William and Robert Tindall, the former of whom resided in London;he was one of the half-dozen great shipbuilders and owners who founded "Lloyd's." Splendid East Indiamen, of some 1000 tons burden, were then built at Scarborough; and scarcely a timber was moulded, a plank bent, a spar lined off, or launching ship-ways laid, without my being present to witness them. And thus, in course of time, I was able to make for myself the neatest and fastest of model yachts.
At that time, I attended the Grammar School. Of the rudiments taught, I was fondest of drawing, geometry, and Euclid. Indeed, I went twice through the first two books of the latter before Iwas twelve years old. At this age I was sent to the Edinburgh Academy, my eldest brother William being then a medical student at the University. I remained at Edinburgh two years. My early progress in mathematics would have been lost in the classical training which was then insisted upon at the academy, but for my brother who was not only a good mathematician but an excellent mechanic. He took care to carry on my instruction in that branch of knowledge, as well as to teach me to make models of machines and buildings, in which he was himself proficient. I remember, in one of my journeys to Edinburgh, by coach from Darlington, that a gentleman expressed his wonder what a screw propeller could be like; for the screw, as a method of propulsion, was then being introduced. I pointed out to him the patent tail of a windmill by the roadside, and said, "It is just like that!"In 1844 my mother died; and shortly after, my brother having become M.D., and obtained a prize gold medal, we returned to Scarborough. It was intended that he should assist my father;but he preferred going abroad for a few years. I may mention further, with relation to him, that after many years of scientific research and professional practice, he died at Hong Kong in 1858, when a public monument was erected to his memory, in what is known as the "Happy Valley."I remained for a short time under the tuition of my old master.
But as the time was rapidly approaching when I too must determine what I was "to be" in life. I had no hesitation in deciding to be an engineer, though my father wished me to be a barrister.
But I kept constant to my resolution; and eventually he succeeded, through his early acquaintance with George Stephenson, in gaining for me an entrance to the engineering works of Robert Stephenson and Co., at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I started there as a pupil on my fifteenth birthday, for an apprenticeship of five years. I was to spend the first four years in the various workshops, and the last year in the drawing-office.
I was now in my element. The working hours, it is true, were very long,--being from six in the morning until 8.15 at night;excepting on Saturday, when we knocked off at four. However, all this gave me so much the more experience; and, taking advantage of it, I found that, when I had reached the age of eighteen, Iwas intrusted with the full charge of erecting one side of a locomotive. I had to accomplish the same amount of work as my mate on the other side, one Murray Playfair, a powerful, hard-working Scotchman. My strength and endurance were sometimes taxed to the utmost, and required the intervals of my labour to be spent in merely eating and sleeping.
I afterwards went through the machine-shops. I was fortunate enough to get charge of the best screw-cutting and brass-turning lathe in the shop; the former occupant, Jack Singleton, having just been promoted to a foreman's berth at the Messrs.
Armstrong's factory. He afterwards became superintendent of all the hydraulic machinery of the Mersey Dock Trust at Liverpool.
After my four years had been completed, I went into the drawing-office, to which I had looked forward with pleasure; and, having before practised lineal as well as free-hand drawing, Isoon succeeded in getting good and difficult designs to work out, and eventually finished drawings of the engines. Indeed, on visiting the works many years after, one of these drawings was shown to me as a "specimen;" the person exhibiting it not knowing that it was my own work.
In the course of my occasional visits to Scarborough, my attention was drawn to the imperfect design of the lifeboats of the period; the frequent shipwrecks along the coast indicating the necessity for their improvement. After considerable deliberation, I matured a plan for a metal lifeboat, of a cylindrico-conical or chrysalis form, to be propelled by a screw at each end, turned by sixteen men inside, seated on water-ballast tanks; sufficient room being left at the ends inside for the accommodation of ten or twelve shipwrecked persons; while a mate near the bow, and the captain near the stern in charge of the rudder, were stationed in recesses in the deck about three feet deep. The whole apparatus was almost cylindrical, and watertight, save in the self-acting ventilators, which could only give access to the smallest portion of water. Iconsidered that, if the lifeboat fully manned were launched into the roughest seas, or off the deck of a vessel, it would, even if turned on its back, immediately right itself, without any of the crew being disturbed from their positions, to which they were to have been strapped.
