Henry Cort: The Great Finer PDF

Preface

HENRYCORT'S processes for making wrought iron (with coal instead of charcoal as the fuel) and rolling to bar (instead of finishing with slow forge hammers) saved England from defeat by blockade in the Napoleonic wars-for in 1790 two-thirds of the wrought iron used in Great Britain was imported from Russia and Sweden. After the battle of Waterloo and for a period of 50 years Cort's processes enabled Great Britain to make more wrought iron than the rest of the world, whilst British operators introduced his processes (and that of the Darbys), with English railways, into most European countries.

E. W. Hulme, Librarian of the Patent Office, said in the first volume of the Transactions of the Newcomen Society-a society formed to overcome the defect of which he spoke-"The greatest defect of our modern histories of inventors and engineers is that they have for the most part been written by men whose scholarship has not atoned for the lack of professional knowledge of the subjects with which they have elected to deal".

The story of Cort's achievements has suffered from the defect of which Hulme wrote. There has been a general lack of appreciation that the conditions for the validity of a paten t, when Cort took out his in 1783-4, were different from those of the nineteenth century and the errors of Smiles and Percy in this respect have been perpetuated by later writers; yet the validity and novelty of Cort's patents are beyond question. The story ofCort's misfortunes has, of course, been well told by Samuel Smiles. but these misfortunes created incorrect estimates of production which became a further corruption of the story. Intense pity for Cort's misfortunes has embroidered the story with innuendoes of political malpractice which were unfounded. There were also, because of the free use of Cort's patents (seized for a debt owing to the Crown by Cort's backer), falsifications of the truth by those who made fortunes by using Cort's processes. Finally, Cort's processes (and Darby's coke blast furnace) were introduced into Europe as 'the English methods' so that foreign users often failed to appreciate the part played by Henry Cort in their development.

Much time has been spent in correcting the metallurgical inexactitudes, the verbal myths, the emotive misrepresentations and the falsifications, deliberate and unconscious, which have unworthily cluttered the truth. The story has been told from original sources, some of which (based on Minutes of Henry Cort himself) were sent to James Weale by Cort's sons to disprove the falsifications of the 1812 Parliamentary Enquiry. Sufficient reliable statistics have been found to give a quantitative basis for the new assessment of the success of Cort's processes.

The keepers of the archives at the Public Record Office, the British Museum, the National Maritime Museum and+the Science Museum Library made the author's searches there pleasant experiences. The County Archivists at Kendal, Kingston-upon-Thames, Greater London and the City of London (Guildhall) were most helpful. The documentary assistance of the Public Librarians at Birmingham, Edinburgh, Portsmouth and Newcastle upon Tyne was of great assistance. The Rectors or churchwardens of Holy Trinity, Gosport; Holy Trinity, Kendal; Crowhurst, Surrey; St Olave's, Hart Street, London'; St Giles-inthe-Fields, Camden; Standon, Hertfordshire; and Titchfield in Hampshire were generous in the time spent in searching the registers in their charge. The author has been compensated for his deficiency of local knowledge by Mr E. W. Nicholson of Messrs Camper and Nicholson, a firm which took over part ofCort's Gosport shops as a mast house; by Dr L. F. W. White, who has written the Story of Gosport; by the County Archivist at Winchester; and by the Archivist at Palace House, Beaulieu.

A year's work attempting to unravel the mystery of the parentage of Henry Cort ended in the conclusion that he was illegitimate; a conclusion which, despite much circumstantial evidence, could not be proved. The result appears as a few pages; had it been otherwise the list of acknowledgements would have to be much extended.

The goodwill the author invariably experienced in his enquiries is something he will always remember with gratitude. He cannot but think that this was, at least in part, a realisation of the worthiness of his task. The author has reason to believe that, at long last, the achievements of Henry Cort will be appreciated in their true merit and that it will be seen that his obscure birth in Lancaster was 'of momentous destiny'.

Edited by: R.A. Mott, Peter Singer