THE CORNISH PUMPING ENGINE. 
5 
new and more scientific machinery presented itself to the attention of the miner. 
For want of another piece of machinery, we had been stinted to a certain depth, 
beyond which the succeeding generation, by the water wheel and bobs, would be 
unable to sink. So that happily for us and our posterity, Mr. Newcomen’s inven 
tion of the steam fire engine, even in the weakness of its infancy, promised that 
future excellence to which it is since arrived, whereby we are enabled to sink our 
mines to twice the depth we could formerly do by any other machinery.” 
8. Thomas Savery, commonly called Captain Savery, early brought into use an 
effective machine for raising water by the agency of steam ; 4 and although his 
engine never appears to have been actually used in the Cornish mines, the efforts 
he made to introduce it into the county entitle him to mention here. 
Of his life and history little is now known. By some parties he has been called 
a sea-faring man, but a passage in his ‘ Miner’s Friend ’ 5 decidedly negatives this 
notion. Switzer in his ‘ Hydrostatics,’ 6 vol. ii. page 325, speaks of his engine as the 
invention of “ a gentleman with whom I had the honour long since to be well 
acquainted ; I mean the ingenious Captain Savery, sometime since deceased, but then 
a most noted engineer and one of the Commissioners of the Sick and Wounded.” 
It has been asserted that he was originally a working miner, but the supposition is 
highly improbable and entirely without proof. He was a Fellow of the Royal 
Society, and a man of superior attainments ; of great talent and energy of character, 
occupying a good station in society, and possessing a tolerable share of opulence. 
It is by no means certain from what source the title of Captain, handed down to 
us in connection with his name, was derived. In the ‘ Transactions of the Royal 
4 It has been said that Savery’s patent of 25th July, 1698, is the first upon record connected with the 
steam engine. This is a mistake: the privilege granted to Ramseye by Charles I., dated 21st January, 
1630, for, among other things, an invention “to raise water from low pitts by fire,” must have been for 
some application of the force of steam, although the method he proposed to make use of is not known. 
Mr. Farey suggests that it was something borrowed from the book of Solomon de Caus, published 
in 1623. 
In 1663 the Marquis of Worcester also procured an act of Parliament ensuring the profits of his water- 
commanding engine to himself and his heirs for ninety years thereafter, on condition of one-tenth of the 
said profits reverting to the King. Under this act, those who counterfeited the machine were to be fined 
five pounds for every hour they used the imitation without consent of the Marquis; a very salutary pro 
tective arrangement, which might often be applied in our day with advantage. 
5 “I believe it (speaking of his engine) may be made very useful to ships, but I dare not meddle with 
that matter, and leave it to the judgment of those who are the best judges of Maritain (sic in orig.) affairs.” 
—Miner’s Friend, original edition, p. 33. 
6 ‘ An Introduction to a general System of Hydrostaticks, and Hydraulicks, Philosophical and Practical,’ 
&c., by Stephen Switzer. 2 vols. 4to. London, 1729.