North and South: The North and South Trilogy (77 page)

“I need figures. Realistic projections of cargo capacity, cost, future income. I won’t speak to a single banker until I have them.”

That was good enough for Cooper. Glowing, he said, “They’ll be ready two weeks after I return. Maybe even sooner. They built small ships in Charleston at one time. A reborn industry could be the salvation of this part of the state.”

“Not to mention the ruination of the Mains,” Orry said. But he smiled.

Cooper and his family landed at Bristol, there transferring to the Great Western Railway that I. K. Brunel had laid out and brought to completion in 1841. The train left from a platform beneath the vast hammer-beam roof of Temple Meads Station, a structure that Brunel had planned. It traveled 120 miles on broad-gauge track, passing over the brick arches of Brunel’s Maidenhead Bridge, considered an engineering masterpiece, and arrived at the new Paddington Station, which had been officially opened by the Prince Consort two years earlier; Brunel had designed every detail of the station, as well as the Paddington Hotel that adjoined it. Since Brunel served on the hotel’s board of directors, Cooper had decided to stay there. He discovered that his reservation had been changed from a small suite to a much larger one, at no increase in cost.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was now in his fiftieth year, a restless, imaginative man who delighted in wearing a stovepipe hat and dangling a cigar from one corner of his mouth. Not all his ideas were good. His choice of broad-gauge track for the G.W.R. was much criticized; carriages from intersecting lines could not be switched onto it. But for sheer soaring size of visions, he had no peer. Cooper saw that again when the little engineer took him to the Thames shipyard of his partner, Scott Russell.

Because of
Leviathan,
the Millwall yard had become Europe’s premier tourist attraction. All around the construction site, the marshy fields of the Isle of Dogs had blossomed with coffee stalls and souvenir shops constructed of canvas and cheap lumber. Every conceivable kind of trinket was offered for sale: Miniature models of the finished ship. Lithographic views.
Leviathan
ABCs for the children. Right now—a weekday with bad weather—the shops were not doing much business.

Fifty-four feet high,
Leviathan’
s double hull reared against the rainy sky. The inner and outer hulls were three feet apart and heavily braced. The ship would have six masts, five funnels, and two sets of engines, one for her paddle wheels and one for her immense screw. She was positioned so that she could slide sideways into the Thames, her great length prohibiting launching in the regular manner.

“We hope to have her afloat within a year, provided I can finish my plan for the slipways and rekindle a spirit of cooperation with Mr. Russell. It has become evident that his original cost estimates for the hull and paddle engines were frivolous and irresponsible.”

Brunel chewed his unlit cigar. Despite evident disenchantment with his partner, his pride was unmistakable when he swept his gaze along the huge keel plate. Using his cigar as a pointer, he indicated the section of the outer hull already finished with plates of inch-thick iron.

“My great babe will take thirty thousand of those plates before she’s done. And three million rivets. At peak times we have two hundred basher gangs hammering in the rivets.”

Cooper pulled off his old beaver hat, the better to see the iron monster above him. Rain splashed his face. “I want to build one like her, only smaller, in Charleston. I copied
Great Britain
once—”

“Handsomely. I saw drawings. But surely what you just said is facetious, Cooper. You’ve always struck me as an intelligent chap and one who likes his comforts. Surely you don’t want to surrender your friends, your family, your health, and all your money to such a venture.”

“I know there are risks, enormous ones. But I feel compelled to go ahead. I want to build her for more than selfish reasons. I think she can help the South, at a time when the South very much needs it.”

“I am aware of the South’s increasing isolation in commerce and politics,” Brunel said with a bob of his head. “Anti-slavery societies are quite active in this country, you know. Well, if you are serious, I’ll show you my drawings and specifications, share as much information as I can. I suppose I needn’t tell you that many find my design suspect. My babe is the first ship in history to be built without ribs. They say she’ll hog, arch up in the center, break apart—”

“I’ll take your opinion rather than those of your critics.”

