Initially the Navy employed him in Portsmouth in 1795 as a “barracks master”, a role which rewarded him with a £300 annual salary. However, by 1796 he was appointed as the Navy’s official chemist, primarily based in Woolwich, and had his salary increased to an extremely comfortable £400 a year.
While employed in this role Sadler was responsible for providing the Navy with its very first steam engine, erected at Portsmouth Dockyard “to the design of James Sadler”.
Sadler’s part as a competitor in steam engine invention was not exactly embraced with a healthy spirit of competition. James Watt is caught fulminating in a letter from Birmingham of September 1786, declaring: “I am extremely sorry that he still busys [sic] himself with the steam carriage. In one of my specifications I have secured it as well as words could do it according to my ideas. In the meantime... let Sadler throw away their time and money hunting shadows.”
Sadler did not take out a patent until five years afterwards, and this deferral could well have been due to Watt’s antagonism. An illustration of Sadler’s design is included in the Sketch Book of William Reynolds, which provides an accompanying description: “Small engine as it worked on the hill at the Dale in Coalbrookdale made by James Sadler 1792.” The illustration reveals Sadler’s design to be a vertical rotary engine most probably used for winding upwards and downwards from a pit. Relying upon steam above atmospheric pressure entering a high-pressure cylinder, the piston is driven forward, while efficiency is maximised by the steam exhausting to a condenser.
J.E. Hodgson observed in his 1928 London lecture coinciding with the centenary of Sadler’s death: “It is fairly obvious that these values in Sadler’s piston and diaphragm, relying as they do merely upon friction, could not remain satisfactory.” Moreover, it seems evident that Sadler realised this, for in his next sketch in May 1793 we find with lettered descriptions “nozzles, values and chests like those of Watt, worked by a tappet on the piston rod”. These modifications, and subsequent revisions in both 1793 and 1794 were made with the aid of Beddoes, now “a famous physician in Bristol”.
Sadler then built two more engines, including one constructed in 1796 in Garlick Hill and put to work for Sutton, Keen & Company mustard makers. Interestingly, Watt’s enthusiastic, and possibly obsequious, younger colleague John Rennie wrote a letter to James Watt reporting in the language of a spy: “Sadler’s engine works exceedingly well. I attempted to get a sight of her, but was foiled. Sadler had been endeavouring to pervert the minds of the good citizens and to persuade them that his engine is much better and cheaper than yours, and uses only about half the coal. This man should be looked after.”
That appears ominous. James Watt, establishment darling, conversing in language from The Sopranos. “Sadler needs looking after” takes on a contemporary air of “taken care of”, “sorting out”, “snubbed out”, “whacked”... Rennie reports to Watt a few days later and confirms, “Sutton & Keen have trumpeted the value of Sadler’s invention with great industry.” But he admits: “I attempted to get sight of her [the engine] again but was foiled.”
John Rennie was then an eager young assistant (and part-time spy) for Watt and Matthew Boulton. Born in the bizarrely named East Lothian hamlet of Phantassie, he later became an engineer in London, and installed stream-driven apparatus in mills, thus industrialising their capacity. Several were subsequently burnt down, almost certainly deliberately by Luddites fearful of their jobs being eradicated. An engineer and specialist in iron foundry techniques, Rennie constructed the first Southwark Bridge.
Of course, the fact that Watt and his engineering accomplice Boulton were so concerned about Sadler simply serves to flatter him. Boulton is moved to observe that “Watt experiences a rumbling of pain in his chest due to the efforts of Sadler’s” competing steam engine. That sounds like he’s describing indigestion; I wonder if Rennie could have helped with that. (Rennie? See what I did there? Oh, never mind.)
James Watt (1736-1819) is quoted on the £50 banknote: “I can think of nothing else but this machine.” Well, there was the spying, and the ridiculously small-minded fight with Sadler, whereas a spirit of co-operation might have brought forth greater rewards for both sides, not to mention scientific advancement for a country at the time terrified of a French invasion.
