"N.B.--If your friend goes to Bridgenorth, let him show this letter to
the founders."
The engine, intended for the West Indies, so pleased Mr. Uville, that
he begged to have it made over to him for South America, where it
worked the machinery for rolling gold and silver in the Mint at Lima.
"About 1815, while erecting a high-pressure pole-engine at Legassack
for Mr. Trevithick, and doing some repairs to Mr. Kendal's thrashing
engine, a Creole, I think called Nash, brought a note from Captain
Trevithick, stating that the bearer was anxious to be taught to erect
and work the portable engines for Jamaica.
"Sir Rose Price, who had property in the West Indies, had sent him to
Mr. Trevithick for that purpose."[16]
[Footnote 16: Recollections of Captain H. A. Artha, Penzance, 1869.]
It is therefore probable that some of Trevithick's engines reached
Jamaica. Sir Rose Price was well known to Lord Dedunstanville and Sir
Charles Hawkins, and living near them, saw the engines at work and
their fitness for his property in Jamaica.
Lord Dedunstanville's engine of 1812 was sold as old iron to Messrs.
Harvey and Co. not long before 1843. Having remained for some time
on the old-scrap heap, it was in that year again worked to drive
machinery. Instead of the original rope-driver on the fly-wheel, a
chain was used, the links of which caught on projecting pins on the
driving wheel. In that form it continued to work until 1853, before
which it was frequently seen by the writer prior to its removal to
make room for a more powerful engine.
What greater proof could be given of the fitness of design of this
early engine, than its long life of forty years under such rough
treatment, and the facility with which it was applied to different
uses. Mr. Bickle, who, from recollection, had made a sketch of this
engine before the writer had found Trevithick's sketch, says that after
the engine had ceased to work, the boiler was turned to account in
heating tar in the ship-builder's yard.
"In 1854 I saw working in a shed at Carnsew, in the ship-*building
yard of Harvey and Co., of Hayle, an engine working a stamps for
pounding up the slag and furnace bottoms from the brass-casting
foundry.
"I was then the foreman hammerman in Harvey and Co.'s smiths' shop
and hammer-mill, and frequently noticed this old engine and inquired
about it. It had been brought from Lord Dedunstanville's, at Tehidy
Park, where it at one time worked a thrashing machine. The boiler
was of wrought iron, built in brickwork, and looked like a big
kitchen-boiler. A flattish cover was bolted on to the top of the
boiler, and the cylinder was let down into this top.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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