Robert Stephenson

Robert Stephenson , <small> (Hon. causa)</small> (16 October 1803 – 12 October 1859) was an English civil engineer and designer of locomotives. The only son of George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways", he built on the achievements of his father.

Robert Stephenson became an apprentice under mining engineer Nicholas Wood after completing his education in 1819. In 1821, he and his father surveyed the Bishop Auckland area to help Edward Pease build a railway that would transport coal from the area to Darlington and Stockton-on-Tees. In 1823, the Stephensons and Pease founded Robert Stephenson and Company to manufacture locomotives; the company designed such locomotives as the Lancashire Witch in 1828 and the John Bull in 1831, the latter of which became the first steam locomotive to run in New Jersey.

Throughout the 1830s Robert oversaw the construction of several railways, including the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway, the Bolton & Leigh railway, the Warrington & Newton Railway and the Leicester and Swannington Railway. He drew the plans for the London and Birmingham Railway, which opened in 1838. In 1832 he was appointed surveyor for a project to build a railway between Lanehead Farmhouse and Consett in County Durham, but the railway line closed in 1840, six years after its completion. In 1839 he spent three months in France, Spain and Italy advising on railways, and after returning to England he advised Parliament and arbitrated in disputes between railway companies and contractors. He was made Knight of the Order of Leopold in 1841 for his improvements to locomotive engines.

In 1845 Robert designed an iron bridge that would cross the River Dee; the Dee bridge was completed in 1846 but collapsed under a locomotive, causing the deaths of five people. Robert was accused of manslaughter during the inquest, but a verdict of accidental death was ultimately returned. He also designed the Britannia Bridge, which crosses the Menai Strait and consists of four tubes; it was opened to public traffic in 1850. The High Level Bridge, another of his works, crosses the Tyne and was opened in 1849 by Queen Victoria. She offered Robert a knighthood, but he refused.

Robert, who was a member of the Conservative Party, was elected as the Member of Parliament for Whitby; he held the position until his death in 1859.

Robert has been called the greatest engineer of the 19th century. Stephenson's death was widely mourned, and his funeral afforded marks of public honour. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Early life

Robert Stephenson was born on 16 October 1803, at Willington Quay, east of Newcastle upon Tyne, to George Stephenson and Frances ( Henderson), usually known as Fanny. She was twelve years older than George, and when they met she was working as a servant where George was lodging. After marrying, George and Fanny lived in an upper room of a cottage; George worked as a brakesman on the stationary winding engine on the Quay, and in his spare time he cleaned and mended clocks and repaired shoes.

thumb|left|Dial Cottage, [[Killingworth, where Stephenson grew up. The sundial installed by Stephenson and his father can be seen above the front door.]]

In 1804, George became a brakesman at the West Moor Pit, and the family moved to Killingworth. Fanny's health deteriorated, and she died on 14 May 1806. Robert was first sent to a village school away in Long Benton. George had received little formal education but was determined that his son would have one and so sent the eleven-year-old Robert to be taught at the Percy Street Academy in Newcastle. Robert became a member of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society and borrowed books for him and his father to read. In the evenings, he would work with his father on designs for steam engines. In 1816 they made a sundial together, which is still in place above the cottage door.

After leaving school in 1819, Stephenson was apprenticed to the mining engineer Nicholas Wood, manager of Killingworth colliery. As an apprentice Stephenson worked hard and lived frugally, and unable to afford to buy a mining compass, he made one that he would later use to survey the High Level Bridge in Newcastle.

Personal life

In 1829, Stephenson married Frances Sanderson; the couple had no children, and he did not remarry after her death in 1842. In 1847, he was elected Member of Parliament for Whitby, and held the seat until his death. Stephenson declined a British knighthood, for unstated reasons, as his father had before him. He did accept several non-British honours: He was decorated in Belgium with the Knight of the Order of Leopold, in France with the Knight of the Legion of Honour and in Norway with the Knight Grand Cross of the order of St Olaf.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1849. A private bill for a Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) was presented to Parliament in 1819 but was opposed by landowners and did not pass. The route was changed, Overton carried out another survey and an act of Parliament, the Stockton and Darlington Railway Act 1821 (1 & 2 Geo. 4. c. xliv), received royal assent on 19 April 1821; Pease and George Stephenson met for the first time in Darlington that same day, and by 23 July George had been appointed to make a fresh survey of the line.

