Category Archives: Engineering

Fuelled growth: a history of F Perkins

How did F Perkins become the largest manufacturer of diesel engines in the world?

Establishment of F Perkins
Francis “Frank” Arthur Perkins (1889 – 1967) and Charles Wallace Chapman (1897 – 1979) decided to develop a lightweight diesel engine for use in trucks and lorries. They were convinced that a diesel engine could be made more reliable and efficient than their petrol equivalents.

Frank Perkins (1889 – 1967)

F Perkins was established at Queen Street, Peterborough in 1932. The company had a capital of £10,000, four directors and three employees. One engine a week was produced in the first year.

Frank Perkins broke the high speed world record for a diesel engine with a 100mph run in 1935.

Over 600 engines a year were produced by 1938.

F Perkins built marine engines for the Royal Navy during the Second World War.

Post-war expansion
F Perkins anticipated an increased demand for diesel engines in the post-war period, and built a new factory at Eastfield, Peterborough. The business operated 75 acres of factories by 1950.

F Perkins was converted into a public company in 1951.

F Perkins was the largest manufacturer of diesel engines in the world by 1953, with an annual production of 60,000. Almost 9,000 people were employed.

A diesel engine designed for motor cars was introduced from 1958.

Subsequent ownership
F Perkins began to appear vulnerable as the large vehicle manufacturers began to produce their own diesel engines. The business was acquired by Massey-Ferguson, the largest manufacturer of farm tractors in the world, for £4.5 million in 1959. Perkins was contracted to supply Massey-Ferguson with all of their engine requirements.

F Perkins employed 10,000 people by 1967, including 7,000 in Peterborough. 1,500 diesel engines could be produced every day.

Massey-Ferguson was renamed Varity Corporation from 1982.

Around 400,000 engines a year were built across 15 different countries by 1992.

4,000 people were employed in Peterborough in 1997.

LucasVarity sold Perkins to Caterpillar, the largest manufacturer of construction equipment in the world, for £803 million in 1998.

Perkins remains one of the largest diesel engine manufacturers in the world.

Weetman Pearson: Britain’s oil baron

Weetman Pearson was probably the most powerful British businessman in the early twentieth century. He transformed a family firm into the largest public works contractor in the world, and developed the Mexican oil industry.

Background
S Pearson & Son was a public works contractor founded by Samuel Pearson in Yorkshire in 1844. Weetman Pearson (1856 – 1927) entered the business founded by his grandfather at the age of 16.

Weetman Pearson became a partner in the family firm from 1883. The headquarters of the business were relocated to London.

Described as a “hard-headed Yorkshireman”, Weetman Pearson was credited with growing the family firm from a regional concern into an international player. Pearson modestly described himself as a “stolid, uninteresting slogger”.

Major public works contracts
S Pearson & Son won the contract to construct the Blackwall tunnel underneath the River Thames in London in 1892. It was the largest underwater tunnel in the world upon completion in 1897, and established the reputation of the firm.

Weetman Pearson (1856 – 1927) in 1917

Pearson embarked upon a £2 million project to provide a drainage canal for Mexico City, which had experienced seasonal flooding, in 1890. The Grand Canal in Mexico City was completed to schedule and on budget in 1896.

S Pearson & Son was registered as a private limited company with a capital of over £1 million in 1897.

Around the turn of the century, Pearson built three harbours, Vera Cruz, Salina Cruz and Puerto Mexico, as well as the Tehuantepec railway (completed 1905) which connected the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

S Pearson & Son employed 30,000 men by 1901.

Pearson enters the oil industry in Mexico
Weetman Pearson began to acquire oil concessions in Mexico from 1901. He was encouraged by President Porfirio Diaz (1830 – 1915), who was keen to develop a rival to Standard Oil, who controlled the industry in his country.

Porfirio Diaz  (1830 – 1915) in 1907

Pearson soon found himself in conflict with Standard Oil. He refused to back down however, saying, “in a mild way I am going to be ruthless”.

S Pearson & Son won a contract to tunnel the Hudson River and the East River in Long Island, thus linking Brooklyn and New Jersey by rail, in 1904.

S Pearson & Son was the largest engineering firm in the world by 1905, employing 60,000 men. Weetman Pearson was one of the wealthiest men in England.

