Henry Holt Butterfill

Henry Holt Butterfill (1830-1914), engineer and writer

1875 of 213 Regent Street, Hull.

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Obituary 1914 in The Engineer

'V E much r egret to have to announce the d eath of Mr. Henry H o lt Butter611, which occ urr ed on January 31st, at hi s h ome at Gunner sbury . Mr. Butt e r611, wh o was for m any years a co ntributor t o our column s, was born in 1830, and was therefore in his eighty-fourth year at the time of his death. Hi s whole life was d evoted to q uestions r elating to marine enginee ring, in which h e obtained hi s first experi en ce during a voyage t o Ameri ca. in the Great Britain, which wa s co mmanded by his uncle , Captain H oskin.

Mr. Butter611 s erve d the first part of hi s apprentice- s hip at Northfleet D ocky a rd , and complet ed it at M audslay's, of L ambeth. H e s ubsequently sp ent five year s in A ustr alia in vario us eng ineering ventures , and then returned to this co\intry a nd proceeded to the North of England, where , amongst oth er things, he was empl oyed in getting out tho drawin gs for th e first hig h-press ure marine engine. For some years he was fell ow-dra.ugbtsman with the late Mr. .J. M ac f arlane Gray, with whom he kept. in t ou ch until his d eath .

During hi s early life Mr. Butterfill served as chief draughtsm an an d marine s up e rint en dent in various places, and was parti c ularly well ver sed in a ll the work which w as carried on on t h e Thame s. For a time he was engineering correspondent for The Ti'YYU!.8, and attended the trials of the t or pedo boat s, des tr oyers and wars hips of the peri od. It was on the occasi on of t he t ri als of H.M. S. P owerful , at which he wa re pr esentin g both that newsp '!p er and o ur selves, that he sust ained a sev ere acci d ent b y tripping over a r ope, which laid him u p for a long p er iod , an d end ed in his right hand b ecomi ng quite use less. Mr. B utter6U w as for so me time in t he drawing- office at Penn 's , at Greenwich. He was the author of severa l books in connection with machine drawing, and was master of the en gin eering drawing cl asses at the old P olytechni c in R egent -str eet. Re was always a keen st udent, an d was mo st persevering in s ubje cts r equiring r esearch. Unti l within three y ears of his death he wrote a littl e on m ar ine en g in eer- ing s ubjects , and in sp ite of f ai ling health co ntinued to follow close ly the d evelopm e nts of his favourite pr ofession. He was , we may add, an ard e nt s pelling ref o rme r, and h e lp ed the late Sir Isaac Pitman con- s ide rablyin t h e early days of the m ovement. In 1882 he started a paper called the Steamship, but it was not successful.

The later work which Mr. Butterfill executed on our behalf was mostly of an historical character, and we may mention two series of articles which came from his pen, namely, "Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering on the Thames in the Victorian Era ," which appeared in the years 1897-8, and "Cross-Channel Passenger Steamship Services," which was published in 1901-2. These articles were of great historical interest, and represented a vast amount of careful and painstaking research.

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