The ‘Rocket’ of the lighthouse world: the Fresnel Optic of Hartlepool Heugh Lighthouse and its gas light – a ‘missing link’ in burner development

Abstract

Robert Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’ was the first of its kind and intentionally preserved as an icon of railway history. The Fresnel fixed optic at Hartlepool was the last of its kind and was preserved by accident. Nevertheless, like ‘Rocket’ it is an extraordinary survival of an artefact representing a seminal moment of a technical achievement which had a lasting influence. It thus no less an icon than the famous locomotive. Hartlepool Heugh Lighthouse was built in the mid-1840s and lit by an optic and a gas lamp, seemingly a unique combination. The burner was apparently a completely new type, producing a flame large and steady enough to exploit the refracting and reflecting characteristics of the optic, something no previous gas burner had been able to achieve. The paper considers the optic and its lamp in the context of contemporary developments in lighthouse illumination and burner design and gives an account of the history of gaslit lighthouses before Hartlepool. The construction of the lighthouse provoked a clash between the Port authorities and Trinity House and the reasons for this are examined. The optic had an astonishingly long life of nearly 80 years, remaining in service until 1927, by which time it was perceived as an historic object which should not just be discarded. The paper concludes with the story of its preservation and subsequent display by the Hartlepool Museum service.

Keywords:

• lighthouse
• Fresnel
• optic
• gas lighting
• Holyhead
• Hartlepool
• San Salvore
• Charles Hunnings Wilkinson
• Giovanni Aldini
• Swansea

Acknowledgements

This paper would not have been possible without the help and co-operation of Mark Simmons, the Curator at the Museum of Hartlepool, who shared with me his unparalleled knowledge of historic Hartlepool and its political framework as well as allowing me to use drawings and illustrations from the Museum’s rich archival collection. I am deeply grateful for the help I have received from Bob Bowden, John Horne and Richard Williams who generously shared their expertise. Bob Bowden also acceded to my request to ‘reverse engineer’ the Hartlepool gas burner and his drawings of it and the later incandescent burner speak louder than words. Frank James, as always, provided profoundly thoughtful comments and criticisms. They all steered me away from potential errors and mis-understandings. Every author needs an editor like Martin Beaumont who, as always, did a wonderful job of tightening up the prose and sorting the inconsistencies.

Notes

1 Sir Cuthbert Sharp, History of Hartlepool…being a re-print of the original work, published in 1816, with a supplemental history, to 1851, inclusive. Hartlepool, 1851 (subsequently republished by Hartlepool Borough Council, 1998), p. 156 of supplemental history (separately paginated).

2 Sharp, Supplement, pp. 36–37.

3 Ibid., p. 41.

4 Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, 3 March 1843. Also Chelmsford Chronicle, 3 March 1843 and many other newspapers.

5 Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, ibid.

6 Ibid., 27 January 1844.

7 Broadsheet, Museum of Hartlepool (HAPMG 1977.63. A4071).

8 Trinity House, By Board Minutes, 26 November 1844. LMA CLC/526/MS30010/034.

9 Ibid., 17 December 1844.

10 Shipping & Mercantile Gazette, 19 December 1844.

11 Ibid. The estimated figure for construction costs must be £4000. It is unlikely that the annual figure for maintenance would be almost the same as construction. It is clear from the Trinity House minutes that they were proposing a toll of ½d per ton so the figure of the half-farthing is clearly wrong.

12 Ibid., 7 January 1845.

13 Trinity House, By Board Minutes, 11 February 1845.

14 Ibid., 18 February 1845.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid., 11 March 1845.

20 Ibid., 18 March 1845.

21 Ibid., 25 March 1845.

22 Ibid., 18 November 1845.

23 Ibid., 17 March 1846. LMA CLC/526/MS30010/035. Mis-transcribed as Fowke in the By Board Minutes. The name is actually Marshall Fowler as listed on p.44 of Sharp.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., 21 April 1846.

26 Shipping & Mercantile Gazette, 4 August 1847.

27 6 & 7 Will. IV, c. 79.

