Thomas Sturge (1787–1866) was a British
oil
An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...
merchant,
shipowner
A ship-owner is the owner of a merchant vessel (commercial ship) and is involved in the shipping industry. In the commercial sense of the term, a shipowner is someone who equips and exploits a ship, usually for delivering cargo at a certain frei ...
, cement manufacturer, railway company director, social reformer and
philanthropist.
Family background and early life
Thomas Sturge was born in 1787, one of at least ten children of
Thomas Sturge the elder (1749–1825),
tallow
Tallow is a rendered form of beef or mutton fat, primarily made up of triglycerides.
In industry, tallow is not strictly defined as beef or mutton fat. In this context, tallow is animal fat that conforms to certain technical criteria, includ ...
chandler and oil merchant of
Newington Butts
Newington Butts is a former hamlet, now an area of the London Borough of Southwark, that gives its name to a segment of the A3 road running south-west from the Elephant and Castle junction. The road continues as Kennington Park Road leading to ...
, about a mile south of
London Bridge. Thomas the younger joined his father's business early in the 19th century, as did at least three of his brothers, Nathan, George and Samuel. Thomas Sturge & Sons, oil merchants and
spermaceti processors operated from premises near
Elephant and Castle
The Elephant and Castle is an area around a major road junction in London, England, in the London Borough of Southwark. The name also informally refers to much of Walworth and Newington, due to the proximity of the London Underground stati ...
, Newington Butts, until 1840.
He was a first cousin of social reformer and philanthropist
Joseph Sturge
Joseph Sturge (1793 – 14 May 1859) was an English Quaker, abolitionist and activist. He founded the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (now Anti-Slavery International). He worked throughout his life in Radical political actions suppo ...
.
Oil merchant and shipowner
Thomas Sturge junior had become the senior partner in the business by 1816, when he began to buy ships and send them to the
Southern Whale Fishery to obtain
whale oil
Whale oil is oil obtained from the blubber of whales. Whale oil from the bowhead whale was sometimes known as train oil, which comes from the Dutch word ''traan'' (" tear" or "drop").
Sperm oil, a special kind of oil obtained from the head ...
, seal oil and
spermaceti for processing and sale in London. He became the principal owner of at least 23 vessels, most of them
South Sea whalers.
His
Quaker faith and values were reflected in his business dealings. He tried to choose committed Christians to command his
whale ships and in his sailing instructions gave his captains detailed advice on how to treat their crewmen. His vessels each seem to have been supplied with a small library and at least five of his vessels carried a "surgeon" or ship's doctor. One of these was Dr Thomas Beale who later wrote, ''The Natural History of the Sperm Whale'' (1839), which he dedicated to his employer. Herman Melville drew on the book for his novel ''Moby Dick'' (1851). The book also inspired three paintings of whaling scenes by
J.M.W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbule ...
, exhibited at the
Royal Academy in 1845 and 1846. Turner tried to sell them to his patron, oil merchant, shipowner and art collector
Elhanan Bicknell
Elhanan Bicknell (21 December 1788 – 27 November 1861) was a successful London businessman and shipowner. He used his wealth as a patronage, patron of the arts, becoming one of the leading collectors of contemporary British art.
Early life
Elh ...
. Bicknell was an associate and friend of Sturge at Newington Butts.
Social reformer and philanthropist
Sturge was a member of a committee to assist “distressed seaman” by 1818. His firm donated £15 15 shillings in 1821 toward the cost of a suitable vessel to serve as a
floating hospital
The Floating Hospital is a non-profit organization that provides healthcare services to medically underserved communities in New York City, both from its headquarters in Long Island City, Queens and from satellite offices in Brooklyn and the Bro ...
for the “assistance and relief of sick and helpless seamen.” The
Seamen's Hospital Society
The Seafarers Hospital Society, formerly the Seamen's Hospital Society, is a charity for people currently or previously employed by the British Merchant Navy and fishing fleets, and their families. It was established in 1821.
Current activiti ...
was established that year, with
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce (24 August 175929 July 1833) was a British politician, philanthropist and leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becom ...
as one of the many vice presidents; Sturge was one of a couple of dozen men on its management committee, along with
Zachary Macaulay
Zachary Macaulay ( gd, Sgàire MacAmhlaoibh; 2 May 1768 – 13 May 1838) was a Scottish statistician and abolitionist who was a founder of London University and of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and a Governor of British Sierra Leone ...
and
Captain William Young.
