Ships and Engineering Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age

This steam roller of mine were made in 1910.

But way before then, at the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign,

they were already building some substantial steam engines.

It were about then they built the first iron ships propelled by steam.

The first steam-powered iron ship was the SS Great Britain,

built by the best of the Victorian engineers, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

When appointed engineer for the new railway,

to be built between London and Bristol in 1833,

he decided that a seven foot wide track

would give a faster, more fuel-efficient ride

than the standard four foot eight-and-a-half inch gauge.

On his Great Western Railway, he designed it all -

the track, the locomotives, the rolling stock,

the tunnels, bridges and stations.

He built road bridges like the Clifton suspension bridge.

But his greatest achievement was building this.

The SS Great Britain was an outstanding achievement

of the Victorian age -

the first ocean-going ship to be made of iron,

and driven by a steam-powered propeller.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel - my hero!

In his honour today,

I'll wear my tall hat while I look round.

Really, anything to do with engineering on a grand scale,

he were the guy to get to have a look at it.

Whilst constructing the Great Western,

he had this vision - to link New York with Bristol and the railway.

This is the second of three ships that he made - the SS Great Britain,

which lies here now in the very dock that it were constructed in,

in 1843.

She was in service, doing regular sailings to New York and Australia

until 1886,

before ending her working life as a store ship in the Falklands.

In 1970,

she was salvaged - brought back to sail under Brunel's famous bridge

to the Great Western dock, for restoration.

The restoration is still going on

and below deck,

you can see how the ship's engine

is being made to look as it did

when Brunel built it.

As you walk round, you can see what a huge project it was for its day.

As well as being the first to use steam power,

it was, at nearly 2,000 tonnes,

the biggest ship to have been built.

But steam power was also being used

for much smaller and lighter craft.

To see some very fine small boats,

I went to the Lake District.

In 1845, the year that the Great Britain first sailed to New York,

the first steamboat was launched on Windermere.

Around this time, wealthy northern industrialists

started to build homes in the Lake District.

Henry William Schneider was a London-born merchant

who created the steel industry at Barrow-in-Furness.

In 1869,

he moved to Windermere and had a steam yacht built.

Here, you can see boats from the age of steam

including Schneider's boat, Esperance.

-This is a twin screwing steam yacht, built in 1869...

-Yeah, mmm.

-It was built in Rutherglen, in Scotland.

-How did it get down here?

Well, they sailed it down the Irish Sea, to Barrow,

and then...er...loaded it onto a railway wagon

with a steam crane.

-And they brought it up on a railway line from Barrow to Lakeside...

-Yeah.

-..which is down at the foot of Windermere.

-I've been there.

I read in a book

that they were sinking a mine shaft in Barrow, for the iron ore

and the money were run out, like.

They were desperate and he sacked them all.

And they said, "We'll do a week for nowt for you."

-And the next week they hit it.

-Yes.

-Best seam of iron ore in Barrow.

-He'd made 'em all rich.

-It was a massive deposit.

-And of course, that was the beginning of his...

-Empire.

-Right.

He became a wealthy man. He came down from the house to the pier,

Esperance with the steam up, waiting for him.

His butler walked down with his breakfast...

That's it! He would come down and get on board with the steam ready.

The steam would be up and away she would go round the lake.

That was how he travelled to work -

to the Lakeside railway, onto his carriage

with his secretary waiting, and he started work

-when the train moved out.

-Like a commuter.

-He was, but he did it in style!

-Oh, aye, without a shadow of a doubt.

Swallow was a much later boat, built in 1911,

but it's still going strong.

I took a steam cruise on it round the lake. My guide was David Scott,

who pointed out to me Mr Schneider's house.

And then the shipbuilding

made a remarkable change to the north-west coast.

Does anybody make owt like this nowadays on Lake Windermere?

No, I'm afraid everything comes up on a lorry made of fantastic plastic.

That's a good description - "fantastic plastic"!

If God had intended fibreglass boats, he would have grown fibreglass trees.

Yeah, yeah.

CYGNETS CHEEP

-Oh! Thank you, David.

-There we are.

-Biscuits and all!

-Ship's biscuits. I've knocked the weevils out of them.

SHIP'S WHISTLE TOOTS

-That's all that's happened.

-The joys of steam engines!

-Yes.

You'll never believe this. It's like acid rain coming down,

out of the funnel.

One thing wrong with it. If it goes on your shirt you can't get it off!

-It's on me biscuits.

-Getting them damp.

Everybody's got to swallow a certain amount of muck

during their lifetime.

If you play with steam engines, you get a lot! Is it raining?

It's magnificent, this.

You can hardly hear the engine.

This is certainly the best way to travel, without a doubt. Beautiful.

If I were rich, I'd buy one.

As the age of steam developed on Windermere,

steam engines were being used for everything

from the smallest,

most delicate jobs, like this steam-powered locksmith

that I saw when I was at Ironbridge,

to engines like this at Crofton pumping station

in the Kennet and Avon canal

near Marlborough in Wiltshire.

It pumped water up to high-level locks.

Because it pumped so efficiently,

it became the basic working machine

of the water industry.

