Parallel lines – the growth of the railways and the steamers

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the world’s first passenger-carrying railway service on the Stockton and Darlington Railway on 27 September 1825 we take a look – in a three-part special – at the close relationship between the railways and the sea, a mutually interdependent relationship from the very beginning.

It’s a story full of surprises, so read on!

Steam ships and steam trains were forged in the same era on the anvil of the Industrial Revolution. The world’s oldest surviving steam locomotive is Puffing Billy, built 1813-14 for the Wylam Colliery near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Meanwhile the wreck record demonstrates that steam ships stuttered into life on small passenger vessels in inshore waters, but were prone to disasters: in 1817 a steam packet on the River Yare exploded just after leaving Norwich for Great Yarmouth, with the loss of half the passengers. [1]

Later that same year. the Regent steam packet, a ‘fine vessel of its kind’ which had apparently cost £1100 to build, suffered a fire en route to Margate. According to a passenger, the fire came from the wooden casing on the deck surrounding the chimney of the steam engine. (Just like today, the press was keen to hear from survivors of any incident and print eyewitness accounts.) There were only two buckets on board to put out the fire, so all that the master could do was order everyone on deck and close all the hatches to deprive the fire of oxygen. He then made a signal of distress and directed the vessel towards Whitstable, the heat trapped inside still keeping the boiler going.

There was ‘terror and agitation’ among the passengers and the fire was ‘only kept from penetrating through the deck by the constant application of water’ from the two buckets to hand, but fortunately the vessel ‘grounded on the sand at Whitstable, when three boats from that place, which had overshot them, arrived to their assistance, and safely took on board all the passengers and crew’, who included children. The vessel burnt to the waterline and as the tide ebbed the keel and engine were exposed on the sand. [2]

‘King Coal’: the railways and the coal industry

From the beginning the railways were intimately connected with the coal industry. The earliest railways originated in the horse-drawn waggonways which brought coal out of the pits to waterways for onward despatch to market. Puffing Billy and its sister engine Wylam Dilly demonstrate the evolution of the waggonways from horse power to steam power.

At this period coal was not directly loaded onto the collier brigs of the Tyne from the shore, but taken out to the ships by the flat-bottomed barge-like Tyne keels, who gave their name to a standardised measure of coal (one keel = 21 tons 4 cwt). The keelmen of the Tyne went on strike in 1822 and a strange story persists that the Wylam Dilly locomotive was loaded onto a keel in order to break the strike by towing a number of keels behind her.

This attractive story seems difficult to substantiate, however: it seems an audacious experiment which would surely have attracted the attention of the press. However, while both local and national newspapers devoted many column inches to the keelmen’s strike and the authorities’ and colliery-owners’ responses, the press is remarkably silent on such an event – despite the twin novelties of steam propulsion at sea, still in its infancy, and the repurposing of a railway engine for riverine use. [3]

The story does, however, serve as a neat illustration of the fundamental links between the railways and the sea, linked by coal. From the outset the powerful coal magnates of the north, landowners with several collieries, saw the potential in facilitating the links between the coalfields and outlets to the sea for domestic export, the best route to moving large quantities of coal. It was this great trade in coal from the 16th century onwards that gave rise to the expression ‘coals to Newcastle’ as an expression for a futile endeavour: coal was Newcastle, benefiting from the rich Durham and Northumberland seams, and the trade was so profitable that ships taking coal to London ran in ballast (empty) on the voyage home: there was no real need for a return or exchange cargo.

The railways and the ports

Just five years after that inaugural passenger service in 1825, the Stockton and Darlington Railway was linked to a new port at Middlesbrough on the Tees for the transhipment of coal via the River Tees, but the demand soon outgrew the port and further development was needed.

At the same time the Marquis of Londonderry saw an opportunity to develop Seaham on the Durham coast to ship the coal from his nearby coalfields, connected by a railway line from Rainton from 1831. [4] The increase in maritime trade was not without its hazards: the number of shipwrecks associated with the region grew commensurately with the growth in shipping using the port. [5]

Coal thus made of the north-east a perfectly closed-loop economy. Coal was used in the manufacture of iron and steel for the engines and bodies of locomotives, trains and steamships, which were themselves powered by coal. Shipbuilding flourished accordingly in Britain’s industrial centres, particularly where there was a strong coal hinterland. Built using coal, powered by coal, and destined to carry coal, the steam collier built on the banks of the Tyne and the Wear unlocked cargo capacity for ever greater shipments of coal to meet demand. Coal created both its own demands and the means to fulfil them.

In terms of the coal trade, railways were intended at the beginning – through the development of port connections – to serve the shipping of coal, and not to replace it. The growth in freight hauled by rail, including coal, never did put the steam colliers out of work for many and complex reasons, not least the fact that from the outset the railways facilitated access to the ports, and hence port development by the coal magnates.

From our 21st century perspective, this approach, while understandable in terms of the bigger picture, seems counter-intuitive. The reliance on shipping rather than devolution to the railways to reach the domestic market would certainly come to place Britain in great danger during the two World Wars. Coal was needed to, quite literally, ‘keep the home fires burning’: it was required for factory production, for domestic heating, lighting and cooking, to build and to power the trains that connected the country, for shipbuilding and to bunker both British steamers and ships from all over the world arriving at British ports. It was therefore vulnerable to supply disruption and economic loss in both income and ships – and, of course, human lives.