He was a member of the
Anti-Slavery Society and substantial financial contributor to the cause. Another member of the society was the historian and politician
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, (; 25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was a British historian and Whig politician, who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster-General between 1846 and 1 ...
(1800–1859) who became friends with Sturge. There were many
Quakers in the abolition movement. Among these was his cousin the prominent
anti-slavery
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The Britis ...
abolitionist and philanthropist
Joseph Sturge
Joseph Sturge (1793 – 14 May 1859) was an English Quaker, abolitionist and activist. He founded the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (now Anti-Slavery International). He worked throughout his life in Radical political actions suppo ...
(1793–1859).
Thomas also made regular donations to a range of other charitable causes. He provided transport to missionaries going to the
South Seas
Today the term South Seas, or South Sea, is used in several contexts. Most commonly it refers to the portion of the Pacific Ocean south of the equator. In 1513, when Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa coined the term ''Mar del Sur'', ...
on his whaling ships.
Robert Moffat and his wife left their children in the care of Sturge and his invalid sister when they were in South Africa in the 1860s. Thomas or his father, Thomas senior, was supporting the
education of the deaf
Deaf education is the education of students with any degree of hearing loss or deafness. This may involve, but does not always, individually-planned, systematically-monitored teaching methods, adaptive materials, accessible settings, and othe ...
by May 1821.
Contributor to Antarctic exploration
In 1838 Sturge joined a group of London shipowners to purchase two vessels, the schooner ''Eliza Scott'' (154 tons) and the cutter ''Sabrina'' (54 tons). These were sent to the
Antarctic, under the overall command of Captain
John Balleny John Balleny (died 1857) was the English captain of the sealing schooner , who led an exploration cruise for the English whaling firm Samuel Enderby & Sons to the Antarctic in 1838–1839. During the expedition of 1838–1839, Balleny, sailing in co ...
, to search for undiscovered offshore islands that might host seal colonies that could be harvested. Among the discoveries made was a cluster of five previously unknown islands. They were given the collective name of the
Balleny Islands with individual islands named after those who had funded the expedition.
Sturge Island is 23 miles long and 6 miles wide and permanently covered in a mantle of snow and ice.
Cement producer
In 1837 and 1838 he purchased two adjacent blocks of land on the Thames near
Northfleet at a cost of £9,313. On that 74-acre plot he built a
cement
A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel ( aggregate) together. Cement mi ...
works to make
Portland cement
Portland cement is the most common type of cement in general use around the world as a basic ingredient of concrete, mortar, stucco, and non-specialty grout. It was developed from other types of hydraulic lime in England in the early 19th ...
. Construction of the
cement kiln
Cement kilns are used for the pyroprocessing stage of manufacture of portland and other types of hydraulic cement, in which calcium carbonate reacts with silica-bearing minerals to form a mixture of calcium silicates. Over a billion tonnes of ...
s started in 1851 and production began in 1853.
Railway investments
He was interested in the building of new railways and in 1842 he spoke at a public meeting in favour of the construction of the Dean Forest and Gloucester railway line. He became a significant shareholder in the
Eastern Union Railway
The Eastern Union Railway (EUR) was an English railway company, at first built from Colchester to Ipswich; it opened in 1846. It was proposed when the earlier Eastern Counties Railway failed to make its promised line from Colchester to Norwich. T ...
Company and a major shareholder and director of the
West Hartlepool
West Hartlepool was a predecessor of Hartlepool, County Durham, England. It developed in the Victorian era and took the name from its western position in the parish of what is now known as the Headland.
The former town was originally formed ...
Harbour and Railway Company.
Later life
In 1842 he left London and moved downriver to
Northfleet, where he had purchased Northfleet House, a mansion under construction, for £3900. Thomas Sturge the younger died there on 14 April 1866. He never married and most of his estate, valued at about £180,000, was left to his brother and business partner, George.
[A.J. Francis, ''The cement industry, 1796-1914: a history'', Newton Abbott, 1978, p.165.]
Notes
Further reading
* ''British Southern Whale Fishery'', web site, http://www.britishwhaling.org/
* Howard, Mark, “Thomas Sturge and his fleet of South Sea whalers,” ''International Journal of Maritime History'', 27 (3) August 2015, 411–43
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Struge, Thomas
1787 births
1866 deaths
19th-century British philanthropists
19th-century English businesspeople
British people in whaling
British railway pioneers
Cement
Companies based in the London Borough of Southwark
English abolitionists
English philanthropists
English Quakers
Exploration of Antarctica
People from Southwark
Quaker abolitionists
Sealers
Whaling firms
Whaling in the United Kingdom