Kew Bridge Steam Museum is in London,

in the old Kew Bridge pumping station by the Thames.

It claims to have the largest collection of static steam engines.

It's certainly the best place to go

to see the best of steam technology.

Clean water is one of our most basic human needs.

In the Victorian times,

they used steam power to pump it through pipes to everyone's houses.

Kew Bridge Steam Museum is housed in this Victorian pumping station.

They have a wonderful collection of steam-pumping machinery.

-This is a Boulton and Watt engine. Geoff will tell us about it.

-Hallo, Fred.

-Hallo, Geoff.

-Tell me how old it is.

-Well, it was built in 1820.

It's the oldest engine we have.

But it was built in a different location, at Chelsea, where it pumped water.

-But the water at Chelsea got so badly polluted...

-Yeah.

-With sewage.

-Sewage, that's right.

So it worked on this site

between 1838 and 1944.

-All credit to Mr Watt.

-It is a credit to Mr Watt.

There's a wonderful collection of engines here.

This is a cross compound one

with bell cranks on the end of the piston rods

and it works the pump rods down into the well.

This one here looks like it's come off a ship. I don't think it has.

It's actually a triple expansion engine,

brought here from a pumping station in Newmarket.

But the most impressive one of all at Kew

is the one that's spent all its working life here.

Right, Clive, lets get the water flowing.

Steam please, Fred. See if she starts moving.

That's fine, thank you.

STEAM HISSES

I believe it's called the Grand Junction 90.

Yes. It's 90 inches in diameter - the steam cylinder -

by 11 foot stroke.

Very precise, all this...er...business.

Right. I think we're almost there.

They say in the old days, the waste hot water flowed out to the river

and the local women did their washing in this stream.

I think it's true to say

this is the biggest Cornish beam pumping engine I've ever seen.

It pumped water to west London for over 100 years.

And they say it's the biggest beam engine still working in the world.

And I would think it is.

That's the ultimate in beam engines, engineering of the highest order.

The age of steam was reaching its peak.

For much of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries,

steam engines provided a livelihood for thousands throughout Britain.

Steam engines drove the machinery in the factories, the rolling mills in the steel works

and the pumps in the mines.

They transported people and goods.

Agriculture became mechanised,

with steam-powered threshing machines.

It was around the mid-19th century

that industries devoted to making machines

first started to get off the ground.

To see one of our oldest engineering firms,

I went to East Anglia.

Richard Garrett & Sons,

of Leiston in Suffolk, were one of the pioneers in heavy engineering.

Here in the Long Shop Museum is a grand collection of their products

in the building they were made in.

Initially, they made threshers, seed drills, ploughs

and other agricultural tools.

Then the company saw a market for steam-powered farm machinery.

So they built this place.

It's the site of one of the world's first assembly lines,

originally built by Richard Garrett.

They manufactured portable steam engines in this building.

The boilers came in at one end.

The bigger bits were made on each side

the smaller bits upstairs, and lowered down. As it progressed,

the thing would come in as a boiler and go out as a completed engine.

This is one of Mr Garrett's many products that he manufactured on this site.

And it's what's known as a semi-portable.

You can see why. It must weigh 20 tonnes!

The reason for the semi-portable was

it saved making boiler houses and foundations for engines.

The whole thing could be delivered direct to the saw mill or wherever

on a trailer, no doubt pulled by one of his traction engines.

It would be there for the rest of its days,

driving the rack saws, the frame saws and the machinery of the mill.

This was the first production line for traction engines

and for the rest of the century, heavy engineering grew at Garrett's,

with steam winding engines,

road rollers and tractors.

Then, by the beginning of the 20th, they had to meet new competition.

Well, this is a bit of an unusual beast, innit?

A very unusual one now.

It was built to compete with the first internal combustion tractors.

Is it very hard to steer?

No, it's very straightforward on the steering. Easier than a roller.

-Oh, aye.

-It's direct steering. The new bearing straightened the shaft.

When Garrett's made engines like the Suffolk Punch,

every industry in Britain used steam power.

To see working steam engines, I went to Liphook in Hampshire.

This is the Hollycombe Steam Collection.

Until the 19th century, agriculture had been labour intensive.

The steam engine changed all that.

Here, you can see demonstrations of steam-powered threshing machines

and ploughing engines.

And it wasn't all work. By the end of the 19th century,

Steam engines provided power for the fairgrounds touring the country.

The engine transported the rides

and drove the roundabouts and swing.

INAUDIBLE

From the 1890s, engines incorporated dynamos

to light the fairground.

How wonderful it must have been

to experience the sight and sounds, the smell,

the movement of the fairground, back then.

An amazing thing, the steam engine, really,

and locomotives and steam rollers and traction engines.

It relies on one man with a shovel to keep it going, keep it alive.

And on a big hill, every other lamp post, you put a shovel of coal on.

With a locomotive going up Shap, I don't know how many tons of coal

they used to burn to get up to Scotland -

shovelling nonstop to keep it going,

like a mobile power station.

A bit strange. What's my hobby now once provided the livelihood for literally hundreds of people

all over England.

