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[Book IV.
became an engineer and thus acquired the title of Captain, agreeably toa custom which is said still to prevail among the Cornish miners. Heseems to have acquired a competence, if not wealth, previous to the com-mencement of his experiments on steam, and we shall find that he was asindependent in his spirit as in his purse. Switzer, who was intimatelyacquainted with him, says he was a member of the board of commissionersfor the sick and wounded ; but this was probably in the latter part of hislife, and subsequent to the introduction of his steam machines.
The first invention of Savery that we meet with is in a pamphlet pub-lished by him in 1698, on the propulsion of ships in a calm. His planconsisted of paddle-wheels to be worked by the crew. In the first editionof Harris’s Lexicon Technicum, A. D. 1704, there is a description, and inthe second, 1710, a figure of Savery’s “ engine for rowing ships.” Ahorizontal shaft passes through the vessel between decks, and to each enda paddle-wheel is attached. On the middle of the shaft is a pinion ortrundle wheel, and underneath a capstan upon which a cog wheel is fixed,whose teeth are made to work between those of the pinion. A numberof bars are arranged in the capstan, and the crew were to apply theirstrength to these as in raising an anchor. As the officers of the admiraltyafter examination declined to adopt it, Savery teils them he had two otherimportant inventions, which he would not disclose until they did him jus-tice in this ! He even held up his opponents to ridicule. On the Surveyorof the Navy, who reported against the adoption of his plan as one neithernew nor useful, he was very severe. At that time large wigs were com-monly worn, and Savery gave a smart rap on that which covered thehead of his official adversary. “ It is [he observed] as common for liesand nonsense to be disguised by a jingle of words, as for a blockhead to behid by abundanee of peruke.” Had Savery been of a timid disposition,we should probably never have heard of him. After enduring one ortwo rebuffs in attempting to introduce his inventions, he would have re-tired and sunk unknown into the grave, like thousands of inventors beforehim.
Of the few incidents preserved respeeting his private life, there are twofrom which it seems that he loved a glass of good wine and a pipe of to-bacco ; and that, to obtain them, he was in the habit of visiting a tavern.Let not those who eschew such things complain of us for unnecessarilymentioning them, for Savery’s first experiments on steam were made in abar-room, with a wine flask and a tobacco pipe. At such a place and withsuch implements he is said to have become acquainted with the principlesof his famous machine. The circumstance has not been commonly known,or some scientific Boniface would, long ere now, have adopted Savery’shead for a sign; and artists would have made him, in the act of experi-menting, the subject of a picture. There is a rieh but neglected field forhistorical painters in the facts and incidents connected with the origin anddevelopment of useful mechanism.
According to Desaguliers , Savery declared that he found out the powerof steam by chance, and in the following manner : “ Having drank a flaskof Florence [wine] at a tavern, and thrown the empty flask upon the fire,he call’d for a bason of water to wash his hands, and perceiving that thelittle wine left in the flask had filled up the flask with steam, he took theflask by the neck and plunged the mouth of it under the surface of thewater in the bason; and the water of the bason was immediately drivenup into the flask by the pressure of the air” & This Illustration of the ascent
Exper. Philosophy, edition of 1744, vol. ii, page 466.