The Duke of Wellington vowed he would never
travel by train again – and, while still alive,
kept his vow. (His corpse was conveyed in state
by rail from his house in Kent to London).
The official opening of the Liverpool-
Manchester railway ought to have been one
of unqualified celebration: the first
passenger train journey in the world hauled
by a steam locomotive; with VIPs
and a military band – albeit
seated on benches in open wagons,
except for the Duke, then Prime Minister,
and his party in a bespoke, covered carriage.
The dual track line had been built to convey –
more quickly than the horse drawn narrow boats
on the canals, or carts on the unmade roads –
the raw cotton unloaded at Liverpool
to Cottonopolis (i.e. Manchester)
and its satellite cotton mill towns
in south east Lancashire – and transport
the finished products back for export
to the growing British Empire’s colonies.
George Stephenson, who designed and built the line,
in order to show off the commercial
versatility of the dual track approach
on the day employed two engines – both of which
he had designed and built: the Northumbrian –
the Duke’s train, as it were – pulled rolling stock
from west to east; the Rocket east to west.
They met half way – at Parkside Station –
to take on water. There, the MP
for Liverpool, William Huskisson,
became the first railway fatality.
He fell on the north track, and the Rocket
crushed one of his legs. The Northumbrian,
pulling the first of its wagons – the one
the military band had been travelling in –
took the injured man to Eccles, where he died
in the vicarage. Meanwhile the bandsmen
began to march in step – or attempted to
given the sleepers and rubble
laid between them – back to Liverpool.
The much delayed train arrived in Manchester
in rain. A large crowd of mill workers,
remembering the Peterloo Massacre,
jeered loudly, and threw things. Wellington,
always a defensive general,
refused to alight. The train returned
to Liverpool – passing the still stumbling
and wet bandsmen – to a civic reception.
I first learned about Huskisson’s demise
in a history lesson in school – just the sort
of Goon Show/Pythonesque fact to appeal
to teenage boys. We did not learn about
how Stephenson was able to build the track
across Chat Moss, a peat bog, thousands
of years old and many metres deep,
a permanent way that operates now,
an engineering feat of genius,
a joyous testament to our large brains.
Nor did we learn that the whole business venture –
each spike, each bolt and nut, each foot of wrought iron
rail, and each of the many, expensive
courses at the celebratory banquet
in Liverpool’s town hall – had been funded
by the enslavement of Africans.
By David Selzer