Inevitably it would have been difficult for Sadler to sever himself completely from aeronautics, given the celebrity status it had earned him during two short years. But the reputation and recognition his ballooning adventures had created for him were now cashed in to obtain high-level appointments. One of these meant he moved to Portsmouth to take on a prestigious new role.
Around this time, Sadler had also branched out into the soft drinks industry. By the 1790s he had established another factory business. Based in Soho, to the east of Regent Street, the firm used a Sadler- designed manufacturing system to produce bottles of “water heavily impregnated with air bubbles” - “soda water”, as it is less clumsily referred to today.
However, Sadler had a shrewd marketing ace up his Georgian frockcoat sleeve. The crates filled at the factory all contained bottles astutely labelled with an illustration of a balloon. Cleverly, Sadler saw the potential of his ballooning exploits for marketing his carbonated water.
30 MARCH 1797: WINDHAM
Sadler‘s second marriage produced a son. Christened Windham Sadler, after his father’s early supporter and benefactor William Windham MP, he was baptised on 30 March 1797 at St. George’s Church, Hanover Square, London. Both the future President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt and architect John Nash, designer of nearby Regent Street (the layout is said to be modelled on Oxford’s High Street with its famous curve, where Sadler’s pastry shop was located), were married at St. George’s.
6 NOVEMBER 1798: SADLER’S GUN
Diligent testing combined with an instinctive acumen for invention were just two parts of Sadler’s recipe for success. He next decided to utilise these twin attributes to improve the Royal Navy’s cannons and rifles.
An illustrated pamphlet Account of Various Improvements in Artillery was produced in November 1798 bearing Sadler’s name as the author, billing himself as Member of the Board of Naval Works at the Admiralty and Barrack Master at Portsmouth. It shows, with detailed engravings, his tested designs for a radically modernised 32-pound cannon.
Lord Nelson was so subsequently impressed that he requested as many of the guns that Sadler could provide.
Strangely, Sadler’s report and blueprints for the newly efficient cannons were presented not to the Royal Navy, but to the directors of the East India Company, as the company operated their own private navy!
Sadler made crucial calculations on efficiency: the length of the carriage, the weight and size of ordnance, how many men were required to re-load. But it was not just the boats designed to carry these newly forged guns that were resigned to sailing in storming and choppy waters - Sadler was clearly fighting stormy politicised battles himself too.
Gun advancement experiments overseen by Sadler had been conducted since 1795. There was a specific reason for this: the French. War was seemingly certain, and there was accompanying paranoia around Britain that a French invasion was imminent. Coded warning signals had been adopted in case the French were spotted attempting to land on British soil. Hence the requirement to improve the nation’s firepower was paramount, and numerous possible improvements and advances were tested by a demonstrably dedicated Sadler.
Sadler specifically took issue with a report made by Count Rumford in May 1797, stating that this report was stealing the credit for his research. Sadler fulminated: “The descriptions of the improvements mentioned by Count Rumford are precisely the descriptions of the Patent Gun made by James Sadler on which the experiments were made by order of the Board of Ordnance. It is also well known to the Secretary of War and many eminent officers of the Navy that J.S. communicated this improvement to the
m, and actually constructed guns on the same principle many years before the experiments were made at Woolwich.” The use of the third-person James Sadler in the text leads the reader to suspect that these were not his own words.
Sadler had discovered that “much of the gunpowder escapes unfired” from the artillery models then deployed by the Royal Navy and so set about remodelling this part of the guns’ design. Crucially he added velocity by striking the correct equilibrium between shot weight and barrel length. He also discovered that the cavity for powder escape was costing vital accuracy, calculating that a quarter of all guns would miss their intended target. Sadler identified and addressed the causes of slow combustion.
