12
THE CORNISH PUMPING ENGINE.
parts of England where fuel was cheap, particularly in the coal districts of the Mid
land and Northern Counties.
17. It is believed that the first steam engine in Cornwall was erected on Wheal
Vor, a tin mine in Breage, and was set to work a little before 1714. Mr. Carne,
w T ho mentions this engine in his Paper ‘ On Copper Mining in Cornwall,’ published
in the ‘ Transactions of the Geological Society of Cornwall,’ 18 adds, “ Whether this
was Savery’s or Newcomen’s is doubtful, as Newcomen’s engine does not appear to
have been much known before 1712.” It was probably one of Newcomen’s first
attempts; for independently of the objections to Savery’s plan, it is scarcely likely
that the latter, having a share in the better engine, would be anxious to promote the
use of his original inferior one, for purposes to which the other was so much better
adapted. If the documents of the mine, from which probably Mr. Carne had his
authority, prove the non-existence of the steam engine there before 1710, and its
existence in 1714, this would be quite consistent with the fact of the erection of the
first atmospheric engine in Warwickshire in 1711 or 1712, and its trial in Cornwall
immediately afterwards. 19
A second engine was erected at Wheal Fortune, in Ludgvan, in 1720, 20 but of
the dimensions or performances of this, as of the former one, we are now entirely
ignorant.
18. The progress of the steam engine, however, in Cornwall, where it was as
much needed as in any part of England, was extremely slow, for except the two
above mentioned, we hear of none having been erected there for many years. We
are explicitly informed by Pryce, 21 a resident in the county and a good authority, that
thirty-six years before he wrote, (i. e. about 1740,) the county had only one fire
engine in it.
It will at first sight appear extraordinary that an invention so important to mining
should have been totally neglected in Cornwall for so many years, while almost all
Anecdotes of Steam Engines,’ pp. 170,172, (one of the best histories of the steam engine extant,) appears to
ascribe to Beighton the merit of first giving the engine this automaton movement ; but it must be evident,
if only from the boy’s object in the invention, viz. to relieve himself of the tedium of remaining in the
engine-house, that the arrangement of this youthful genius, whatever it was, made the engine self-acting.
Hence Beighton was only the improver, not the inventor, of this ingenious contrivance.
18 Voi. iii. 1824.
19 There is a tradition that Newcomen, on the expiration of his patent (1719), became engineer in chief
to the Cornish mines.
20 ‘ Statistics of the Copper Mines of Cornwall,’ by Sir Charles Lemon, Bart., M.P., F.R.S., &c. &c.,
published in the ‘Transactions of the Statistical Society of England.’ 1838. June. Page 66.
21 ‘ Mineralogia Cornubiensis.’ Introduction, p. xiv.