1. Homepage
2. Life of Henry Cort
3. Cort's processes in iron manufacture
4. Cort's patents
5. Refutation of allegations of conspiracies against Cort
6. Adam Jellicoe's death
7. Henry Cort's birth
8. A navy agent's business
9. Early life of John Becher
10. Attwick & Burges families
11. "Cortship" of second wife
12. Thomas Morgan
13. Henry Cort's hoops contract
14. 1856 Accolade
15. Generosity of friends 1789-94
16. James Watson
17. Illness of Cort's son
18. Main sources of information
19. Contemporary sources
20. Navy sources
21. Chancery files
22. Publications about Cort
23. Assessment of Cort's character
24. Images of Henry Cort

25. Impeach-tranferred to 05

26. Parliamentary inquiry 1811-2
27. The furore of the 1850s
28. Society of Arts
29. Cort's first marriage
30. Henry Cort's children
31. Cort family pensions
32. Henry Cort's Hertfordshire property
33. 1791 signatories
34. Guiana and the Cort-Gladstone connection
35. Cort's twilight years
36. Memorials to Henry Cort


37. Smelting of iron
38. Fining before Cort
39. Shropshire & Staffordshire ironmasters
40. Cumbrians: Wilkinson etc
41. Early works at Merthyr Tydfil
42. The Crowley business
43. London ironmongers
44. Scottish iron
45. Cort's promotion efforts 1783-6
46. Later Merthyr connections
47. Puddling after Henry Cort


48. Gosport in Cort's day
49. Gosport administration
50. Gosport worthies
51. The Amherst-Porter network
52. James Hackman, murderer
53. Samuel Marshall
54. Samuel Jellicoe's legacy
55. Links with Titchfield
56. Links with Fareham


57. Fact, error and conjecture
58. 18th century politics
59. Law in the 18th century
60. 18th century finance
61. Religion and sexual mores
62. Calendar change of 1752
63. Shelburne, Parry and associates
64. John Becher's family
65. The Becher-Thackeray lineage
66. Thomas Lyttelton: a fantastic narrative
67. Eighteenth-century London
68. Abolition and the Corts
69. The Burges will tangle


70. Navy connections
71. Navy agent's business
72. Cort's clients
73. Ships' pursers
74. History of Adam Jellicoe
75. Dundas & Trotter
76. Cort's navy office associates
77. Toulmin & other agents
78. Sandwich & Middleton
79. The Arethusa
80. John Becher's war
81. Thomas Morgan's war
82. The 1782 Jamaica convoy
83. Sinking of the Royal George

84. Rickman & Scott: two contrasting naval careers-Missing



85. Visitors 2006-2009
86. Developement of the site 2006-2009

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87. Daniel Guion and family
88. Extremely bad academic work and extremely bad journalism

Scottish iron

When Henry Cort visits Scotland in 1784, there is only a handful of ironworks there.

The earliest has been set up by an English initiative in 1759. Two Birmingham entrepreneurs, John Roebuck and Samuel Garbett, join with local man William Cadell to build the Carron works, on a fast-running tributary of the Forth near Falkirk.

Roebuck also purchases a mill on another tributary at Cramond near Edinburgh.

For a while the enterprises are run jointly.

Iron is smelted and fined at Carron. Smelting is done with coke, fining largely with charcoal (although Roebuck does patent a process using coal).

Much of the fined iron goes to Cramond to be turned into nails and hoops.

Both Roebuck and Garbett run into financial problems with other ventures, and control of Carron passes to Garbett's son-in-law Charles Gascoigne.

These developments have often been depicted as deliberate machinations by Gascoigne, but some of his correspondence with Boulton & Watt suggests otherwise.

Gascoigne experiments with new methods of fining, but is unable to come up with anything worthwhile.

His most significant contribution is the carronade, a small cannon that can fire a large ball. A succession of naval victories later ensues.

Meanwhile the Cadells have taken control at Cramond, which becomes a separate works, importing much of its raw material from Sweden.

In 1774 they make a determined effort to expand their customer base.

The Gosport business is one of their targets. They threaten to sell nails directly to the Navy in competition.

Attwick and Morgan, who have been getting their ironmongery from the West Midlands, succumb to this threat. When he takes over their business, Cort finds Cramond is the main supplier of nails.

He is not happy with the supply he gets.

Cramond retorts that he has failed to specify his needs properly. Apparently the dispute is never solved, despite repeated attempts at agreement.

Edington is present at some of Cort's demonstrations in 1784. Maybe his influence is one reason that Cort's process fails to gain a foothold in Scotland at the time, despite a promising initial response.

Meanwhile in 1779 three Scottish brothers, the Wilsons, have embarked on a new venture, establishing an ironworks they call Wilsontown in Lanarkshire.

For a while they employ John Mackenzie as manager. He has left by the time of Cort's visit.

Two years later he and Edington set up the Clyde ironworks. From this point iron production in Scotland starts to take off.

It receives a great fillip when David Mushet (originally a Clyde employee) discovers the black band ironstone, an ore containing enough carbon to obviate the need for coke in smelting.

Mushet's son will become instrumental in the attempts to rehabilitate Cort's name in the 1850s.

The pages on this site are copied from the original site of Eric Alexander (henrycort.net) with his allowance.
Eric passed away abt 2012
If you use/copy information from this site, please include a link to the page where you found the information.