by sea was small, but when our trade with foreign lands began to grow, there grew, too, the question how best to light our rocky coasts and docks and headlands. So an order of monks--the Brethren of Trinity House--was made, and these prayed for the safety of the sailors, and later looked to the lighting of the coast.

Eddystone rock we can easily find on the map, a low, black reef lying S.S.W. of Plymouth, a place of lurking danger as well for ships cruising up and down the Channel as for those coming into Plymouth harbour.

In the days of Smeaton, and for some time earlier, the way in which lighthouses were built was for a private man to go to the owner and say, "I will build a lighthouse on that rock if you will let me." If his offer were accepted and he carried out the work he had then the right to levy dues on the ships that pa.s.sed, or, in other words, to make them pay toll. In this way he sometimes collected quite a large income.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century a man called Winstanley undertook to build a lighthouse on Eddystone. He drew out plans and started on the work, and it was no light work. The base of the rock was narrow and sloping. It was hard to make the foundations fast, for winds and waves had a way of rising suddenly, and the whole of the work would be drowned for the time, and perhaps many of the materials swept away.

But by dint of waiting patiently for fine weather and smooth water the building was at last finished. It was made of wood, rather in an ornamental style, and had many projections. It took four years in the building, for although in other parts of the Channel the waters might be smooth enough, yet round the Eddystone they were almost sure to seethe and foam. For several seasons the building stood.

"I wish," exclaimed the builder one day, elated that his work had turned out so well, "that I might be here in the fiercest storm, just to see it stand."

After it had stood some three years from its finish Winstanley went out one day to see to some repairs. He remained on the rock overnight, and during the night his wish, though hardly as he would have had it, was fulfilled. A gale and storm terrific in their fury burst overhead and broke along the English coast. With the first streak of dawn an anxious people looked from sh.o.r.e to see how it fared with the lighthouse. Not a trace of it remained. Not a speck was to be seen on the waters. It and its maker had been utterly swept away!

Next came a man called Rudyerd, who volunteered to build a lighthouse that would stand. He pondered the last, and he came to the conclusion that it had failed in form. He determined to alter that. So he made a long, high column in the shape of a cone, with no ornaments, no projections jutting out to catch the wind, and at the end of four years the thing was finished--a wooden building coated over with oak.u.m and pitch.

For a time all went seemingly well. It held four rooms, one above the other. The lantern was lit by candles. Years went on, and still it stood defying the winds and storms for half a century. There were two light-keepers, who snuffed the candles overnight, sitting up for four hours at a time. One of these men fell ill and died. A storm was raging at the time. No help could come to his companion, and so through a long month he kept the body, afraid to throw it into the sea, in case he should be thought a murderer.

At last help came from sh.o.r.e, but the loneliness and horror had told so terribly upon the remaining man that ever afterwards three men were employed to keep the light burning, in case of one falling ill or dying.

But in spite of its long standing there was a hidden flaw in the lighthouse. It was inflammable--capable of catching fire. One day--no one could quite tell how it happened, it might be the flame had dried and scorched the timber. At any rate, a man going in to snuff the candles found that fire had broken out. It wanted but a few minutes till the place was in flames. The men rushed below, while a perfect rain of beams and burning lead fell in showers about their heads. Seeing the blaze from the sh.o.r.e a boat put off with all speed. When it reached the rock it found the men, not on the rock, but crouching beneath a ledge, dripping and half dead, and with just enough life in them to enable them to catch the rope thrown to them, for it was too rough for the boat to reach the rock. And so they were towed on board.

And now the third attempt at the lighthouse was to be made by John Smeaton.

"Thou art the man to do it," were the words of the letter asking him to undertake the work. And so Smeaton was launched on that which was to make his name famous.

The first step he took was to get and study the plans of the former men.

To succeed he had first to find out where the others had failed.

The first building had failed in weight. The second had not been fire-proof. And so he decided to make his lighthouse of stone. People when they heard of it called out that it was a wild project. It could not be done. "Nothing but wood could possibly stand on the Eddystone."

But Smeaton was in no way moved or cast down. What he made he wanted to stand, and not to last for a few years merely; and so of stone he determined it should be.

He began to draw out the design. He kept to the shape of Rudyerd"s--the long cone-like column. He made the diameter of the foundation broader.

He planned the locking and bonding and dovetailing of the stones--each to each, and all to the centre. When this was all carefully thought and made out he started from London for Plymouth. He was _six days_ on the journey owing to the "badness of the roads."

On the 2nd of April he set sail for the rock, but winds and waves beat so vehemently that he found it impossible to land. All he could do was to view the low, treacherous black thing on which he was to build his house of stone. Back he went three days later, and for the first time he stood on Eddystone, but only for a couple of hours. There was almost nothing to be seen, only one or two iron branches left from the wrecks of the former wooden buildings. On the third attempt he made he could not even see the rock. Spray and foam hid it entirely from view. In the same way his fourth and fifth visits failed, but his sixth was successful, and he landed at low water, and in the stillness of the evening made his first measurements.

"I went on with my business till nine in the evening," he wrote, "having worked an hour by candlelight."

Again and again he tried to get a landing. Sometimes he managed it, at others it was impossible. After having spent fifteen hours in all on the rock he went back to London, and with his own expert hands made a model.

The work took him two months in all, and that proficiency that he had learned as a boy in his little workshop at Austhorpe stood him in good stead now. After this he set out for Plymouth again. No detail of his work was too small for him to attend to himself. He visited the quarries where the stones were to be hewn. He carefully chose the kind of cement that was to bind them together; the workmen, the work-yards, the ships that were to carry the stones to the rock. Each and all pa.s.sed under his eye.

It was a great day when, in August, 1756, he and his men started for Eddystone, and the master fixed the centre and laid down the lines. Now the work might be said to be fairly begun. But was ever work so often broken in upon? Winds and waves are not to be counted on--least of all about the stormy Eddystone, for often though the water is calm and smooth in other places, it smothers in foam the low black reef.

There were times when the workmen could work as long as six hours at a stretch, going on eagerly by torchlight if necessary. Again it would happen they could not work more than two hours out of the twenty-four.

Time was precious, and time was grievously taken up in going to and from Plymouth, and so Smeaton arranged that a "buss"--a fishing-vessel with two masts and a cabin at either end--should ride at anchor near the scene of work, with provisions and other necessaries.

But here, again, it was hard to plan ahead. One day a mighty storm arose. The men could not work. Their yawl broke from its moorings. They could neither send to sh.o.r.e, nor could they get help. But they must eat.

Days pa.s.sed, and gradually their store of provisions grew less and less.

By the time relief reached them they were at their last crust.

During the long months of winter when work was out of the question the time was spent in dressing the stones in the yard on sh.o.r.e. Smeaton himself saw them laid out in lines and numbered, after which they were put in order on board ready to be lifted off when the rock was reached, and easily put in their places. Dangers and difficulties often crowded thick on the work, enough to daunt a man less dauntless than Smeaton.

One night on the homeward way a big storm arose.

The night was dark, and Smeaton was roused from sleep by the sound of much stamping and hurrying to and fro overhead. He rushed on deck in his nightshirt. The helmsman was holding frantically by a rope.