Capping this, he also solved another serious problem with the Navy’s guns: their tendency to be, as Sadler phrased it, engaged in “the dropping of the muzzle”, i.e. the gunpowder blowing the gun itself apart. He asserted: “It is certain that brass guns are sometimes rendered unserviceable by the discharge of less than 200 shot.” He therefore set about establishing the optimum amount of gunpowder required for each gun model, too much or too little reducing the velocity and accuracy of the discharge. Quoted in his pamphlet, Sadler states: “It is an important fact that a shot which has just force to pass through one ship’s side will produce more mischief than if it’s velocity were greater.”
Sadler conducted painstaking research, firing cannons with different levels of gunpowder - adding an additional ounce of powder before each separate firing. This must have made him a very annoying neighbour.
He concluded that the Royal Navy’s standard insistence that each gun should be loaded with ten pounds and ten ounces of powder was dangerously flawed. Not only did he report that a mere four ounces would retain a full 80% of the same range, but he discovered greater accuracy. Moreover, the guns did not overheat, so rapid repeat firing - rendered impossible by the existing larger powder loads - was now available to gunners. Sadler reported that the current recommended charge “endangers the gun carriage, strains the vessel, and incurs a greater risk of rendering the gun unserviceable... It may therefore be concluded,” he states, “that smaller charges of powder than those at present used, might be adopted with the advantage to public service.”
The Naval Committee duly published a report, observing that “Sadler’s gun is much stronger, the dimensions having been found by repeated experiments to be best adapted to produce sufficient steadiness.” Another iron gun created by Sadler of the same calibre “weighs less than half the common gun” and is “already in use in His Majesty’s service.” The report also notes: “Sadler’s gun is little more than half the length of the old one, it takes less room, it is more easily run in and out as well as charged and discharged.”
Topping off the improvements, Sadler also designed a rapid fire mechanism that avoided the need for slow priming. He patented the resulting design of his 32-pounder with non-recoil mounting, reviewed as being more accurate, faster loading and crucially only employed three men to operate rather than the twelve required to fire its predecessor.
Sadler then set his sights on smaller rifles, starting with setting the sights on rifles - literally. He redesigned almost every component of the existing rifles issued to the Navy. The ensuing published paper, lengthily titled Description of a New and Much Improved Rifle Gun by James Sadler, Member of the Board of Inspection at the Admiralty, laid out the thorough technical details of his gun studies and the blueprint for a superior new model.
Sadler informed readers how he had given a total overhaul to the rifle, testing each aspect of the firing and loading mechanism. During testing he fired 38 continuous shots in the presence of an approving Sir John Cox Hippisley MP - an individual famously described as “that busy man” by King George III - and several high-ranking Naval officers from Swinley Camp. He figured out a method of increasing the compressed air into the cartridge during the firing action, and maximised numerous other efficiencies. Sometimes he injured himself as a consequence; he incurred “an accident with a small piece of ordnance” with his hand “much hurt by the powder catching fire”. Yet by experiencing the faults first-hand, Sadler reasoned, he was able to rectify them. Certainly the British Navy’s safety record was not impressive, with men routinely injured by cannons and rifles - only some of which belonged to the enemy. Consequently Sadler’s labours led to a vastly more efficient, and safer to use, rifle for British military personnel.
This was certainly a task Sadler took seriously, and the establishment was apparently impressed. Sadler’s pamphlet observes: “Some professional men in the military service of the East India Company are of the opinion that the improved gun and carriage may be of eminent advantage in the country fortresses. Both gun and carriage are easily manoeuvrable and the rapidity of which it may be moved and fired in all directions in a battery, would enable a trifling garrison to resist with confidence the attacks of a very powerful enemy.”
Sadler had encamped himself in Naval testing yards, spending “the course of one summer and most of the following year” meticulously recording data from his repeated firing range experiments, and noting that “officers had never seen so much accuracy produced from any other ordnance”. At one experiment at The Warren, the First Lord of the Admiralty was present to see the very first shot fired by Sadler’s newly invented gun “cut the bolt in the centre of the target”.