Pearson struck oil in Mexico in around 1905. He agreed to supply C T Bowring, the largest distributor of petrol in Great Britain, with oil at a fixed price. Unfortunately, his well ran dry, and he was forced to buy crude from his rival, Standard Oil, at inflated prices in order to fulfil the contract.

Mexican Eagle
Pearson discovered the Dos Bocas oil reserves in 1908. With a daily output of 300,000 barrels, it was the largest deposit yet found in the world.

The Mexican Eagle Co, controlled by S Pearson & Son, was formed to exploit the Pearson oil assets.

Mexican Eagle went public in 1910, with a capital of £3 million. Its production output over the next two years was estimated at 750,000 tons.

Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell virtually controlled the global oil market at this time. Pearson was reluctant to rely on his competitors, and established the Eagle Oil Transport Co in 1912 to process and distribute his raw product.

The value of Mexican Eagle tripled between 1910 and 1913. Between 1912 and 1913, the company held an estimated 50 percent market share for fuel products in Great Britain. Production in 1913 was eleven million barrels. Mexican Eagle was the largest British company by 1913.

Mexico was the third largest oil producer in the world by 1914, after the United States and Russia, and Pearson controlled around 60 percent of the country’s output.

According to a contemporary quote from the Daily Mail, “oil is the new source of power that will govern the future industrial development of the world”.

Mexican Eagle was the second largest producer of oil in Mexico, with an output of nearly 19 million barrels in 1919.

With a market capitalization of £79 million, the Pearson group of companies ranked as by far the largest business in Britain by 1919, with a valuation more than 25 percent higher than its nearest rival, Burmah Oil.*

Pearson sells Mexican Eagle to Royal Dutch Shell
Pearson sold control of his oil interests, including 35 percent of the ordinary capital of Mexican Eagle, to Royal Dutch Shell for £15 million in 1919. The merger represented the takeover of the largest British company by the largest European company. Royal Dutch Shell had an output roughly double that of Mexican Eagle, at around 40 million oil barrels in 1918.

Royal Dutch Shell invested heavily to increase production in Mexico. Mexican Eagle produced over 32 million barrels in 1920, accounting for more than 20 percent of Mexican production. An estimated 50 million barrels were shipped in 1921. The company had a daily capacity of over 100,000 barrels.

Following a mild heart attack, Weetman Pearson exited the contracting business in 1926. S Pearson & Son would instead concentrate on its assets in electricals, oil, land and finance.

Pearson died with an estate valued at £4 million in 1927. According to his obituary in the Manchester Guardian, he “never lost his accent and pleasant Yorkshire ways”.

The Mexican oil industry was nationalised by the government in 1938.

References
* Bud Frierman, Lisa, Andrew C. Godley and Judith Wale, ‘Weetman Pearson in Mexico and the Emergence of a British Oil Major, 1901-1919’, Business History Review 81 (2007).

Building bridges: Dorman Long

Dorman Long was the largest steel and iron manufacturer in the British Empire, but is best known for its large structural engineering projects, such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Arthur Dorman
Arthur John Dorman (1848 – 1931) was born in Ashford, Kent, the son of a tanning yard owner. He relocated to Middlesbrough in the North East of England to serve an apprenticeship to E G Johnson of Richard Johnson & Co, iron producers, in 1866.

Arthur John Dorman (1848 – 1931) in 1918

Dorman was not afraid to get his hands dirty, and although his spectacles and Southern accent caused great amusement to his fellow puddlers, he earned their respect in undertaking their strenuous work. A straightforward and likeable man, he rose to the position of assistant manager.

Dorman Long is established
Dorman partnered with Albert de Lande Long (1844 – 1917) to acquire the West Marsh Ironworks at Middlesbrough in 1876. With 20 puddling furnaces and three rolling mills, the business specialised in producing wrought iron bars and angles for the shipbuilding industry.

Developing trade led Dorman Long to acquire the Britannia Works from Bernhard Samuelson (1820 – 1905) and steel production commenced on a large scale.

Dorman Long became a limited company with a share capital of £350,000 in 1889. It had an annual output of 100,000 tons of steel.

Albert de Lande Long retired from active interest in Dorman Long in 1891.

A half share in Bell Brothers of Middlesbrough was acquired from Sir Hugh Bell (1844 – 1931) in 1899. Bell Brothers held extensive collieries, ironstone mines and limestone quarries.

