John Grantham (1809–1874) was an English engineer, born in

Croydon Croydon is a large town in south London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a local government district of Greater London. It is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater London, with an extensi ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

, who was involved in marine, railway and tramway engineering. He was the second son of another John Grantham. After leaving school, John (junior) worked with his father surveying routes for projected railway lines in England.

To Ireland

His father, John Grantham (1774-1833), was appointed as John Rennie's assistant to survey the

River Shannon The River Shannon ( ga, Abhainn na Sionainne, ', '), at in length, is the longest river in the British Isles. It drains the Shannon River Basin, which has an area of , – approximately one fifth of the area of the island of Ireland. The Shan ...

. He introduced steam navigation to the inland Shannon in 1827 and his steam boats plied the Shannon and the Grand Canal and were taken up by the

City of Dublin Steam Packet Company The City of Dublin Steam Packet Company was a shipping line established in 1823. It served cross-channel routes between Britain and Ireland for over a century. For 70 of those years it transported the mail. It was 'wound-up' by a select commit ...

. He is buried in the cathedral at Killaloe where there is a commemorative wall tablet. His son assisted him in the work.

Return to England

Mather, Dixon and Company

Returning to England, he joined

Mather, Dixon and Company Mather, Dixon and Company was an engineering firm in Liverpool, England. It was established in 1826 at the Bath Street Foundry to build marine and stationary steam engines. Production of steam locomotives began in 1827. Products Early years Th ...

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 popul ...

and later became a manager and partner in the firm.

Naval work

Mather, Dixon and Company closed in 1843 and Grantham began a practice as a Naval Architect and Consulting Engineer. He was involved in the design of several large iron sailing and steam ships, including ''Sarah Sands'', ''Pacific'', ''Antelope'' and ''Empress Eugenie''. He became Engineer to the Whitehaven Steamship Company, and other companies, and was involved in the construction of vessels for Australia and Egypt. In 1859 he left Liverpool for London, where he continued to do work for the mercantile marine.

Railways and tramways

In 1860, became Engineer to the

Buenos Aires Northern Railway The Buenos Aires Northern Railway (BANR) (in Spanish: Ferrocarril del Norte de Buenos Aires) was a British-owned company that operated a broad gauge railway line in Argentina, in the second half of the 19th century. The BANR was also the first ...

, Argentina. In 1863, he created the first tramway in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, Denmark. In 1872 he designed a steam tramcar. This was a four-wheel double-deck car with two vertical boilers in the centre. The boilers were of the Field type and each was 18 inches diameter and 4 ft 4 in high. The engine, placed under the floor, had two cylinders, each 4" diameter and 10" stroke. These drove a single pair of driving wheels, 30" diameter. The car could be driven from either end. The car was built in 1873 by the Oldbury Carriage and Wagon Company and the steam machinery was supplied by

Merryweather & Sons Merryweather & Sons of Clapham, later Greenwich, London, were builders of steam fire engines and steam tram engines. The founder was Moses Merryweather (1791–1872) of Clapham, who was joined by his son Richard Moses (1839–1877). Fire applia ...

. The car was tried out in London, at

West Brompton West Brompton is an area of south-west London, that straddles the boundary between the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The centuries-old boundary was traced by Counter's Creek, now lost be ...

and in

Vauxhall Bridge Road The London Inner Ring Road, or Ring Road as signposted, is a route with an average diameter of formed from a number of major roads that encircle Central London. The ring road forms the boundary of the London congestion charge zone, although t ...

, but it was not a great success. Edward Woods modified it, by fitting a single Shand Mason boiler in place of the twin Merryweather boilers, and it was then used on the

Wantage Tramway The Wantage Tramway Company was a two-mile tramway that carried passengers and freight between the Oxfordshire town of Wantage and Wantage Road Station on the Great Western Main Line in England. Formed in 1873 to link Wantage Road station with ...

from about 1876 to 1881. The car re-appeared on the Portsdown and Horndean Tramway about 1903 and was derelict when that line closed in 1934.

Innovations

In 1830, Grantham won a prize from the

London and North Western Railway The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the L&NWR was the largest joint stock company in the United Kingdom. In 1923, it became a constituent of the Lo ...

for a design for pulling up passenger carriages from Lime Street to Edge Hill Station,

, by stationary engines. He took out several patents for

screw propeller A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon ...

s and invented a system of sheathing iron-built ships with wood and

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

, to prevent fouling in tropical climates.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grantham, John 1809 births 1874 deaths 19th-century English people English inventors British steam engine engineers English railway mechanical engineers Locomotive builders and designers People from Croydon Engineers from London