The engineer smiled. He seemed to lose some of his own negative feelings as he described the great four-cylinder screw engines he had subcontracted to James Watt’s company. “Then there’s the paddle shaft. Forty tons. The single largest forging ever attempted by man—”

He talked with mounting enthusiasm as they walked on through the drizzle. Flocks of crows were perching on the deserted souvenir stalls. A section of canvas flapped. Shipyard workers on scaffolds hailed Brunel, but he missed most of the greetings; he was speaking too rapidly. So rapidly that Cooper could barely keep up with the writing of notes.

Cooper took his family out to a plain little churchyard in Beaconsfield. The children didn’t understand why he stood silent, with his head bowed, at the grave of a man named Burke. But even four-year-old Marie-Louise dimly grasped that the place meant something special to her father.

The children were much more interested in the Thames River tunnel, the monumental nineteen-year project Brunel had finished after the death of his father, who had done the original engineering work. Brunel had already shown the Mains a model of his Great Shield, a huge, compartmentalized iron work-face in which thirty-six laborers had stood with pick and hammer removing the soil of the riverbed a little at a time.

The family entered the pedestrian tunnel from the Wapping side of the river. It was a cool, eerie place, and Judith was somewhat put off by the sight of so many derelicts sitting or sleeping against the walls. But Cooper, with Marie-Louise held in his left arm and Judah hanging onto his right hand, saw only the grandeur of the concept. His eyes shone.

“If free men can do this, why on earth does anyone keep slaves?”

The whisper brought a shiver to Judith’s spine. Cooper looked as if he had glimpsed the face of God. She slipped her hand around his right arm and squeezed, loving him more than she ever had.

Next day, Cooper and Brunel planned to go over rough cost estimates for
Leviathan.
Without warning, Cooper postponed the appointment and went chasing off in a new direction, on behalf of George Hazard.

What started the chase was a four-word headline in the
Mail.

The issue was weeks old. It had been picked up from a railway-station bench and used to wrap the cores of some apples the children had eaten on the return trip from Beaconsfield. Cooper found the remains of the apples and the paper on a table in the foyer of their hotel suite. He was about to toss everything away when a headline caught his eye:

BESSEMER SEEKS AMERICAN PATENT.

A student of inventors and inventions, Cooper recognized the name at once. Henry Bessemer was a successful inventor best known for developing a method to put the proper spin on projectiles fired from a smoothbore gun. He had done the work during the Crimean War, with the aid and encouragement of Emperor Napoleon III of France.

What was he attempting to patent in America? Two short paragraphs supplied the answer. “Good Lord, fancy that!” Cooper exclaimed. He was already beginning to sound somewhat British.

Judith appeared from the parlor. “Is anything wrong?”

“Quite the contrary. Have a look. Chap named Bessemer claims to have invented a fast way to convert pig iron to steel. He’s going after an American patent. I wonder if George knows. I must look into this for him.”

And so he did, canceling his appointment in order to do it. Most of his investigation consisted of searching through old newspapers. He also sent several notes to Bessemer requesting an interview. The inventor never answered.

“Not surprising,” Brunel told him several days later. “Bessemer claims he was pressured into revealing the existence of his process too soon.”

“How did he reveal it?”

“He read a long wheeze of a paper before the Association for the Advancement of Science.
The Times
reprinted it
in toto.”

“When?”

“Sometime in August, I recall.”

“I didn’t look back quite that far.”

Cooper wrote another note to the inventor; Brunel wrote as well. That turned the trick, but Bessemer’s reply said Cooper could have no more than ten minutes of his time.

Brunel’s genius lay in conceptual thinking, ideas that could not be patented and that he was glad to share. Henry Bessemer’s inventions were different, each a specific device or process and hence to be protected—or stolen. Cooper found Bessemer a suspicious, defensive man.

“The announcement was premature. It brought down a wild pack of wolves. They’re fighting with me and among themselves for a share of my discovery. The steelmakers of Sheffield are deriding me, as of course they must. It currently takes them a fortnight to obtain a small crucible of cast steel from pig iron. If I can make five tons of steel in a half hour, they’re finished.”

“What can you tell me about your process, Mr. Bessemer?”

“Nothing. I have said all I am going to say to the public or to you. Good day, Mr. Main.”

