William Huskisson

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.