Robert Stephenson and Co: Pride of Newcastle
A locomotive built in 1828 by Robert Stephenson and Co and the first locomotive to be shipped to the US where it was christened America
Christened the America but also known as the Pride of Newcastle, it was shipped from London that November and reached New York on January 15, 1829. Four months later, on May 13, a second engine, the Stourbridge Lion, arrived from Foster, Rastrick and Co.
Soon thereafter, with public curiosity sharply on the rise, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company arranged to demonstrate its two locomotives. Again the America went first; New York newspapers described its being put in motion (with wheels raised off the ground) before an enthusiastic crowd that included “his Excellency the Governor, several judges of the courts, the gentlemen of the D&H Co., and a large number of others.” A day later the same public “experiment” was made on the Stourbridge Lion, with equally satisfactory results.
The following weeks were used for mechanical fine-tuning and for planning operational details. A letter from Allen to Jervis, dated June 22, noted their agreement to put the America “on the summit,” while “the other engine (the Lion) had better be taken to the head of the canal [at Honesdale].” By early July all was in readiness for transferring both locomotives upriver to the nearer end of the newly made canal. Company records show their safe arrival via packet boat and the start of their further journey.
But from this point the story—the official story—is dramatically interrupted. According to a later company history, “On July 16, the locomotives cleared from Eddyville . . . [but] no record of the arrival of the America at Honesdale has been found, and no mention of it in the correspondence that exists in regards to the unloading of the Stourbridge Lion. The history, therefore, of the America from the time it started up the canal remains a mystery.”
In short, the Stephenson engine — first to be ordered, built, and paid for, first to arrive, and first to be 'demonstrated' under steam — seems suddenly to have vanished. Its several firsts, plus such technical considerations as its apparent mechanical superiority and significantly lighter weight, point to the America as the likely choice to be first also for a trial run. Yet according to all subsequent accounts, that historic honor went instead to the Stourbridge Lion.
On the morning of Saturday, August 8, 1829, before a large crowd of excited onlookers drawn from Honesdale and the surrounding countryside, Horatio Allen climbed aboard the Stourbridge Lion and took the controls. Years later he would remember the moment for admiring audiences. In one grandiloquent version he began as follows: “When the imagination has attained to some of the scene, let us seek to go back to a time when only one of these iron monsters was in existence on this continent.” (Had he forgotten entirely about the America?) He continued: “The impression was very general that the iron monster would either break down the road or that it would leave the track and plunge into the creek. My reply to this apprehension was that it was too late to consider the probability of such occurrences; that there was no other course but to have the trial made of the strange animal which had been brought here at such expense, but that it was not necessary that more than one should be involved in its fate: that I would take the ride alone. . . . Preferring, if we did go down, to go handsomely and without any evidence of timidity, I started with considerable velocity, passed the curve over the creek safely, and was soon out of hearing of the cheers of the large assembly present. At the end of two or three miles, I reversed the valves and returned without accident to the place of starting, having thus made the first railroad trip by locomotive in the Western Hemisphere.”
The completion of Allen’s ride let loose a burst of local celebration, marked not only by 'cheers' but also by volleys from 'a large cannon,' one of which misfired and seriously injured a young bystander.
In fact, the Lion’s success was not as complete as first imagined. The weight of the engine had damaged the track underneath. Company officials felt a 'very serious disappointment' and sought to curtail public awareness of the entire 'trial.' Even so, news reached Wall Street within weeks and sent the value of D&H stock shares into a steep plunge. The company tried to recoup by substituting horses for the power of the locomotive, but it suffered years of additional difficulty.
When at last its mining operations began to yield profit — truly vast profit — the Stourbridge Lion was resting unused in a crude shed beside the track. Still, the Lion has been fully rewarded and recognized by history. Allen’s claim for its being “first . . . in the Western Hemisphere” is echoed today by the Smithsonian Institution, which proudly displays the engine’s complete boiler and other original parts. The same triumphant line appears in textbooks and monographs too numerous to mention.
In 1871 William H. Brown, a pioneer historian of America’s railways, sought to establish an exact record by asking each of the principals 'about the first Locomotive imported to this country.' Jervis replied flatly (and falsely) that 'the name of the first locomotive ordered from England, and the first in America, was the Sturbridge Lion.' Jervis’s master mechanic, David Matthew, answered with an evasive sidestep: Sometime about the middle of May 1829 the locomotive called the Sturbridge Lion arrived from England. Horatio Allen, alone among Brown’s informants, alluded to the America but misdated its arrival by a full eight months and rather cryptically declared that this . . . was not the engine which made the first run on the road at Honesdale. Subsequently, Allen would reverse himself by claiming that the two engines had reached New York together and when the time came that one . . . was to be sent to Honesdale. The Sturbridge Lion was sent.
