Sir Frederick Henry Royce, 1st Baronet, (27 March 1863 – 22 April 1933) was an English engineer famous for his designs of car and aeroplane engines with a reputation for reliability and longevity. With
Charles Rolls
Charles Stewart Rolls (27 August 1877 – 12 July 1910) was a British motoring and aviation pioneer. With Henry Royce, he co-founded the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. He was the first Briton to be killed in an aeronautical accident wit ...
(1877–1910) and
Claude Johnson (1864–1926), he founded
Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to:
* Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct
Automobiles
* Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated in ...
.
Rolls-Royce initially focused on large 40-50 horsepower motor cars, the Silver Ghost and its successors. Royce produced his first aero engine shortly after the outbreak of the First World War and aircraft engines became Rolls-Royce's principal product.
Royce's health broke down in 1911 and he was persuaded to leave his factory in the Midlands at Derby and, taking a team of designers, move to the south of England spending winters in the south of France. He died at his home in Sussex in the spring of 1933.
Early life
Royce was born in
Alwalton
Alwalton is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. Alwalton lies approximately west of Peterborough city centre. Alwalton is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being ...
,
Huntingdonshire
Huntingdonshire (; abbreviated Hunts) is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire and a historic county of England. The district council is based in Huntingdon. Other towns include St Ives, Godmanchester, St Neots and Ramsey. The popu ...
, near
Peterborough
Peterborough () is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, east of England. It is the largest part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority district (which covers a larger area than Peterborough itself). It was part of Northamptonshire until ...
in 1863 to James and Mary Royce (née King). He was the youngest of their five children. His father ran a flour mill which he leased from the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners
The Ecclesiastical Commissioners were, in England and Wales, a body corporate, whose full title was Ecclesiastical and Church Estates Commissioners for England. The commissioners were authorized to determine the distribution of revenues of the Chu ...
but the business failed and the family moved to London. His father died in 1872 and Royce had to go out to work selling newspapers and delivering
telegrams
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
after only one year of formal schooling.
In 1878 he started an
apprenticeship
Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a ...
with the
Great Northern Railway company at its works in Peterborough thanks to the financial help of an aunt. After three years the money ran out. After a short time with a tool-making company in
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...
he returned to London and joined the Electric Light and Power Company. He moved to their
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
office in 1882
working on street and theatre lighting.
In 1884, with £20 of savings, he entered a partnership with Ernest Claremont, a friend who contributed £50, and they started a business making domestic electric fittings in a workshop in Cooke Street,
Hulme
Hulme () is an inner city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England, immediately south of Manchester city centre. It has a significant industrial heritage.
Historically in Lancashire, the name Hulme is derived from the Old Norse word ...
,
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
, called F. H. Royce and Company. In 1894 they started making
dynamo
"Dynamo Electric Machine" (end view, partly section, )
A dynamo is an electrical generator that creates direct current using a commutator. Dynamos were the first electrical generators capable of delivering power for industry, and the foundati ...
s and
electric cranes and F. H. Royce & Company was registered as a
limited liability company
A limited liability company (LLC for short) is the US-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of ...
. The company was re-registered in 1899 as Royce Ltd
[ with a public share flotation and a further factory opened in ]Trafford Park
Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, southwest of Manchester city centre and north of Stretford. Until the l ...
, Manchester.
Partnership with Rolls
Following a decline in trade after the Second Boer War
The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the South ...
, and the arrival of increasing competition by cranes and dynamos from Germany and the United States, Royce began considering the motor car as a potential new product for the company. With his fascination for all things mechanical he became increasingly focused on motor cars and bought first, in 1901, a small De Dion and in 1902 or 1903 a 1901 model two cylinder Decauville
Decauville () was a manufacturing company which was founded by Paul Decauville (1846–1922), a French pioneer in industrial railways. Decauville's major innovation was the use of ready-made sections of light, narrow gauge track fastened to stee ...
.[ This did not meet his high standards and so he first improved it and then decided to manufacture a car of his own which he did in a corner of the workshop in 1904.
Two more cars were made. Of the three, which were called Royce and had two cylinder engines, one was given to Ernest Claremont and the other sold to one of the other directors, Henry Edmunds.][ Edmunds was a friend of ]Charles Rolls
Charles Stewart Rolls (27 August 1877 – 12 July 1910) was a British motoring and aviation pioneer. With Henry Royce, he co-founded the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. He was the first Briton to be killed in an aeronautical accident wit ...
who had a car showroom in London selling imported models and showed him his car and arranged the historic meeting between Rolls and Royce at the Midland Hotel, Manchester, on 4 May 1904. In spite of his preference for three or four cylinder cars, Rolls was impressed with the two-cylinder Royce 10 and in a subsequent agreement of 23 December 1904 agreed to take all the cars Royce could make. These would be of two, three, four and six cylinders and would be badged as Rolls-Royce.