Stephenson had not completed his apprenticeship, but he was showing symptoms of tuberculosis, and his work was hazardous; he was down West Moor Pit when there was an underground explosion. Wood agreed to release the 18-year-old so that he could assist his father during the survey. By the end of 1821 they reported that a usable line could be built within the bounds of the act of Parliament, but another route would be shorter and avoid deep cuttings and tunnels. George was elected engineer by shareholders with a salary of £660 per annum. He advocated the use of steam locomotives, Pease visited Killingworth in the summer of 1822, and the directors visited Hetton colliery railway, on which George had also introduced locomotives. During the survey of the George had been persuaded, mainly by the Scottish engineer Robert Bald, that Robert would benefit from a university education. George could have afforded to send his son to a full degree course at Cambridge but agreed to a short academic year as he wished that Robert should not become a gentleman but should work for his living. Robert first helped William James to survey the route of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and then attended classes at Edinburgh University between October 1822 and April 1823.

On 23 May 1823, a second act of Parliament, the Stockton and Darlington Railway Act 1823 (4 Geo. 4. c. xxxiii), received royal assent with the Stephensons' deviations from the original route and permission for the use of "loco-motives or moveable engines". In June 1823 the Stephensons and Pease opened Robert Stephenson and Company at Forth Street in Newcastle to build these locomotives, Pease lending Robert £500 so he could buy his share. As George was busy supervising the building of the railway, Robert was placed in charge of the works with a salary of £200 per annum. Robert also surveyed the route and designed the Hagger Leases branch, which was planned to serve the collieries at Butterknowle and Copley Bent. A new act of Parliament was required for the line, and Robert stayed in London for five weeks while the bill passed through its parliamentary process, with royal assent being given to the Stockton and Darlington Railway Act 1824 (5 Geo. 4. c. xlviii) in May 1824. The ordered two steam locomotives and two stationary engines from Robert Stephenson & Co. on 16 September 1824, and the railway opened on 27 September 1825.

Colombian mines

On 18 June 1824, Stephenson sailed on the Sir William Congreve from Liverpool for South America with a contract for three years. At that time Colombia and Venezuela had not been independent of Spain for long, and they were both part of the same republic, Gran Colombia. The area's natural resources were attracting some British investors, including the Colombian Mining Association which had been formed to reopen gold and silver mines worked by the Spanish in colonial times. A Robert Stephenson & Co. partner, Thomas Richardson, was a promoter. Robert Stephenson & Co. received orders for steam engines from the company, and Richardson suggested to Stephenson that he go to South America.

To prepare for the trip, Stephenson took Spanish lessons, visited mines in Cornwall, and consulted a doctor, who advised that such a change of climate would be beneficial to his health. After a five-week journey Robert arrived at the port of La Guayra in Venezuela on 23 July 1824. He investigated building a breakwater and pier at the harbour, and a railway to Caracas. A railway linking Caracas to its port was an ambitious project as Caracas is nearly 1,000 meters above sea level: one was not completed until the 1880s. Stephenson had potential backers for his railway in London, but he concluded that while the cost of a pier, estimated at £6,000, would be sustainable, that of a breakwater or railway would not.thumb|left|Stephenson's cottage at [[Falan|Santa Ana]]

He travelled overland to Bogotá, arriving on 19 January 1825. Travelling onward, Robert found the heavier equipment at Honda on the Magdalena River; there was no way to get it to the mines as the only route was a narrow and steep path. The mines were another from Mariquita, and Stephenson set up home at Santa Ana in a bungalow. The Mining Association sent Cornish miners to work the mine, but they proved difficult to manage and drank so heavily that only two-thirds were available for work on any given day. They refused to accept that Stephenson, who had not been brought up in Cornwall, could know anything about mining.

His contract ended on 16 July 1827. He travelled to Cartagena to see if he could walk across the Panama Isthmus, but this proved too difficult. While waiting for a ship to New York, he met the railway pioneer Richard Trevithick, who had been looking for South American gold and silver in the mines of Peru and Costa Rica, and gave him £50 so he could buy passage home.

Stephenson caught a ship to New York; en route this picked up shipwrecked survivors that were so weak they had to be winched aboard, before the ship he was on sank in another storm. Everyone was saved, but Stephenson lost his money and luggage. He noticed that one second-class passenger was given priority over first-class passengers in the lifeboats: the captain later said privately that he and the passenger were Freemasons and had sworn an oath to show such preference to each other in times of peril. Stephenson was impressed and became a Freemason in New York. Wishing to see something of North America, he and four other Englishmen walked the to Montreal via Niagara Falls. He returned to New York, caught the packet Pacific across the Atlantic and arrived in Liverpool at the end of November 1827.

Locomotive designer

In 1827 George was working as the chief engineer of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR). He had built the Experiment locomotive with sloping cylinders instead of the vertical ones on previous locomotives. Robert wanted to improve the way the wheels were driven and had a chance when an order arrived in January 1828 from the L&MR. The Lancashire Witch was built with inclined cylinders that allowed the axles to be sprung, but the L&MR withdrew the order in April; by mutual agreement the locomotive was sold to the Bolton and Leigh Railway. Several similar locomotives with four or six wheels were built in the next two years, one being sent to the US for the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. As well as working at the locomotive works, Robert was also surveying routes for railways and advised on a tunnel under the River Mersey.