Cooper already knew one reason for Bessemer’s hostility. There were problems with his process. Again digging through old newspapers, Cooper located the
Times
article and learned more about the nature of the controversy surrounding the inventor. He copied out everything that might interest his friend in Lehigh Station.

Bessemer had been led to his discovery while working with Napoleon III’s armaments expert, Minié, on the problem of projectile spin. An intensely curious man, he had been drawn into other aspects of ordnance, including a study of possible substitutes for the fragile cast iron currently used to make cannon. What resulted from this line of inquiry was Bessemer’s process to manufacture quality steel in quantity and the necessary machinery—an egg-shaped converter, a hydraulic apparatus for operating it from a safe distance, and what he called his blowing engine for sending an oxygen-rich blast of air over the pig iron.

In theory the process was astoundingly simple. But that was the case with many revolutionary inventions. One month after making his sensational revelations, Bessemer was licensing his process to various firms for thousands of pounds. A month later the press was branding him a charlatan. “A brilliant meteor which flitted across the metallurgical horizon, only to vanish in total darkness.”

By the time Cooper arrived in England, the public furor had died down. Bessemer still had faith in his process and was pursuing his American patent, but English ironmasters were after his head. Those who had paid to use his process declared it a failure and a hoax. The steel was unsatisfactory. Frantic to find the reason, Bessemer was now committed to nonstop laboratory work. The reason for the failure seemed to lie in the high phosphorus content of all the ore mined in Britain. Unwittingly, the inventor had used Swedish ore in his experiments, an ore virtually free of phosphorus.

Brunel told Cooper that even this discovery did not solve Bessemer’s problem. However, there were persistent reports that an anonymous steelmaker from Wales had found a way to make the process work and was planning to patent his own method. No wonder Bessemer felt threatened and angry. He had rocketed to prominence, then fallen, all within three months.

Still, Cooper was impressed with the man and believed that he was onto something. What persuaded Cooper were the frequent public statements of the Sheffield manufacturers—they continued to denounce Bessemer and the theoretical base of his process. Anytime an idea was opposed that vehemently, there was usually something to it.

He continued to clip old papers, building up a thick file and supplementing it with his own notes. He intended to take the file to George the moment he was back in America.

“After all,” he said to Judith as they traveled to Southampton for the voyage home, “if I’m going to ask him for a couple of millions to build my ship, I’d better do him a favor first.”

“W
HAT’S THE NAME OF
this mysterious fellow who is Bessemer’s savior?” Stanley Hazard asked.

The question carried not only skepticism but a sneer. To be sure, the sneer was faint—this was, presumably, an occasion governed by politeness—but it was there. Cooper despised Stanley’s narrow mind almost as much as he despised his smug face, whose resemblance to an overflowing bowl of gruel grew more pronounced every year.

Recalling the larger purpose of his visit helped Cooper curb his anger. “I don’t know, Stanley. His finery is in Wales, but beyond that, nothing is said.” He pushed the thick file across the table. “All I could learn is in here.”

Suddenly he pressed his hand to his lips and coughed. George was excited by Cooper’s news. He showed it by smoking faster than usual, quick, nervous puffs of the cigar clenched in his teeth. When Cooper’s fit of coughing continued, George waved his hand through the layers of blue smoke, stirring and dispersing them a little.

“Sorry, Cooper.” He strode to the window and raised it. Cool night air flowed into the small private dining room of the hotel.

In New York, Cooper had put Judith and the children on a steamer to Charleston, then come straight on to Lehigh Station. He had arrived in the middle of the night and secured a room at the Station House. The hotel was located a block from the depot. It had been built soon after the railroad came through. It was small, but modern in every respect. Each guest room had a bathtub in a smaller room adjoining, and the entire place was lit by gas mantles.

After a good breakfast, Cooper had sent a note up the hill, informing George of his arrival and inviting him to bring his brother to supper that evening. Cooper really didn’t want to present his ship design to Stanley, but felt he must. George was in charge of all direct spending by Hazard Iron, but the ship would be a different sort of expense, an investment, and one so large George probably wouldn’t dare authorize it without consulting his brother. Better to have Stanley on their side than working against them.