Company capital was increased to £1 million in 1902 to purchase the remaining half of Bell Brothers from Sir Lowthian Bell (1816 – 1904), who became company chairman. The firm was now the largest steel producer in the North of England, and the only one that was entirely vertically integrated.

The merger made logical sense as the result of increasing co-operation between the two firms. It was also a response to the formation of United States Steel, the largest manufacturer in the world, in 1901.

The North Eastern Steel Company was acquired in 1903.

Dorman Long was the first non-armaments company in Britain to dedicate itself to shell production during the First World War.

The six blast furnaces of Walker Maynard & Co at Redcar were acquired in 1915.

A £2 million steelworks was established at Redcar in 1917.

Sir B Samuelson & Co of Middlesbrough was also acquired in 1917.

Dorman Long was the largest iron and steel business in Britain by 1920. It had an annual production capacity of 1.25 million tons of pig iron and one million tons of steel.

The Redcar steelworks covered 150 acres and employed 2,500 men by 1923.

Richborough, the state-owned Kentish coal port which had been neglected since the war, was acquired in 1924.

Dorman Long enters the bridge-building industry
Dorman Long entered the bridge-building industry from 1924. The Sydney Harbour Bridge was their first contract, constructed at an estimated cost of £4.5 million.

Construction of the Tyne Bridge in 1928. Source: Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums

Dorman Long acquired Bolckow Vaughan in 1929. The merged company had an annual capacity of three million tons of steel (25 percent of British production) and two million tons of pig iron. The merger was motivated by a trade slump following the post-war boom, and neither company had issued a dividend since 1921.

Arthur Dorman died in 1931. His obituary in the Yorkshire Post heralded his strong relationship with his workforce of 25,000 people. By this time Dorman Long was the best-known bridge-builder in the world.

A keen Anglican and Conservative, Dorman was also a generous benefactor. He built Dormanstown garden village to improve the living standards of his workforce, and donated the Dorman Museum to the people of Middlesbrough.

Dorman Long struggled during the Great Depression, and entered into receivership in 1933. The board of directors was reconstituted, and managerial control was returned to Middlesbrough.

Dorman Long opened the second largest coking plant in Europe at their Cleveland Works in 1936.

Dorman Long employed 39,889 people in 1937, with the vast majority working in County Durham and Yorkshire. The wage bill for the year amounted to nearly £7 million.

Dorman Long built the second largest bridge in the world at their works in Middlesbrough in 1937. It was erected in Denmark and still stands.

Sydney Harbour Bridge
Sydney Harbour Bridge

Dorman Long controlled collieries with an annual output of four million tons, and ironstone mines with an annual capacity of 2.5 million tons by 1938. The South Bank works contained the largest coking plant in England.

By 1949 Dorman Long held 60 percent of the structural engineering industry in South Africa, and owned the largest structural engineering company in South America, British Structural Steel of Buenos Aires.

Relative decline of the business
Dorman Long entered into relative decline, and was the 38th largest steel manufacturer in the world by 1963, with an annual output of 1.745 million metric tons.

Dorman Long was responsible for 22 to 25 percent of British structural steel output in 1964, and employed a total of around 25,000 people.

Dorman Long merged with South Durham and Stewarts & Lloyds to create British Steel & Tube in 1967. The merged company was the largest steel producer in Britain, and one of the largest steel manufacturers in the world, with an annual output of over five million tons.

British Steel & Tube was nationalised later that year under the name British Steel. Redpath Dorman Long was formed as the heavy engineering and bridge-building subsidiary.

Dorman Long reduced its workforce from 9,000 to 3,000 in the early 1980s, in response to large profit losses.

British Steel sold Redpath Dorman Long to Trafalgar House for £10 million in 1982. Trafalgar House merged the business with its own Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Co to form the largest structural steel fabricator in Western Europe, with 7,000 employees.

Dorman Long Technology was demerged from Cleveland Bridge in 2000. It specialises in the construction of bridges. It has company headquarters in Northamptonshire, and maintains its North of England headquarters in Darlington.

Cleveland Bridge continued to operate from a 22-acre site in Darlington, where it employed 250 people. The business entered into administration in 2021.

A Wear we go: William Doxford

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