Bell Harry Read online

  As well as gunfire, the French had run into a thick hedge along the side of the road. They had to break formation to get through it. Seizing their chance, the Black Watch and Gordon Highlanders rushed forward to attack them at bayonet point before they were able to regroup.

  The Scots were heavily outnumbered, so Picton ordered the rest of his troops to attack as well. Waving his sword, he led the assault himself.

  ‘Charge!’ he shouted, spurring his horse forward. ‘Hurrah, hurrah! Rally the Highlanders!’

  Picton plunged into the fray. He had only gone a few yards when he was hit in the head by a musket ball and slumped forward in his saddle. Picton’s aide-de-camp hurried to help him down from his horse, but too late. Picton was already dead.

  There was no time to worry about it. The aide dragged Picton’s body to a nearby tree, to be recovered later, and rejoined the battle. The French were in retreat now, driven off by a timely charge from the British cavalry. Some of the Gordon Highlanders grabbed hold of the Royal Scots Greys’ stirrups and hitched a ride down the slope as they chased the French back to their starting point.

  It wasn’t until that evening, after Napoleon had fled from the field, that they were able to recover Picton’s body. He was the oldest general in the British army and the most senior officer to have been killed. It was decided therefore that his body should not be buried where it had fallen, like everyone else’s. It should be taken back to England instead and given a proper funeral, suitable for a British general.

  The thick oaken chest containing his remains came ashore at Deal on 25 June, exactly a week after the battle. It was taken to Canterbury that evening and kept for the night at the Fountain Inn, in the same room where Picton had enjoyed his dinner a fortnight previously. A guard of honour stood watch over it throughout the hours of darkness.

  ‘I shook his hand,’ the ostler kept telling anyone who would listen, as the men maintained their vigil. ‘Only two weeks ago, I shook General Picton’s hand. Right here, on this very spot.’

  At six o’clock next morning, the coffin continued its mournful journey to London. Soldiers from the 52nd Regiment, which had fought at Waterloo, were waiting outside the inn to escort the gun carriage to the city boundary. Forming up around the vehicle, they set off along St Margaret’s Street, slow-marching with their arms reversed while a band played Handel’s Dead March from Saul.

  The cortege turned into the High Street. The people of Canterbury removed their hats as it appeared. They watched in respectful silence as the coffin was ceremonially conveyed through the city to the boundary at the West Gate.

  The band came to a halt there. The slow march was abandoned and Picton’s body continued at a brisker pace along the road to London. Bell Harry had rung from the cathedral for the great victory at Waterloo. There were no bells for Sir Thomas Picton as his cortege left the West Gate behind and set off in funeral pomp for the rest of the journey to the capital.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  George Stephenson’s New Steam Engine on Wheels

  On 15 April 1830, a cargo ship slipped out of Newcastle and set sail for Whitstable, the little fishing village on the north coast of Kent. The ship was carrying an astonishing piece of machinery, revolutionary in design, for delivery to the Canterbury & Whitstable Railway Company. Nothing like it had ever been seen in Kent before.

  The machine was a steam-powered locomotive engine. It was a strange contraption with cylinders, a boiler and a stack at one end, mounted on metal carriage wheels. It had been specially designed by George Stephenson & Son of Newcastle to pull a long train of passenger carriages down a pre-laid track.

  Such a sight was not to be missed. All of Whitstable was there to see it as the ship came in. The villagers watched in wonder as the extraordinary device was unloaded and deposited gingerly on the quayside in front of them. The whole operation was supervised by Edward Fletcher, the mechanic who had accompanied the new engine from Newcastle.

  ‘She’s called Invicta,’ he told the villagers, once the machine was safely ashore. ‘We’ve named her after the White Horse of Kent. We thought that would be appropriate.’

  ‘A machine that can do what a horse does?’

  ‘Ten horses.’ Fletcher patted the cylinder proudly. ‘She can pull as much as ten horses when she gets going. Maybe even twelve.’

  The villagers reserved judgment. They would believe it when they saw it. A machine that could do the work of twelve horses sounded far too good to be true.

  The trials began a few days later. The track for the new venture had already been laid down. It covered the seven miles from Whitstable to Canterbury, which was as far as most people in the village had ever been. The plan was to connect the two places by a railway so that they could travel from one to the other every day. If it worked, it would be the first passenger railway service in the world.

  The trials were conducted by George Stephenson’s son Robert. He had designed the steam engine, with some oversight from his father. George had made a brief visit to Canterbury to inspect the proposed line, but he was too busy with other railway projects in the north of England to supervise the construction. He had left that to his son.

  ‘We’ll try her out on the flat first,’ Robert Stephenson told Fletcher, as they discussed the experiment. ‘Invicta isn’t so good at gradients. We’ll run her as fast as we can on the flat and see how we go.’

  A suitable stretch of line had been identified between Church Street and Clowes Wood. Stephenson joined Fletcher on the footplate as soon as steam had been raised. The two men produced pocket watches and compared the time. Counting down the seconds, Stephenson nodded to Fletcher to begin.