Faced with such confusing testimony, Brown could only discount the Stephenson locomotive, while giving full honors to the Lion. It was left to later historians to identify the America by name and establish the date of its arrival. But for them, too, its subsequent disappearance remained a mystery. As one wrote in 1979, Not having been run, the [America] . . . made no particular impression on anyone and was ignored by contemporary writers. It would seem that this is the explanation for the obscurity which has surrounded its fate.
There is, however, another explanation. Recently recovered documents show beyond doubt that on July 23 both the America and the Stourbridge Lion reached Honesdale, where both were unloaded and both were placed on tracks.
Then we learn at last the fate of the America. First to be tried on track. And also, first to explode. It blew up on the 26th July 1829
It appears, moreover, that the America was the focus of an early corporate cover-up. How else to explain its nearly complete absence from the records, and remembrance, of D&H officials? Certainly there was money at stake, a huge amount for the time. The private writings of the Wurtses, all through the period in question, disclose their acute fears for the solvency of the company. And if investors reacted so sharply to the way the Lion had damaged its track, would not the likely response to an engine explosion have been sharper still?
Reputations were at stake as well. Jervis was known, to employers and others, as an extremely sensitive sort, and his name, more than any other, was tightly linked to the railroad project. Allen and Matthew were young men near the start of their careers. The Wurts brothers had marked a course toward the summits of high finance but were as yet just partway there. Mayor Hone had committed his considerable prestige to the fortunes of the D&H. So, too, had other company backers. With all these men, failure—or simply a public perception of failure—might hold grave consequences for the future. To grasp their motives is easy enough; to reconstruct the hidden event itself is more difficult. BLEW UP JULY 26, 1829 is a headline, no more and no less. But if we let our imagination carry us back to those critical summertime months, we can create at least a probable scenario for the America’s violent demise.
As the time approached for putting the new locomotives into actual operation, tension would certainly have run high. But the engineers’ plan to use the America on the railway’s remote “summit” section afforded the chance for a private test run. Moreover, the date set, July 26, was a Sunday; the local populace would be otherwise occupied. A handful of company officials and employees would constitute the only audience for this momentous—but unpredictable and risky—event.
At the appointed hour the firebox was stoked, steam was raised, and, with an unknown man at the throttle, the America was put into motion—making transportation history, whether acknowledged or not. How far? How fast? How many runs? Who was the first locomotive engineer? The answers to these questions may never be discovered, for on that day the America BLEW UP, and those present agreed to say nothing of what they had witnessed, beyond a small circle of company insiders.
There remained, of course, the Stourbridge Lion, which, unlike the America, had been conspicuously set up in the middle of town (in Honesdale). There it stood, the focus of much attention and curiosity, hour after hour, day after day. In later years it was remembered 'as looking like a mammoth grasshopper . . . and the front was ornamented with a large, fierce-looking face of a lion.”'As a result, 'it was an object of great dread' to local passersby.
There was, in short, no possibility of conducting a closed trial of this second locomotive. Company officials would have to run it in a very public way or else face unwanted questions (perhaps including some about the America). So run it they did. Surely they were fearful; Allen’s much later account describes a prevalent “impression” of impending disaster. And for those few who knew the fate of the America thirteen days before, the anxiety must have been extreme. Still, as Allen put it, “there was no other course but to have the trial made.” He himself would emerge as martyr or hero; at the time he could not have known which.
Because the Lion succeeded—in historic, if not operational, terms—any public memory of the America would gradually fade. Moreover, the personal memories of those most closely involved would be carefully suppressed. Yet this does not mean they forgot, as the carved box so clearly testifies. At some point later on, one of them sat down with tools and materials to create a private memento of what must have been a searing experience for all. A dream had died there on the “summit” above Honesdale, and now it would have its appropriate coffin. Preserved by means unknown through several succeeding generations, the box would eventually surface, in the spring of 1981, in a small antiques shop on New York’s Upper East Side.
Most likely, its maker was David Matthew, known for his skill in drafting as much as for his mechanical expertise. Probably, the recipient was Jervis, since his is the only name it carries. They were two old friends and colleagues who shared a painful secret, which now, more than 150 years later, need be a secret no more.
See Also
Sources of Information
- [1] American heritage