Although a frequent visitor to Woolwich and Portsmouth, Sadler was living throughout this period at 10 Stafford Row, Pimlico, and he published his report a mere three weeks after his son, the ill-fated Windham, was born in the same house.
Sadler ended the century on the up and up (even without a balloon) when he was elected in 1799 as a life member of the Royal Institution. But his career was to descend like a punctured balloon at the start of the next century.
Unfortunately Sadler appears to have cultivated a nemesis in the Royal Navy named Sir Samuel Bentham, the brother of Jeremy Bentham, the spiritual founder of University College London. It is unclear why Bentham harboured such a malicious dislike for Sadler. Inconveniently for him, Bentham held high rank, becoming Inspector General of Naval Works. Bentham was appointed to oversee the reform of the Royal Navy’s dockyards, a role that would have brought him into close contact, and conflict, with Sadler. They also shared an agenda in that the two men held almost identical remits, including guns, boat building and Naval equipment from rigging to copper-bottoms. It is likely that Bentham sanctioned the revolutionary adoption of Sadler’s steam engines into the dockyards in 1796.
During his time with the Navy Sadler undertook a far-reaching range of tasks. He conducted investigations into the properties of copper sheathing and instigated analysis of the docks’ fresh water spa and gunpowder combustion. Additionally, he invented an on-board brewing device, oversaw an investigation into the seasoning of timbers used in ship construction and produced plans for “annoying” French enemy vessels in Boulogne harbour. He also found time to invent a more efficient air pump, replaced signal lights with his own more luminous invention and conducted numerous experiments into impurities found in gunpowder and ammonia.
And in addition to all that, Sadler published numerous scientific research papers, including his works on: The Process for Refining Lead (1806), Explanations of a Common Impurity (1806), The Distillation Processes of Seawater (1807), On Smelting of Lead (1811), On the Dislocation of Veins (1814), etc. Such an output bears a typical hallmark of a polymath, and is likely to be research wholly undertaken by Sadler himself.
Yet towards the end of the nineteenth century’s first decade, Sadler and Sir Samuel Bentham seem to have fallen out irredeemably. As a consequence Sadler struggled to retain his position, and in 1809 he was dismissed without receiving compensation for his self-erected experiment apparatus. Furthermore, Sadler had privately built his own research laboratory in 1802 and crucially this appears to have been requisitioned by Bentham without compensation for his own vast ex
penditure involved. Overnight Sadler was instantly plunged into enormous debt.
Fly in the Appointment: Counselling
It has become clear that I need to learn about phobias. Festering ignorance is no longer an option. If I want to tackle my restrictive phobias, I need to educate myself. I need to obtain insights into my anxieties, and discover why part of my brain, unfortunately a very bossy part, is having difficulty distinguishing actual threats from imagined ones. Luckily an Oxford University psychologist and phobia expert agrees to enlighten me.
Sufferers of psychological impairments often report it helps to discover they are not suffering in isolation, so it helps merely to have Dr. Hannah reassure me that I am not alone in enduring my described symptoms.
Dr. Hannah agrees to provide me with insights into the human brain in exchange for a posh frothy coffee, which is a reasonably good deal. Then the hospital café owner pops his head through a serving hatch like an undaunted tortoise and shouts that they’re closing. So we relocate to a utilitarian corridor, which looks poorly maintained, and is the sort of corridor where the cops arrive on a TV show to bang on one of the doors only to be told from behind a chain-lock, “he ain’t here!” before they kick in the door anyway.
There is a drinks vending machine. Installed by a private company, it advertises lots of choice, though doesn’t work and keeps our money anyway. Presumably it is located in the hospital as a visual metaphor for the modern NHS.
Speaking with Dr. Hannah and benefitting from her knowledge is a little like being taken backstage by God for forty minutes, and having the entire workings - and limitations - of our human cognitive functioning explained. She has so many pearls of wisdom in her possession she could make a necklace out of them, but selflessly encourages me to come out of my shell and discover my own pearls of wisdom within.
The Man With His Head in the Clouds Page 16