  Fletcher pulled a lever. Invicta surged forward at once in a hiss of steam and smoke. Startled spectators fell back as the engine hurtled precariously along the track. Nobody wanted to be too close to it if the thing suddenly veered out of control.

  ‘Don’t go all out,’ Stephenson warned Fletcher, as they picked up speed. ‘We don’t want to overdo it. Just take it steady for a while and don’t strain the engine.’

  Fletcher nodded. Invicta chugged on. They left Whitstable behind and pressed on quickly through open countryside. Almost before they knew it, they reached Clowes Wood, where the gradient began. Fletcher brought the engine to a stop at the agreed spot and the two men compared watches again.

  ‘Seven minutes,’ Stephenson announced in triumph. ‘Seven minutes to go two miles.’

  ‘We could have gone faster. Could have done it in less.’

  ‘Seven minutes is good enough. That’s seventeen miles per hour, if you think about it.’

  It was an astonishing technical feat. Both men were very proud of their achievement. The only problem was the series of slight inclines from Clowes Wood to Canterbury, on higher ground inland. The new engine wasn’t powerful enough to haul a train of carriages up even a modest slope.

  Instead, two stationary engines were going to be used for that part of the line. The engines would wind in a long cable hooked to the passenger train. One engine house had been built for the purpose at Clowes Wood, another at Tyler Hill, just outside Canterbury. Between them, the two winding engines would cover that part of the journey that Invicta couldn’t manage.

  It was an exciting venture. Canterbury would become a seaport in all but name, once it had a rail connection to Whitstable. London was easily reached by boat from Whitstable. So were lots of other places. The opportunities for trade were obvious for anyone to see.

  ‘The line will be able to carry coal at half the price of a horse and cart,’ Robert Stephenson told the villagers proudly. ‘That’s what my father’s railway has done. Stockton to Darlington. It takes coal straight from the collieries to the seaport. We can do that here too, only we’ll be taking people instead of coal.’

  ‘Has that ever been tried before?’

  ‘Not by steam engine it hasn’t. This is going to be the first time.’

  The date for the grand opening of the railway
line was set for 3 May 1830. The plan was for the inaugural train to leave Canterbury at mid-morning, travelling by fits and starts from Tyler Hill to Clowes Wood, where the steam engine Invicta would be waiting to take it the rest of the way to Whitstable. The passengers – all of them local worthies — would then have lunch by the sea before returning to Canterbury in time for a celebratory dinner at the King’s Head, if everything went to schedule.

  ‘I just hope everything does,’ Stephenson confided to Fletcher, as they made their preparations. ‘The newspapers will all be there to watch us. We don’t want anything going wrong on the day.’

  ‘Nothing will go wrong, Mr Stephenson. It’ll all be just fine.’

  The whole of Canterbury turned out to see the train set off. The city had been decorated for the occasion. Bunting hung from windows and flags flew from public buildings. A banner proclaiming ‘Prosperity to the City’ had been draped across the entrance to the new railway terminus. Thousands of people gathered to join the party as the great machine prepared to set off on its epic journey to Whitstable.

  The train was supposed to leave at eleven a.m., but it was a quarter past by the time everyone had taken their seats in the procession. The directors of the railway company sat in the first carriage, sporting white rosettes on their coats. The engineers sat with them, wearing crimson rosettes.

  The aldermen of Canterbury sat behind them in an enclosed coach. The remaining carriages were occupied by friends, wives, local gentry and a small band of musicians. There were almost three hundred passengers in all, cheered on by thousands of onlookers as they waited for the journey to begin.

  When all was ready, a flag was waved to the engineer at Tyler Hill. The cable between the railway lines immediately jerked into life as the steam engine at Tyler Hill began to reel it in. With a jolt, the whole train started forward and the passengers were on their way.

  At the same time, Bell Harry began to peal, announcing the good news across the city. Cannons boomed from the West Gate. The sound of the guns was almost drowned by an enormous roar from the crowd as it watched the train disappearing in the direction of Tyler Hill. Nothing remotely like it had ever been seen in Canterbury before.

  To Stephenson’s relief, everything went according to plan. The train passed through the new tunnel at Tyler Hill without mishap and was hauled by cable all the way to the winding station at Clowes Wood. There, it was unhooked from the cable and attached to Invicta. The steam engine started off at once, towing all the carriages behind it for the last leg of the journey to Whitstable.

  The sea lay blue and inviting in front of them as they arrived. Everyone in Whitstable was waiting to welcome them. Invicta came in slowly towards the end of the line and was surrounded by delighted fisher folk as soon as they were quite sure that the engine had stopped at last.

  ‘Forty-one and a half minutes,’ Stephenson announced. He waved his watch in triumph as he jumped down from the train. ‘That’s how long the journey took. Actual travelling time was less than three quarters of an hour to get the whole way from Canterbury to Whitstable.’

  The passengers shared his enthusiasm. They were all very pleased to have arrived so successfully. Climbing out of the carriages, they flocked to the seafront in excited groups and took a stroll along the shore before lunch. A splendid meal had been arranged for them at the Duke of Cumberland pub.

  The return to Canterbury that afternoon was just as exhilarating. The passengers all cheered as the train entered the tunnel at Tyler Hill. Fortified by a good lunch, they tested the tunnel’s acoustics for the full half mile of unaccustomed darkness before emerging into the sunlight once more at the other end.

