Thomas Brassey
Thomas Brassey (born November 7, 1805 in Buerton near Chester , † December 8, 1870 in Hastings -St. Leonhards-on-Sea) was an entrepreneur and civil engineer who primarily promoted the emerging railway construction. In the middle of his life, in 1847, a third of the railroad construction went back to his plans. When he died, a twentieth of the world's railways had been built under his leadership.
family
Brassey came from a Middle English middle class family who could trace their family history very far back: his ancestors had immigrated from Normandy with William the Conqueror and settled in the Chester area. Thomas was the eldest son of the successful farmer John Brassey and his wife Elisabeth and attended Mr Harting's School in Chester.
Career
Brassey was interested in solving technical questions from an early age. He became a land surveyor and at less than 20 years of age was already working under the famous builder Thomas Telford , who was building Holyhead Road, the access road to Birmingham . At age 21, he became the junior partner of his former surveyor instructor, William Lawton. From then on, both traded as “Lawton and Brassey”. They moved their headquarters to Birkenhead on the opposite side of Liverpool ; at that time the place consisted of just four houses. The business prospered, but Lawton soon passed away, leaving Brassey to run the company alone.
In 1834 Brassey came into contact with George Stephenson , and a little later with his pupil Joseph Locke , who wanted to buy material from him for railway construction. It was only for the second tender in 1835 that he received an order from Stephenson for a viaduct between Stafford and Wolverhampton . This successful venture was followed by many, now important railway lines for many different railway companies across Great Britain , before moving to mainland Europe in the early 1840s.
International work
His first order in 1841 was the Paris – Rouen line, which was to become a geographical continuation of the British railways. At Locke's mediation, the tender for this route was only served by him and his compatriot and competitor William Mackenzie . Instead of undercutting each other, they submitted a joint offer that was accepted. From this case Brassey learned how important strategic partnerships are and cultivated them throughout his life. In the following years they built over 700 kilometers in France, the longest stretch of 473 km from Orléans to Bordeaux .
During the construction of the Rouen – Le Havre line, one of the few major technical accidents occurred in Brassey's construction in 1846: the 30-meter-high Barentin viaduct , made of bricks, collapsed after the first heavy rain. The cause has not been determined, but it is assumed that the quality of the lime or the mixing ratio of the mortar was wrong. The £ 50,000 expensive building was Brassey at his own expense and build again under its own supervision. The viaduct is still used today for its intended purpose.
Due to a financial crisis, the orders in France initially fell sharply, so that the builder looked elsewhere. In 1848 he went first to Spain , then to Italy , where smaller projects were realized. After 1856 he built the Dutch-Rhenish Railway in the Netherlands and on the German Lower Rhine , which was an early railway project for the Dutch. For a long time they were skeptical about the railroad because of their excellently developed canal and river network. Then he took orders again in France. In between he also realized buildings in his home country.
As early as 1852, Thomas Brassey had already accepted the largest project of his life, the 876 km long Grand Trunk Railway along the St. Lawrence River in Canada. Among other things, the longest bridge in existence at the time was built, the three-kilometer Victoria Bridge in Montreal. The construction of the line was a pioneering achievement and technically successful, but for the client the company was a financial catastrophe; he lost a million pounds in the process.
The order also included the delivery of rolling stock. Brassey founded the company "The Canadian Works" at his headquarters in Birkenhead, which his brother-in-law ran. This location was ideal because ocean steamers could be loaded directly there. In eight years he delivered more than 300 locomotives . The steel structure of the Victoria Bridge was also made in England. It consisted of over 10,000 steel girders that were punched during production and connected on the spot with half a million rivets .
His next project was the "Great Crimean Central Railway", which was the world's first strategic railway to connect the port city of Balaklava with the English positions south of Sevastopol . Under the direction of Brassey, construction of the eleven-kilometer line began in September 1854. It was completed after just seven weeks, just in time for the start of winter. A year later, British troops in alliance with the French and Turks succeeded in defeating the previously Russian Black Sea port city.