28 Trinity House, By Board Minutes. As reported to the By Board on 21 April 1846.

29 Ibid., 28 April 1846.

30 Annotations on Robinson’s drawing of the lighthouse. Museum of Hartlepool.

31 Trinity House, By Board Minutes, 12 May 1846.

32 Ibid., 23 June 1846.

33 Ibid., 27 October 1846.

34 Macneill’s report of 1845 [in] Sharp, Supplement, pp. 45–46.

35 Sharp, Supplement, p. 48.

36 Ibid.

37 Answer to question ‘XXXVI in the questionnaire circulated by the Commissioners,’ in Report of the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Condition and Management of Lights, Buoys, and Beacons (London: HMSO, 1861), Vol II, p. 311.

38 Sharp, Supplement, p. 48.

39 1861 Commission, Vol II, p. 311.

40 Sharp, Supplement, p. 49.

41 Léonor Fresnel, ‘Note…upon the application of the lenticular apparatus to the illumination of maritime coasts. Translation,’ in Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, Transmitting a Report Relative to the Light-House System of the United States, ed. by R. J. Walker (Washington D.C., 1846), p. 167.

42 Alan Stevenson, Report to the Committee of the Commissioners of Northern Lights Appointed to Take into Consideration the Subject of Illuminating the Lighthouses by Means of Lenses (Edinburgh, 1835), p. 1.

43 Augustin Fresnel, Mémoire sur un nouveau système d’éclairage des phares (Paris: L’Imprimerie Royale, 1822), p. 1.

44 Henri de Senarmont, Émile Verdet and Léonor Fresnel, Oeuvres completes d’Augustin Fresnel, (Paris, 1870), Vol. III, p. XXXV.

45 The 1861 Commission lists 15 lights in all, including Isle of May and Inchkeith, with lenses supplied by Cookson, to which may be added Hartlepool although the maker was given as Swinburn[e].

46 Lincolnshire Chronicle, 1 August 1845.

47 J. F. Chance, The lighthouse work of James Timmins Chance, Baronet (London: Smith, Elder, 1902), p. 4.

48 The drawing of the optic is not quite accurate, indicating that Robinson drew it in before visiting Cookson’s works.

49 Trinity House, By Board Minutes, 26 May 1846.

50 Ibid.

51 Alan Stevenson, Report [on] Illuminating the Lighthouses, p. 19.

52 1861 Commission, Vol. II, p. 311. The date of the optic given here is February 1845 which is incorrect.

53 Ibid.

54 Léonor Fresnel, Note…, pp. 98–99.

55 Julia Elton, ‘A Light to Lighten Our Darkness: Lighthouse Optics and the Later Development of Fresnel’s Revolutionary Refracting Lens 1780–1900,’ The International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology, 79.2 (2009), 183–244, 208.

56 Robert Christison and Edward Turner, ‘On the Construction of Oil and Coal Gas Burners,’ The Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, XIII (1825), 2–38, 2.

57 Samuel Clegg, Treatise upon the manufacture and distribution of coal gas (London, 1841), p. 190.

58 William Murdoch, ‘An Account of the Application of the Gas from Coal to Economical Purposes,’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 98 (1808), 124–132, 124.

59 Ibid., p. 126.

60 Clegg, p. 21. Fredrick Albert Winsor (1763–1830) was a pioneer of gas lighting, demonstrating gas lighting in London in 1804 and a progenitor of what became the Chartered Gas Light & Coke Co.

61 R. H. Patterson, ‘Gas Burners and the Principles of Gas Illumination,’ in King’s Treatise on the Science and Practice on the Manufacture and Distribution of Coal Gas, Vol. III (London, 1882), p. 134.

62 William Richards, A Practical Treatise on the Manufacture and Distribution of Coal Gas (London, 1877). Reproduces extracts from the report on pp. 295–300.

63 Patterson, King’s Treatise, Vol. III, p. 74.

64 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savudrija_Lighthouse> [accessed 20 October 2020].

65 Giovanni Aldini, Saggio di osservazioni sui mezzi atti a migliorare la costruzione e l’illuminazione dei fari con appendice sull’illuminazione dei fari col gas (Milan, 1823), p. 132.

66 Ibid. Figure 9 of Plate VII.

67 Alan Stevenson, Report [on] Illuminating the Lighthouses, pp. 33–34. Stevenson received his information first hand from ‘my friend Mr Wilson Pillans of Triest’.