WHISTLE BLOWS

INAUDIBLE

I've always been fascinated by the variety of things we used to make

and looking at things that show

just how inventive we used to be.

This is a collection of magazines called The Engineer.

There's all sorts of stuff in it -

you know, wonderful adverts and stories about squirrels and all

and engineering feats of the last century.

The things that interest me most in this magazine are the adverts -

beautiful adverts for magnificent machinery.

There's a windmill here and beautiful self-aligning bearings.

"The Aqua-thruster." Sounds painful!

Oh...! All sizes!

Yes. Here's one for the Robey Trust.

Robey portable, semi-portable...

Robey's of Lincoln were one of the great makers of steam engines

with a huge variety of types

including road locomotives, steam rollers and stationary engines.

I came across a group of enthusiasts at Tavistock in Devon

who have a fine collection of Robey engines.

And here, at the Robey Trust,

they're teaching engineering skills that had all but disappeared a few years ago.

..cooling the boiler down. So...we stop the engine...

then we can open this door.

That looks as though it needs something, doesn't it?

That will help build the fire up.

That's it.

Now we should be able to make some more steam, now. And here's Fred.

-Did you get all that, young Edward?

-Yes.

-I see you managed OK.

Be sure you don't lose the shovel!

John, how many lads have you got on your Trust?

About four or five regulars. One or two extras appear now and again.

-About four or five regular.

-That's very good, really,

because I got to one stage when I was thinking

we were breeding a nation of little lads who got hold of red-hot pipes.

-Well, it's where the future of preservation lies.

-Without a doubt.

One word of advice, Ian. They're dangerous, them.

You can soon end up scalded by the steam.

Some of these white packings...

Mr Martino, a gentleman I knew,

ended up scalded to death with one of them.

These packings, when you screw it up tight as you can when it's cold

you think everything's OK.

You light the fire and it goes like tripe.

You can get another four turns on it.

So it's important to keep giving it a screw as the boiler warms up.

I think we should. We don't want any accidents.

There's the thing for you.

-IAN:

-OK.

Now then, Phil, what's this lad doing?

He's being trained to lubricate the engine.

The Trinian bar goes through the firebox and gets very hot. Different metals expand differently.

-You've got to have plenty of grease to keep things running smoothly.

-Aye.

-Are you going to give me a ride?

-Of course. Yes. Neil can be on there.

Come on, young Neil. Put your grease gun away.

This is a more recent Robey engine,

but I wonder if the people who put the adverts in those magazines

all them years ago

ever imagined there would be people riding around on them for fun!

My magazines aren't just full of adverts.

They've got some interesting reading in them.

I read an article on Victorian shipbuilding.

It describes Brunel's struggle with the Great Eastern.

It was so big, they never built one for 50 years after that were as big.

It took six months to get it in the water.

The newspaper people ridiculed him, you know, and said he were nuts.

And there were all sorts of wonderful ideas

to get it started on the slipway.

One ludicrous thing were: fill it with people and get them jumping,

and hopefully it might get it off the thing.

In the end, it were really Richard Tanges, from Birmingham,

who were into hydraulic jacks.

He managed to eventually get it in the water

after six months of struggle.

It made Brunel an old man before his time.

The thing killed him.

The last known picture of him alive

were on the deck, examining the remains of one of the funnels which had exploded.

People might have thought Brunel mad,

but his advances in ship design

set the pattern for all marine architecture that was to follow

and paved the way for Britain's great shipbuilding industry.

Clydeside was one of our greatest shipbuilding centres

but the yard closed down in the '60s and '70s.

There's no trace of this industry.

One of the ships built there was the paddle steamer Waverley.

She operated on the Clyde for 30 years.

Hello, there. How are you doing? I'll go and find Kenneth.

Now she's been preserved for people like me who want to have the thrill

of sailing on a real steamship.

BIRDS CALL

All me life, I've liked steamships.

When I were a little lad, I once made one about three feet long.

I entered it for a model exhibition and I won £3/10s. Never forgotten.

Here today, on the Waverley,

which is the last ocean-going paddle steamer in the world,

made here on the Firth of Clyde, and sailing down the Clyde, is quite pleasant.

I'm really enjoying it.

-Good morning, Kenneth.

-Good morning, Fred.

-It's still running sweet as a nut.

-Oh, yeah.

-Are there three sizes of cylinder?

-Yes.

The high pressure one is 24 inches in diameter.

It's got a five-and-a-half foot stroke, so it's big.

Summat magic about a steam engine.

They say we've advanced, but I don't know.

I went in engine room of a bloody car ferry t'other day - teeny thing.

The noise coming out of it - unbelievable!

ENGINE HUMS QUIETLY

It's magnificent, this.

It's what all little boys dream about.

I wonder if Brunel ever did this on the Great Eastern.

There's no better way to see the scenery of the Firth of Clyde

than from the decks of a Clyde paddle steamer. It's magic.

I wish I'd lived in the days when you could travel like this.

Steam is more than an enthusiasm or a nostalgia.

Steam power developed here. It's one of our unique contributions.

So steam, like the sea, should run in the blood of every Briton.

Subtitles by Sheila Hyde, BBC - 1999