The first Rolls-Royce car, the Rolls-Royce 10 hp
The Rolls-Royce 10 hp was the first car to be produced as a result of an agreement of 23 December 1904 between Charles Rolls and Henry Royce, and badged as a Rolls-Royce. The 10 hp was produced by Royce's company, Royce Ltd., at its factor ...
, was unveiled at the Paris Salon in December 1904. In 1906 Rolls and Royce formalised their partnership by creating Rolls-Royce Limited, with Royce appointed chief engineer and works director on a salary of £1,250 per annum plus 4% of the profits in excess of £10,000. Royce thus provided the technical expertise to complement Rolls' financial backing and business acumen. By 1907 the company was winning awards for the engineering reliability of its cars.
The Rolls-Royce Eagle
The Rolls-Royce Eagle was the first aircraft engine to be developed by Rolls-Royce Limited. Introduced in 1915 to meet British military requirements during World War I, it was used to power the Handley Page Type O bombers and a number of oth ...
was the first aircraft engine to be developed by Rolls-Royce Limited. It was introduced in 1915 to meet British military requirements during the First World War and proved to be one of only two aero engines made by the Allies that was neither a production nor a technical failure.
Royce & Company remained in business as a separate company making cranes until 1932 when it was bought by Herbert Morris of Loughborough. The last Royce-designed crane was built in 1964.[
The partnership ended when Rolls died in 1910 in a crash of his ]Wright Flyer
The ''Wright Flyer'' (also known as the ''Kitty Hawk'', ''Flyer'' I or the 1903 ''Flyer'') made the first sustained flight by a manned heavier-than-air powered and controlled aircraft—an airplane—on December 17, 1903. Invented and flown b ...
aircraft.
Development of Rolls-Royce
Royce had always worked hard and was renowned for never eating proper meals which resulted in his being taken ill first in 1902 and again in 1911. Ill health had forced his move away from Derby
Derby ( ) is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby g ...
in 1912. In the same year, he had a major operation in London and was given only a few months to live by the doctors. In spite of this he returned to work but was prevented from visiting the factory, which had moved to larger premises, fitted out to detailed plans by Royce, in Derby in 1908. He insisted on checking all new designs and engineers and draughtsmen had to take the drawings to be personally checked by him, a daunting prospect with his well-known perfectionism. He had a villa built at Le Canadel in the south of France and a further home at Crowborough, East Sussex. In 1917, Royce moved to the village of West Wittering
West Wittering is a village and civil parish situated on the Manhood Peninsula in the Chichester district of West Sussex, England. It lies near the mouth of Chichester Harbour on the B2179 road southwest of Chichester close to the border with Ha ...
, West Sussex.
In October 1928, he began design of the "R" engine while walking with some of his leading engineers on the beach at West Wittering, sketching ideas in the sand. Less than a year later, the "R” engine, designed in his studio in the village, set a new world air speed record of 357.7 miles per hour and won the Schneider Trophy
The Coupe d'Aviation Maritime Jacques Schneider, also known as the Schneider Trophy, Schneider Prize or (incorrectly) the Schneider Cup is a trophy that was awarded annually (and later, biennially) to the winner of a race for seaplanes and flyin ...
of 1929. When the Ramsay MacDonald government decided not to finance the next attempt in 1931, Lucy, Lady Houston
Dame Fanny Lucy Houston, Lady Houston, Baroness Byron ( Radmall; 8 April 1857 – 29 December 1936) was a British philanthropist, political activist and suffragist.
Beginning in 1933, she published the '' Saturday Review'', which was best kn ...
, felt that Britain must not be left out of this contest and sent a telegram to the Prime Minister stating that she would guarantee £100,000, if necessary, towards the cost leading the Government to reverse their previous decision. The result was that Royce found that the "R" could be made to produce more power and the Supermarine
Supermarine was a British aircraft manufacturer that is most famous for producing the Spitfire fighter plane during World War II as well as a range of seaplanes and flying boats, and a series of jet-powered fighter aircraft after World War II ...
S.6B seaplane won the Trophy at on 13 September 1931. Later that month on 29 September, the same aircraft with an improved engine flew at , becoming the first craft to fly at over and breaking the world's speed record.
Bentley, shock absorber and Merlin
In 1931, Rolls-Royce Ltd. bought out their rival firm of W. O. Bentley
Walter Owen Bentley, MBE (16 September 1888 – 13 August 1971) was an English engineer who founded Bentley Motors Limited in London. He was a motorcycle and car racer as a young man. After making a name for himself as a designer of aircraft a ...