Activities away from the railroad
Brassey's work was not limited to the railroad and its surroundings. In addition to his factory in Birkenhead, he built another factory in France, to which he had the materials delivered for his various orders on mainland Europe. He built a number of sewage plants in the UK and a waterworks in Calcutta . In addition, some dry docks in various English cities, including the Royal Victoria Dock in London , trace back to his activity.
Brassey supported Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) financially in the construction of his ship "The Leviathan", which was later renamed Great Eastern and in 1854 was six times larger than any other ship built up to that point in the world.
There were other ideas that drove the entrepreneur: He made plans for a tunnel under the English Channel , which were strictly rejected by both the British and European governments. Another plan was to design a canal across the Isthmus of Panama ; this was also considered unrealizable. In this respect, too, Brassey was way ahead of his time.
Brassey's last years
From 1867 Brassey's health deteriorated. Previously, he planned and managed the construction of routes in South America (400 km), Australia (over 200 km), Nepal (800 km) and Austria-Hungary . In 1868 he suffered a minor stroke , but continued to work. In April, he collapsed while on an extensive trip to East Asia. From 1870 he withdrew from all business, but occasionally visited his construction sites. Even when he became bedridden from the late summer of 1870, he still received numerous visitors, colleagues and employees who paid him their respects. He died on December 8, 1870 at the Victoria Hotel in St. Leonards, leaving a fortune of 3.2 million, other sources even seven million pounds. This made him one of the richest "self-made men" in the Victorian era, but a pompous lifestyle was always far from him. Until the end of his life he was responsible for the planning and construction of over 4800 km of rail network in continental Europe and almost 2500 km outside of Europe.
His eldest son Thomas Brassey (1836-1918) began a successful career in politics and was governor of the Australian state of Victoria .
literature
- John Millar : Thomas Brassey, railway builder & Canada Works, Birkenhead . John Millar (UK) Ltd., Hoylake 1993, ISBN 0-9510965-2-4 .
- Charles Walker: Thomas Brassey. Railway builder . Muller, London 1969, ISBN 0-584-10305-0 .
- Arthur Helps : Life and labor of Mr. Brassey . Bell and Daldy, London 1872.
Individual evidence
- ^ Arthur Helps: Life and labor of Thomas Brassey . 1872, p. 11
- ↑ a b c d David Brooke: Thomas Brassey . In: Oxford dictionary of national biography (online resource). Oxford Univ. Press, 2004. (accessed March 14, 2010)
- ↑ Thomas Brassey (1805-70) . In: European Route of Industrial Heritage
- ↑ Helps, p. 26f., P. 106ff.
- ^ A b c Charles Walker: Thomas Brassey, Railway Builder . Frederick Muller, London 1969, ISBN 0-584-10305-0
- ↑ Helps, p. 36 ff.
- ^ Robert Dudley Baxter: Results of railway extension. A paper read before the Statistical Society of London . Lecture to the Statistical Society of London, November 1860. JL Pearson, Washington.
- ^ Tom Stacey: Thomas Brassey: The Greatest Railway Builder in the World . Stacey International, London 2005, ISBN 1-905299-09-5
- ^ Brian Cooke: The Grand Crimean Central Railway . Cavalier House, Knutsford 1990, ISBN 0-9515889-0-7
- ↑ Helps, p. 148
- ^ Colin S. Harris: Engineering geology of the Channel Tunnel . American Society of Civil Engineers [distributor] (New York). T. Telford, London 1996, ISBN 9780727720450 , p. 8
- ^ Brassey, Thomas . In: Thomas Humphry Ward (Ed.): Men of the Reign . Routledge, London a. a. 1885. (accessed on March 14, 2010 via World Biographical Information System )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Brassey, Thomas |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English engineer and entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 7, 1805 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Buerton near Chester |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 8, 1870 |
| Place of death | Hastings -St. Leonhards-on-Sea |