The steam colliers were vital, and thus became a clear target of the Scarborough minefield laid by enemy shipping during the First World War. During the Second World War colliers likewise had to contend with mines and the ever-present possibility of a U-boat strike or bombardment from the air. [For a little more on the attacks on collier shipping in the First World War, see our previous blogs on Sir Francis (June 1917) and The Schooners’ Last Stand, (September 1917).]

Fish’n’Chips

As well as taking goods to market – and facilitating their international export as well as domestic circulation by sea – the railways also brought fish from market. The expansion of the railway network over Britain coincided with the development of the steam trawler exploiting the fish stocks of the North Sea and North Atlantic.

The catch could be brought to market more quickly by steam trawler and onward despatch by the burgeoning railway network meant that from the late 19th century onwards inland communities could benefit as much as coastal communities from ready access to fish. It was a cheap meal – because it could be brought in quickly and in quantity – and a nutritious and filling one, particularly important for the diet of working-class communities in industrial cities.

The steam fleets of Kingston-upon-Hull, Grimsby, and Fleetwood were particularly noteworthy, and well placed to reach the great cities of the industrial north and the Midlands – and beyond – by railway. The steam trawlers and the railways together made fish and chips a national dish.

The wreck record parallels the twin growth of the steam trawler and the railways. Our earliest record of a steamer in the fishing trade being lost at sea in English waters dates from March 1853. The George Bolton was a ‘new screw steam schooner, which had been introduced in the fishing trade for the purpose of expediting the conveyance of fish from the coast of Holland to the London market’. She was supplied with a ‘full cargo of cod-fish, shipped on board of her from the numerous craft engaged in those fisheries, for Grimsby, where she would discharge her cargo, and thence conveyed to London by railway.’ Her boilers exploded off the Humber, almost cleaving her in two, and she sank, although collier brigs in the vicinity were able to rescue survivors, some much scalded by the explosion. [6]

Part 2 follows next week with the ever-closer connections between trains and steamers in the 20th century

With many thanks to Andrew Wyngard, railway consultant for this blog.

Footnotes

[1] Historic England NMHR records; ‘Horrible explosion of a steam packet’ Lancaster Gazette, 12 April 1817, No.826, p1

[2] Historic England NMHR records; ‘Total Loss of a Margate Steam Packet’. Stamford Mercury, 11 July 1817, No.4,503, p4

[3] The source for the story appears to be the print presented by Forster Bros, based at Scotwood-on-Tyne, depicting the Wylam Dilly ‘made to answer as a paddle tug’ in 1822 (reproduced above and in Grelling, M, nd, “Wylam Dilly: one of the world’s oldest locomotives”, National Museums Scotland). but it does not appear to be a contemporary record of events. It is undated: the typefaces and grammatical details in the caption appear more consistent with the mid- to late 19th century. It was certainly extant by 1912 when it was republished in a Newcastle paper in 1912 (Newcastle Daily Chronicle, September 10, 1912. p3) to celebrate the centenary of Henry Bell’s steamboat, the paddle steamer Comet. The newspaper credits Messrs Ord and Company, 45 Hartington Street, Newcastle, as the source of the print. John Shute Ord, shipbroker, was resident at that address in 1911 (England and Wales Census, 1911).

The caption reads “Wylam Dilly” Taken off Railway Waggon Way and fitted on a Keel called “Tom and Jerry”, at Lemington, and made to answer as a Paddle Tug, going by Quayside, Newcastle. By the mid-19th century the practice of capitalising nouns in English was very old-fashioned, but persisted to some extent in press circles, and this may be a hallmark of the print. i.e. it was handled by a press associated with the newspaper industry. There were Forsters owning tugs on the Tyne from the 1830s at least: Scotswood appears in connection with Forster ownership from the 1870s to the 1920s. There is sufficient detail in the print to suggest details from memory, perhaps from local rivermen as the Forsters had been – Tom and Jerry was a popular novel and play of 1821, just the sort of inspiration for a vessel name that was very common, Lemington was the end point of the Wylam waggonway to the river, and both Wylam and Lemington were places name-checked in acounts of the strike.

So far, so plausible – yet the print remains puzzling, in the face of the silence in the contemporary press on the Wylam Dilly‘s purported use on the river in 1822 and the fairly rudimentary nature of the paddle wheels as shown more by the movement of the water than in size or action. So far the origin of the story remains untraced, but the ‘presented’ caption at the bottom suggests to me that the original was commissioned or presented for a local publication on local industrial heritage. Wylam and Lemington were key locales in the strike, and Wylam Dilly in use on the waggonway at that time – that much is certain. Whether the locomotive actually made it onto the river is less certain.

[4] Seaham Town Council, nd, Seaham Harbour 1828-1851, published online

[5] Cant, S 2013 England’s Shipwreck Heritage: from logboats to U-boats (Swindon: English Heritage) p179

[6] Historic England NMHR records; ‘Blowing up of two Steam Vessels, and Loss of Life’, Morning Advertiser, 14 March 1853, No.19,258, p3