"I saw Captain Andrew Vivian on Wednesday, who told me that he had
been offered 150_l._ a year to inspect all the engines in the county,
and report what duty they were doing, in order to stimulate the
engineers. He declined accepting it, having too much to do already;
and he thought it would be worth Trevithick's notice, as it would not
take him more than a day or two in a month.
"I remain, my dear Jane,
"Yours sincerely,
"H. HARVEY.
"I wrote this letter on Sunday, with an intention of sending it then,
but thought it best to wait until this day, in hopes of hearing the
determination of Government in your favour; but your letter has
arrived without the desired information. All that I can now say is,
to desire that Trevithick will make up his mind to return to Cornwall
immediately.
"H. H."
The application to the Government for remuneration for benefits
conferred on the public was unsuccessful. The office of registrar of
Cornish engines was unsuitable; fortunately for mining interests,
illness obliged Trevithick to revisit his native county, for by
the increased power and economy of his engines Dolcoath Mine, so
frequently mentioned, and so important in olden time, now returns
70,000_l._ worth of tin yearly.
Trevithick's first act on returning to Cornwall in 1810 was the
erection of the high-pressure boilers and pole vacuum engine at Wheal
Prosper; at the same time renewing his proposals to Dolcoath to use
his improved boilers, which had been broken off in 1806, and to apply
high-pressure steam to their low-pressure Watt engine, with the same
safety and profit as in Wheal Prosper; the evidence was undeniable,
so his plans were agreed to, and in the early part of 1811 the
high-pressure boilers, called the Trevithick or Cornish boilers, were
constructed in the Dolcoath Mine under his directions.
Old John Bryant, who worked the Dolcoath large engines both before and
after the introduction of higher pressure steam, including the Carloose
or Bullan Garden 45-inch cylinder engine, Wheal Gons 63-inch cylinder
single engine, and the Watt 63-inch cylinder double, with the bee-but
boiler, such as Trevithick, sen., used in 1775,[70] followed by the Watt
waggon boiler, and afterwards by the globular boiler of Trevithick,
jun., in 1799,[71] and still later also with the cylindrical boiler of
1811, gave the following statement, when seventy-four years old, to the
writer:--
[Footnote 70: See vol. i., p. 25.]
[Footnote 71: See vol ii., p. 119.]
"In the old bee-but and the waggon boiler the steam pressure in the
boiler was not much; we did not trouble about it so long as the
engines kept going: when the steam was too high it blew off through
the feed-cistern. When Captain Trevithick tried his high steam in
Dolcoath we hoisted up the feed-cistern as high as we could; when
the steam got up, it blew the water out of the cistern. Captain Dick
holloed out, 'Why don't you trig down the clack?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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