68 Aldini, p. 129. ‘Perciò, in via di fatto, non dubitai di asserire francamente che se l’Inghilterra e la Scozia furono le prime a porla in esecuzione nelle città, l’Italia diede la prima l’esempio dell’illuminazione dei mari col gas.

69 Augustin Fresnel, Projet d’expériences sur l’éclairage des phares. Fragment dated August 1819. Reprinted in Senarmont, Vol. III, p. 9.

70 Aldini, p. 137. ‘…poichè essendomi trattenuto lungmente nel dicembre del 1818 in Bath presso del dotto mio amico sig. Wilkinson per conoscere tutto ciò che risguardava l’illimniazione a gas.’

71 The original Bath guide, considerably enlarged and improved [etc]. Bath, Meyler, nd but c. 1820, p. 128.

72 Charles Hunnings Wilkinson, Elements of Galvanism, in Theory and Practice [etc] (London, 1804). The title page gives details of his various appointments, including his lectureship, and p. 81 of Vol. I states, ‘I shall proceed accordingly to the theory of Galvani, improved by his nephew Aldini. A short time ago, the latter stated to me, that his uncle was prepared to reply to all the objections brought forward by Volta.’

73 Aldini, p. 136. ‘Esso è formata a guise di un’ancora tutta ornate alla superficie di lumi semplice a gas, I quali tramandano una vaga e vivace luce’.

74 Aldini, p. 136. ‘Il dottore Wilkinson da un anno circa eresse un fanale a gas nell’isola chiamata Flat-Holmes nel canale di Bristol’.

75 Ibid., p. 137, ‘Il sig. Schew…mi ha accertato di essere stato esso medesimo testimonio dell’ottima riuscita del detto fanale’.

76 Trinity House, By Board Minutes, 8 February 1816, LMA CLC/526/MS30010/023 and Court Minutes, 5 March 1818, MS30004/017.

77 Trinity House, By Board Minutes, 17 September 1818.

78 Trinity House, Court Minutes, 6 April 1820 and also the Royal Cornwall Gazette, 22 January 1820.

79 The Cambrian, 24 March 1821.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid.

82 1834 Select Committee, Robert Stevenson’s evidence, p. 112, paras 2095, 2110, 2111.

83 The Cambrian, 2 March 1821 stated that ‘last week the whole was completed’, i.e., sometime in the week beginning 17 March.

84 Ibid.

85 1834 Select Committee, Robert Stevenson’s evidence, p. 113, para 2109.

86 Aldini, Plate VII, fig. 10.

87 The Glasgow Mechanic’s Magazine, New Edition, Vol. 1, No. XI, 1832, p. 162.

88 1834 Select Committee, Appendix, pp. 173–174.

89 Report from the Select Committee on Lighthouses, 1845, pp. 655,636,673,658.

90 Brighton Gazette, 20th August 1846.

91 1845 Select Committee, p. 672.

92 From information given to me by John Horne.

93 William T. O’Dea, The Social History of Lighting (London, 1958), p. 49. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night. The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 1988), p, 9.

94 Murdoch, An account, p. 126.

95 Clegg, p. 191.

96 A. Fresnel, Projet d’expériences [In] Senarmont, Vol. III, pp. 8–9.

97 Manchester Mercury, 9th May 1820.

98 Samuel Lewis, A topographical dictionary of Wales, London, S. Lewis 1833. Vol 1, under article on ‘Holyhead’.

99 Ibid.

100 Bristol Mercury, 2nd October 1820.

101 1834 Select Committee, p. 112, para 2096.

102 Military Register, 31st December 1820.

103 1834 Select Committee, p. 112, para 2101.

104 M. Ricardo, Observations on the advantages of oil gas establishments, The Annals of Philosophy, New Series, V. (1823), 218–222, 218.

105 King's Treatise, Vol. 1, London, 1878, pp. 43–46.

106 1834 Select Committee, p. 177, para 3127.

107 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holyhead_Mail_Pier_Lighthouse. Retrieved 10th November 2020.

108 George Garbutt (Editor), A historical and descriptive view of the parishes of Monkwearmouth & Bishopwearmouth and the port and borough of Sunderland, Sunderland, for the Editor, 1819, pp. 271–272.

109 Robert Stevenson, Lighthouses [In] The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, Vol. 13, part 1, p. 7.

110 James Burnett, The history of the town and port of Sunderland, and the parishes of Bishopwearmouth and Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, the author, 1830, p. 37.

