60,000 tons pig iron in 25 years is an average of 2400 tons per year.
I count about 24 forges, omitting a couple that look as if they were
manufacturing rather than making iron.
If these made 200 tons each per year, we have 4800 tons per year, which
would need 7200 tons of pig iron.
This makes a total of perhaps 10,000 tons of pig iron.
The industry in England and Wales made about 12,750 tons of bar iron in 1735
(at the bottom a recession) rising to about 20,000 tons in 1755. The pig
iron equivalent would be a third as much again. The British iron industry
was certainly larger than that of the Chesapeake. What the result would be
if Pennsylvania, New England and the rest were added in, I cannot say.
The statement made to Evelyne (whose name I must apologise for misspelling)
would be correct if the qualification "internationally-traded" were added.
Peter King
49, Stourbridge Road,
Hagley,
Stourbridge
West Midlands
DY9 0QS
01562-720368
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Arch-Metals Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
Evelyne Godfrey
Sent: 25 January 2007 16:35
To: Peter King
Subject: Re: American pre-Revolution iron production
Hi,
The "Chesapeake was world's third largest producer of iron in the 18th
C..." idea was something that they told me when I first come to work in
Virginia (18 months ago).... indeed I think they mentioned it at the job
interview, as if it were a well known fact. This is a published source
for that statement:
http://departments.umw.edu/hipr/www/Godfrey/Va_iron_plantations.pdf
This paper also reproduces the export data from Bining, i.e. that the
around 60,000 tons of pig iron was sent from the Chesapeake to Britain
between 1730 and 1755.
Cheers,
Evelyne
>>> Peter King <[log in to unmask]> 1/25/2007 9:55 AM
>>>
I think that most of my information came from a book by A C Bining,
British
Regulation of the Colonial Iron Industry. It provides data on exports,
but
some one needs to collect all the data and make an estimate for
American
production. Studies have been made of the pre-Revolutionary industry
in
several states, but I do not think any one has drawn all this
together.
The American industry appears only to have begun to take off about
1720,
though there were a few earlier ironworks. Before that America was
almost
entirely dependent on Britain. I know of some research which will be
undertaken into the trade in manufactured iron, but it will be a while
before it is complete, yet alone published. The trade data is
available for
each colony (or group of them), but only aggregate figures have been
published.
Evelyn Godfrey's statement about manufacture in America was too strong.
The
prohibition (in 1750) was designed to limit its expansion, and was
probably
not in practice enforced. I suspect that the attempt to rank countries
in
order of size of production is rash. I have never seen any estimate of
the
size of the industry in France, Germany or Italy; all had a significant
iron
industry and they were far closer to being self-sufficient than
Britain.
The population of France was bigger than that of Britain and its iron
industry may have been too. We notice the Russian and Swedish
industries,
because they were heavily export-orientated, as was that of Virginia
and
Maryland, whereas the industry in New England and Pennsylvania was much
less
concerned with export.
Peter King
49, Stourbridge Road,
Hagley,
Stourbridge
West Midlands
DY9 0QS
01562-720368
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Arch-Metals Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
Of
James Brothers
Sent: 25 January 2007 00:52
To: Peter King
Subject: Re: American pre-Revolution iron production
There is ample evidence that the colonies were producing about as
much
iron as England right up to the time of the Revolution. English
production,
due to the adoption of coke as a fuel, takes off in the last quarter of
the
1700s and England is the leading producer of iron by 1800.
It was not all shipped back to England, most of it stayed in the
colonies.
The Chesapeake industry was geared toward export. But even so there
was
enough demand for local cast iron products that Alexander Spotswood
build a
foundry (double air furnace) at Massaponnax around 1732. A total of 16
blast
furnaces were running at one time or another during the 1700s in
Virginia.
While Issac Zane started out shipping iron to England, he found it much
more
profitable to sell locally, or ship to Philadelphia. Almost all of the
iron
produced in Pennsylvania, NY, and NJ was consumed locally. And we are
talking thousands of tons. Peter King has been able to trace a bit
over
7,000 tons of iron from colonial furnaces to Britain during the 1st
half of
the 1700s. But that is a small fraction of American production.