In March 1828 Robert wrote to a friend saying he had an attraction to Broad Street in London as Frances (Fanny) Sanderson lived there.

Robert had become a member of the in 1846, and the following year had accompanied Talabot and Alois Negrelli to look at the feasibility of a Suez canal. He advised against a canal, saying it would quickly fill up with sand, and assisted in the building of a railway between Alexandria and Cairo, with two tubular bridges that he had designed. This opened in 1854, and was extended to Suez in 1858. He spoke in Parliament against possible involvement in a Suez canal scheme in 1857 and 1858.

The house that has no knocker

thumb|The first Titania in 1850, as reported by the [[Illustrated London News]]

Robert had moved to 34 Gloucester Square in 1847; when in London he would socialise at the Athenaeum and Carlton clubs, delaying returning home until late. By 1850, Robert had been involved in a third of the country's railway system, and had prematurely aged and become ill with chronic nephritis, then known as Bright's Disease.

In 1850, the route for the Norwegian Trunk Railway from Oslo (then Christiania) to Lake Mjøsa was surveyed, and Robert became chief engineer. Bidder stayed on as resident engineer, Robert returning in 1851, 1852 and 1854. In August 1852 Robert travelled to Canada to advise the Grand Trunk Railway on crossing the St Lawrence River at Montreal. The Victoria Bridge had a 6,500-foot-long (2,000-metre-long) tube made up of 25 wrought iron sections, and was to become for a time the longest bridge in the world. and in 1854 was elected as one of the institute's vice Presidents. In 1855 Robert was decorated Knight of the Legion of Honour by the Emperor of France.

Having served as vice-president of the Institution of Civil Engineers since 1847, he was elected president in 1856, and the following year received an Honorary Doctorate of Civil Law at Oxford along with Brunel and Livingstone.

During his life he had become close friends with Brunel and Locke, and in 1857, although weak and ill, he responded to a plea for help from Brunel in launching the SS Great Eastern. Robert fell from the slipway into riverside mud, but continued without an overcoat until the end of his visit. The following day he was confined to his bed for two weeks with bronchitis.

In late 1858, Robert sailed with some friends to Alexandria, where he stayed on board Titania or at Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo. He dined with his friend Brunel on Christmas Day before returning to London, arriving in February 1859. He was ill that summer, but sailed to Oslo in the company of George Parker Bidder to celebrate the opening of the Norwegian Trunk railway and to receive the Knight Grand Cross of the order of St. Olaf. He fell ill at the banquet on 3 September and returned to England on board Titania in the company of a doctor, but the journey took seven days after the yacht ran into a storm. As Robert landed in Suffolk, Brunel was already seriously ill following a stroke and died the following day. Robert rallied, but died on 12 October 1859. He was three years older than Brunel.

Legacy

thumb|upright|[[Statue of Robert Stephenson outside Euston Station in London]]

By 1850 Stephenson had been involved in the construction of a third of England's railway system. He designed the High Level Bridge and Royal Border Bridge on the East Coast Main Line. With Eaton Hodgkinson and William Fairbairn he developed wrought-iron tubular bridges, such as the Britannia Bridge in Wales, a design he would later use for the Victoria Bridge in Montreal, for many years the longest bridge in the world. He eventually worked on 160 commissions from 60 companies, building railways in other countries such as Belgium, Norway, Egypt and France.

Robert's death was deeply mourned throughout the country, especially since it happened just a month after the death of Brunel. His funeral cortège was given permission by the Queen to pass through Hyde Park, an honour previously reserved for royalty. Two thousand tickets were issued, but 3000 men were admitted to the service at Westminster Abbey, where he was buried beside the great civil engineer Thomas Telford. Ships on the Thames, Tyne, Wear and Tees placed their flags at half mast. Work stopped at midday on Tyneside, and the 1,500 employees of Robert Stephenson & Co. marched through the streets of Newcastle to their own memorial service.

Robert left about £400,000 (): the Newcastle locomotive works, Snibston collieries and £50,000 went to his cousin George Robert Stephenson, the only son of George's younger brother Robert, £10,000 was left to Parker Bidder and the Newcastle Infirmary, and the rest was left to friends and as legacies to institutions. One of the bequests, for £2,000, was to the fund from which the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers was anticipating the creation of its permanent Newcastle Headquarters. Robert was a member of this institute.

Notes and references

Notes

References

Sources

External links

The Robert Stephenson Trust
Menai Heritage—A community project and museum telling the story of Stephenson's Britannia Tubular Bridge
Archive of Robert Stephenson and Co Ltd held at The National Railway Museum