  ‘There they are!’ A man on the roof of Bell Harry was looking out for the train. He yelled to the bell ringers. ‘They’ve come back. They’re coming into the station now.’

  Bell Harry began to ring at once. All across the city, people dropped what they were doing and hurried to the station again to greet the travellers’ return. The crowds seemed even larger than they had been that morning as the train arrived at the end of its ground-breaking journey. Everyone wanted to hear about it as the passengers disembarked in triumph at the terminus and began to tell their stories.

  ‘So far so good,’ Stephenson told Fletcher quietly as they watched the passengers departing. ‘Now for the hard part. I have to make a speech at the dinner tonight.’

  ‘You’ll be all right. Just tell them there’s a great future in railways.’

  The King’s Head was an easy walk from the terminus. One hundred and fifty people had been invited to celebrate the grand opening of the railway line. Stephenson was an engineer, not a speech maker, but he knew he couldn’t avoid saying something at the dinner. The line’s investors wouldn’t be happy if the designer of Invicta didn’t give them a speech of some sort.

  It was a very convivial occasion. Wine flowed and waiters bustled about. The band played throughout the meal. Singers came on at the end. The guests were all in a splendid mood by the time the tablecloths had been cleared away at last and the railway chairman rose with a glass in his hand to propose the loyal toast.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he told everyone. ‘The King.’

  ‘The King.’ They all got up and drank to the King’s health. Then they raised their glasses again and toasted the health of the various railway people who had brought the Canterbury-Whitstable line into being.

  When it was Stephenson’s turn, he mumbled a few words of thanks in reply, but spoke in such a low voice that the newspaper reporters couldn’t hear him. The gist of it was that Invicta had come up to all his expectations. Stephenson was glad to sit down again as soon as he decently could.

  He was much more expansive talking to the railway directors sitting at his table. They called for more wine and sat listening as he told them about his father’s ideas for the development of the railways.

  ‘My father is very concerned about the gauge of the railway tracks,’ he told them. ‘The width between the two lines is four foot, eight and a half inches here. It’s the same between Stockton and Darlington. It’ll be the same when the line between Liverpool and Manchester opens. My father thinks that ought to be the standard gauge everywhere.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He says the lines will all be joined up one day. Not today and not tomorrow, but one day. He thinks it’ll be possible to travel all over the country by railway train. The gauges would all have to be the same width for that to happen.’

  ‘Your father really thinks that would be possible?’

  ‘He does. But only if there’s a standard gauge, so that the same wheels work on every track.’

  The directors mulled it over while a waiter refilled their glasses. George Stephenson’s suggestion made perfect sense, but they knew it would be a long time yet before the country was covered in railway lines. The directors had found it hard enough building a single line from Canterbury to Whitstable.

  ‘I have an idea about selling passenger tickets,’ one of them told the others.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It seems to me that people might want to go to Whitstable every day during the summer season. We could sell tickets to regular travellers at a discounted price.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘If they undertook to make the journey five times a week, we could sell them five tickets for the price of four. A ticket for the whole season.’

  The directors nodded in agreement. The idea was commercially sound. The railway business was full of interesting new possibilities that they looked forward to exploring in due course. Someone else had suggested that it might even be possible to live in one place and work in another, if there was a railway connecting the two.

  But that was for the future. For the moment, the directors were simply relieved that the day had been such a success. They were exhilarated as the party broke up at last and they went their separate ways. Behind them, the waiters at the King’s Head began to clear up and put everything away b
efore they too finished for the day. The men compared notes as they worked.

  ‘We had a right one on our table,’ one of them said. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said the country would be covered in railway lines one day. Not just this one to Whitstable, but everywhere.’

  ‘All over the country?’

  ‘That’s what he said. The whole country would be connected by railway lines. They’d all join up. You could go from one end of England to the other on a railway train.’

  Absurd. The waiters at the King’s Head shook their heads. They knew a stupid idea when they heard one.

  ‘Why stop at England?’ one of them pointed out. ‘Why not the rest of the world as well?’

  They all fell about at that. Then they put the lights out and went to bed.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Charles Dickens and David Copperfield

  Charles Dickens’s American publisher had come to stay. James Fields and his wife were in England on the first leg of a grand tour of Europe. Dickens had invited them to spend a week at Gad’s Hill, his country home near Rochester.

  He had known the couple for years. Fields edited the Atlantic Monthly as well as publishing Dickens’s novels. His wife Annie, née Adams, came from the same family as the two Adams presidents. Dickens had been their guest in Boston during his 1868 lecture tour of the United States.

  Now he was repaying their hospitality. He had spent several days in London showing them the sights before inviting them down to Gad’s Hill. James Fields wanted to see a bit of the countryside while he was in England. In particular, he was keen to visit Canterbury with his wife.

  ‘We could do it English-style,’ he had suggested to Dickens in a letter before leaving Boston. ‘A horse and carriage. Postilions in scarlet jackets. We don’t get much of that in America. It would be fun to go to Canterbury the old-fashioned way.’