Trevithick, Richard

Trevithick, Richard (1771-1833), engineer, b. Redruth, Cornwall, England.

'Captain Dick', as people called Richard Trevithick, was a happy-go-lucky young man.

He was well known in Cornwall as a wrestler and also as a clever engineer.

He followed the same trade as his father, looking after the fixed steam engines used in the Cornish mines.

In 1797, Trevithick built a model steam carriage. It ran well. So he started to build a full-size carriage like it. The job took him four years. It was finished on Christmas Eve 1801 and that night, in pouring rain, Captain Dick drove it along the roads near his home.

That first steam carriage was damaged in a fire, but, in 1802, Trevithick built a second and took it to London. Passers-by stared in wonder as he steamed down Oxford Street at twelve miles (nineteen km) per hour.

But the steam carriage was not safe on the uneven roads. So Trevithick built a steam locomotive or moving steam engine to pull wagons on a track. In 1804 this went to work at an ironworks at Pen-y-darran in South Wales, but after four months the cast-iron rails broke.

In 1808 Trevithick went to London with a small locomotive called Catch-me-who-can pulling a passenger coach, and put it on show. For one shilling passengers were taken for a ride around a circular track. Thousands of people paid for rides. But one day a rail in the track broke and the coach overturned. After that people were afraid to go for rides.

Trevithick took no part in the development of railways in England. He went to seek his fortune in Peru and Costa Rica, but returned home penniless in 1827.

See Richard Trevithick: Giant of Steam ~ Anthony Burton