Jan Verbruggen (1712 – 27 October 1781) was a Dutch master gun-founder in the Netherlands and later at the

Royal Arsenal The Royal Arsenal, Woolwich is an establishment on the south bank of the River Thames in Woolwich in south-east London, England, that was used for the manufacture of armaments and ammunition, proofing, and explosives research for the British ...

in Woolwich, London. He was also an artist.

Early life and career

He was born in 1712 in

Enkhuizen Enkhuizen () is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland and the region of West-Frisia. History Enkhuizen, like Hoorn and Amsterdam, was one of the harbor-towns of the VOC, from where overseas trade w ...

in the Netherlands, son of Pieter Verbruggen and Maria Brouwer. In 1734 he married Eva van Schaack, and they had three children.De Vries van Doesburgh
VERBRUGGEN (Jan)
''

Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek The ''Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek'' (''NNBW'') is a biographical reference work in the Dutch language. It has been succeeded by the '' Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland''. It was published in ten parts between 1911 and 1937 b ...

''. Volume 3, page 1282. In 1740, he became gun-founder of the Dutch admiralty's foundry in Enkhuizen, and from June 1755 he was master gun-founder in

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

. After a few years he was suspended, the guns produced being considered unsound; his attempt in 1763 to obtain an appointment at the

in Woolwich, London was unsuccessful.

Artist

Verbruggen, a student of the artist Jan van Call the Younger, was also a painter of seascapes and coastal scenery, such as pictures of yachts and

East Indiamen East Indiaman was a general name for any sailing ship operating under charter or licence to any of the East India trading companies of the major European trading powers of the 17th through the 19th centuries. The term is used to refer to vesse ...

at or near Enkhuizen.

At the Royal Arsenal

By 1769 the British government's contracted gun-founders, William Bowers and Richard Gilpin, were due to retire, and Andrew Schalch, the master founder at the Royal Arsenal since 1718, produced few guns; his work had been considered unsatisfactory for several years. In consequence, on 12 January 1770 Jan and his son Pieter (1735–1786) were appointed master founders at the Royal Arsenal. Royal Foundry, Woolwich, Paul Sandby 1779 LMA

Royal Foundry, Woolwich, Paul Sandby 1779 LMA

In May 1770 they moved to England. At the Royal Brass Foundry they introduced a

horizontal boring machine A horizontal boring machine or horizontal boring mill is a machine tool which bores holes in a horizontal direction. There are three main types — table, planer and floor. The table type is the most common and, as it is the most versatil ...

, for guns cast solid (instead of vertically reaming guns cast round a core); this system had been installed by Verbruggen at The Hague in the 1750s. They also rebuilt the furnaces and casting pits, and used precast moulds for cascabels. Verbruggen's horizontal boring machine was the first industrial size

lathe A lathe () is a machine tool that rotates a workpiece about an axis of rotation to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, deformation, facing, and turning, with tools that are applied to the workpiece to c ...

installed in England.

Henry Maudslay Henry Maudslay ( pronunciation and spelling) (22 August 1771 – 14 February 1831) was an English machine tool innovator, tool and die maker, and inventor. He is considered a founding father of machine tool technology. His inventions were an ...

, the later inventor of many improvements to the

, worked as an apprentice in Verbruggen's workshop in Woolwich. The first guns made by the Verbruggens passed

proof test A proof test is a form of stress test to demonstrate the fitness of a load-bearing structure. An individual proof test may apply only to the unit tested, or to its design in general for mass-produced items. Such a structure is often subjected t ...

s in April 1774. Cannons,

mortars Mortar may refer to: * Mortar (weapon), an indirect-fire infantry weapon * Mortar (masonry), a material used to fill the gaps between blocks and bind them together * Mortar and pestle, a tool pair used to crush or grind * Mortar, Bihar, a village ...

and

howitzer A howitzer () is a long-ranged weapon, falling between a cannon (also known as an artillery gun in the United States), which fires shells at flat trajectories, and a mortar, which fires at high angles of ascent and descent. Howitzers, like ot ...

s were made at the foundry; the proof record was higher than in earlier years, and the foundry was able to satisfy the requirements of the British services. Jan Verbruggen died in London on 27 October 1781 and was buried at the

Dutch Church, Austin Friars The Dutch Church, Austin Friars ( nl, Nederlandse Kerk Londen), is a reformed church in the Broad Street Ward, in the City of London. Located on the site of the 13th-century Augustinian friary, the original building granted to Protestant refuge ...

on 2 November. His son Pieter continued as master founder at the Woolwich foundry.

Notes and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Verbruggen, Jan 1712 births 1781 deaths 18th-century Dutch engineers 18th-century Dutch painters 18th-century Dutch male artists Dutch marine artists Dutch mechanical engineers Government munitions production in the United Kingdom Military history of the Netherlands People from Enkhuizen