I wrote my MA on this. If you want lots of data, I can send you
more.
James Brothers, RPA
[log in to unmask]
On Jan 24, 2007, at 17:06, Torbert, Barton wrote:
Thanks for the reply.
So once war was declared all the production would have stayed
in-country. So you seem to be saying that there was significant
American production available no matter how it was previously
accounted
for.
Where was the ore coming from for the iron production in the
Chesapeake
region?
Bart
-----Original Message-----
From: Arch-Metals Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of
Evelyne Godfrey
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 2:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Falling Creek IW side question
Hi,
I think that the situation so long as the American colonies were
under
British control was that colonists were banned from keeping or
selling
locally produced iron; cast iron was just being produced in
America, and
it all had to be shipped straight to Britain where it could be
taxed and
some of it perhaps sold back to the colonists. This was one of the
points of contention at the time of the Revolution. Of course by
then,
colonists were regularly flouting the laws and casting cannons and
all
sorts to use against the British Army.
Supposedly by the mid-18th century, the Chesapeake region (Maryland
and
Virginia) had been the worlds third biggest iron producer, after
Russia
and Sweden, but colonial iron would have counted as "British"
production
rather than "American" per se.
The English settlers from Jamestown, who built that blast furnace
at
Falling Creek just twelve years after arriving, were presumably
being
pushed by the Virginia Company back in London to establish some
sort of
profitable industry as soon as possible... they had started out
looking
for gold of course, and when that didn't pan out as it were, they
decided to go after the iron ore. Even though work at Falling Creek
came
to an abrupt end with the massacre of 1622, iron remained
Virginia's
second big 'cash crop', alongside tobacco, up until the late 18th
C, and
the blast furnaces were organised according to the plantation
system,
just like the tobacco growing, i.e. with slave labour (sadly,
slaves
continued to make up the bulk of the workforce in the Virginia
iron
industry right up until 1864).
cheers,
Evelyne
Bart Torbert <[log in to unmask]> 1/24/2007 3:42 PM >>>
This discussion brings up a side question.
What was the iron production in pre-Revolutionary America? The
question is relative to the Americans ability to provide war needs
from
native sources.
Bart
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Steve Gray <[log in to unmask]>
The precursors of the furnaces are more likely to be Welsh
rather
than English,
from such counties as Carmarthenshire, Glamorgan and Gwent.
Yours Steve Gray
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter King
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 10:08 AM
Subject: Re: Falling Creek IW
The precursors of the furnace would inevitably be English. I
cannot think of
evidence from 1620s or earlier, but later English furnaces had
systems for
draining water from below the furnace, but I think the
foundations
would have
been in stone. However, at that period, timber-framing of
buildings
was still
common in England, with lath and plaster between the timbers. It
is
thus quite
possible that other parts of the furnace buildings would be of
timber, not to
mention the waterwheel.
The traditional view is that furnaces went into blast in the
autumn
and blew
until the early summer. While this was not invariably done in
places
where the
water-supply was good enough, it almost certainly has an element
of
truth in it.
I would have expected May to be the anticipated end of the first
blast, not its
start. On the other hand, if the furnace was in blast at the time
of
the
massacre, I would expect it still to be (or have been) there and
full
of its
large charge.
This is of course all speculation.
Peter King
49, Stourbridge Road,
Hagley,
Stourbridge
West Midlands
DY9 0QS
01562-720368
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Arch-Metals Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of
James Brothers
Sent: 23 January 2007 02:47
To: Peter King
Subject: Falling Creek IW
Lyle Browning, the Falling Creek IW archaeologist, has proposed
a
number of
possible explanations for the timbers recently discovered at the
site. While
much of the equipment at an ironworks (e.g. wheel, bellows,
anvil,
and hammer)
rested on substantial timber structures, is there evidence
elsewhere
for heavy
wood foundations for blast furnaces? Or is this more likely to
be
part of the
wheel support/foundation or some other part of the water power
system? Or is
there another possibility that hasn't been thought of yet? If
Winchester
Cathedral could be built on a raft, why not a blast furnace?
James Brothers, RPA
[log in to unmask]
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