111 Ibid., p. 102.

112 Stevenson, A rudimentary treatise, Part II, p. 97.

113 Illustrated London News, 6 November, 1847.

114 Owen Merriman, Gas Burners Old and New. A Historical and Descriptive Treatise on the Progress of Invention in Gas Lighting [etc] (London, 1884), p. 46.

115 Ibid., pp. 46–47.

116 Patterson, King's Treatise, Vol. III, p. 158.

117 Ibid.

118 Ibid.

119 Merriman, p. 49.

120 Patterson, King’s Treatise, Vol. III, p. 107.

121 Ibid., p. 145.

122 Illustrated London News, 6 November 1847. The addresses come from the Post Office Directory, 1848.

123 Durham County Advertiser, 12 November 1847.

124 Illustrated London News, 6 November,1847.

125 Ibid.

126 Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser, 22 October 1847.

127 1861 Commission, Vol. II, p. 311.

128 Ibid.

129 History of the Hartlepool Gas and Water Company 1846–1930, Hartlepool, nd, p. 8.

130 Sharp, Supplement, p. 49.

131 Illustrated London News, 6 November 1847.

132 The Gas Gazette, 10th November 1837.

133 The Gas Gazette, 10 December 1847, p. 83.

134 Illustrated London News, 6 November 1847.

135 Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 30 October 1847, Belfast Protestant Journal, 23 October 1847,

136 The Gas Gazette, 10 November 1847.

137 London Gazette, May 1847, Edinburgh Gazette, 31 October 1848.

138 Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury, 16 October 1847.

139 Ibid.

140 Sharp, Supplement, p. 75.

141 Ibid., p. 44.

142 Ibid., p. 75.

143 Ibid., p. 76.

144 Ibid., pp. 44–45.

145 I am grateful to Mark Simmons, Museum Curator at Hartlepool, for this information, the result of his personal research.

146 Sharp, Supplement, pp. 44–45.

147 Ibid.

148 1861 Commission, Vol. II, p. 311.

149 Sharp, Supplement, p. 49.

150 Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 22 May 1895.

151 A chart of Hartlepool and Tees bays, London, James Imray, 1848.

152 Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 22 May 1895.

153 Julia Elton, entry on W. T. Douglass in the Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers, Vol. III, 2014.

154 Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 16 April 1895.

155 Ibid.

156 Jonathan P. Wigham, ‘John Richardson Wigham 1829–1906 [In] BEAM,’ The Journal of the Irish Lighthouse Service, 35 (2006–2007), p. 21.

157 The London Gazette, 3 January 1896, p. 16.

158 Patterson, King’s Treatise, Vol. III, p. 159; Merriman, p. 53.

159 Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 22 January 1896. Although the article states that the making of the burner was supervised by Sir James Nicholas Douglass, this is unlikely since Douglass had suffered a stroke in 1892. W. T. Douglass no doubt did superintend its manufacture and was confused with his father.

160 Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 22 January 1896.

161 Ibid., 15 May 1925.

162 Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 3 March 1926.

163 This information comes from a hand-written note by the light-keeper, Harry Carter. Museum of Hartlepool. 1975.47 Pcat 1827.

164 Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 7 December 1926.

165 Un-named newspaper clipping dated 18 September 1970. Museum of Hartlepool.

166 Mail, Hartlepool, 11 February 1972.

167 I am grateful to Mark Simmons, Curator at Hartlepool, for the detailed information on the museums in which the optic has been variously displayed.

168 World Lighthouse Society online journal, First quarter 2011.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julia Elton

Julia Elton FSA has spent a lifetime working with rare books and manuscripts relating to the history of engineering. She contributed a chapter to ‘Robert Stephenson: the eminent engineer’ (edited by Michael Bailey) and wrote a number of entries on lighthouse and gas engineers for volumes 2 & 3 of the Institution of Civil Engineers’ Biographical Dictionary. In recent years she has made a special study of lighthouse illumination and is currently reading for a PhD in the subject. She is a Past President of the Newcomen Society (the first woman to hold this position) and wrote her presidential address on the development of the Fresnel refracting lighthouse lens. She is a long-standing member of the Inst. Struct. Eng. History Study Group and an honorary member of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers. Correspondence to: Julia Elton. Email: [email protected].