. A "20/25" engine was put into a chassis and a Bentley radiator fitted. An open four-seater body completed the picture. The engine was "hotted-up" and the car was taken down to West Wittering to get Royce's approval. They were somewhat apprehensive of what he would say, but he gave it his blessing. He told them that such a fast car should have a means of varying the stiffness of the springing.
The night before he died he sat up in bed and drew a sketch on the back of an envelope which he gave to Miss Aubin (his nurse and housekeeper) telling her to see that the "boys" in the factory got it safely. He died before it reached Derby. This was the adjustable shock-absorber. Thus, in 1933 the first Bentley made by Rolls-Royce Ltd made its appearance and another famous name carried on.
Following the success of the "R” engine, it was clear that they had an engine that would be of use to the Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...
. As no Government assistance was forthcoming at first, in the national interest they went ahead with development of what was called the "PV-12" engine (standing for Private Venture, 12-cylinder). The idea was to produce an engine of about the same performance as the "R”, albeit with a much longer life. Rolls-Royce launched the PV-12 in October 1933 and the engine completed its first test in 1934, the year after Royce died. The PV-12 became the Rolls-Royce Merlin
The Rolls-Royce Merlin is a British liquid-cooled V-12 piston aero engine of 27-litres (1,650 cu in) capacity. Rolls-Royce designed the engine and first ran it in 1933 as a private venture. Initially known as the PV-12, it was late ...
engine.
Personal life
Henry Royce married Minnie Punt in 1893 and they set up home together in Chorlton-cum-Hardy
Chorlton-cum-Hardy is a suburban area of Manchester, England, southwest of the city centre. Chorlton ward had a population of 14,138 at the 2011 census, and Chorlton Park 15,147.
By the 9th century, there was an Anglo-Saxon settlement her ...
, Manchester, and were joined by his mother, who lived nearby until her death in 1904, and Minnie's niece, Violet. The Royces moved to a newly built house in Knutsford
Knutsford () is a market town in the borough of Cheshire East, in Cheshire, England. Knutsford is south-west of Manchester, north-west of Macclesfield and 12.5 miles (20 km) south-east of Warrington. The population at the 2011 Census was ...
, Cheshire in 1898. The couple separated in 1912.
Royce, who lived by the motto "Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble", was appointed OBE in 1918, and was created a baronet
A baronet ( or ; abbreviated Bart or Bt) or the female equivalent, a baronetess (, , or ; abbreviation Btss), is the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. The title of baronet is mentioned as early as the 14t ...
, of Seaton in the County of Rutland, in 1930
Events
January
* January 15 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This is the closest moon distance at in recent history, and the next one will b ...
for his services to British Aviation. He had no children and the baronetcy became extinct on his death.
After he fell ill, Royce was looked after by a nurse, Miss Ethel Aubin for twenty years (after his death she married G.H.R. Tildesley, Royce's solicitor). He died at his house Elmstead in West Wittering on 22 April 1933. His cremated remains were initially buried under his statue at the Rolls-Royce works in Derby, but in 1937 his urn was removed to the parish church of Alwalton, his birthplace.
In 1962, a memorial window dedicated to his memory was unveiled in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the Unite ...
. The window is one of a series designed by Ninian Comper
Sir John Ninian Comper (10 June 1864 – 22 December 1960) was a Scottish architect; one of the last of the great Gothic Revival architects.
His work almost entirely focused on the design, restoration and embellishment of churches, and the de ...
dedicated to the memory of eminent engineers. He is also commemorated in Royce Hall, student accommodation at Loughborough University, and until 2011 at one of Peterborough's Queensgate shopping centre car parks. The Sir Henry Royce Suite, a business suite, is named after him at the Peterborough Marriott Hotel in the Alwalton business park.
Cultural Depictions
Actor Michael Jayston
Michael James (born 29 October 1935), known professionally as Michael Jayston, is an English actor. He played Nicholas II of Russia in the film ''Nicholas and Alexandra'' (1971). He has also made many television appearances, which have include ...
portrayed Royce in the 1972-1973 BBC Television miniseries '' The Edwardians''.
References
Bibliography
* (1st edition 1964)
External links
The Sir Henry Royce Foundation, Australia
* (RT 11:16) Part 1 (of 3) of a video containing a visit to Royce's grave
a 1956 ''Flight'' article
{{DEFAULTSORT:Royce, Henry
British automotive pioneers
British automobile designers
Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
British automotive engineers
British founders of automobile manufacturers
Rolls-Royce people
1863 births
1933 deaths
Burials in Huntingdonshire
People from Peterborough
People from Knutsford