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RENNIE, JOHN; 



RENNIE, GEORGE. 



in several large charts, showing by an infinite number of arrows the 

 direction and force of the currents throughout the Atlantic Ocean, and 

 accompanied by a thin volume which ought to be studied by every 

 seafaring person. More recently Lieutenant Maury, superintendent of 

 the Washington Observatory, has, with the sanction of the United 

 States government, largely extended the range of observations by pro- 

 curing the logs of a vast number of vessels, and has methodised and 

 simplified the results. Major Rennell also wrote some papers in the 

 ' Transactions ' of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, such as a 

 disquisition on the Melita island of St. Paul's voyage ; the place of 

 Julius Ccesar's landing in Britain, in which he proves that the principal 

 mouth of the Thames was then to the southward of the Isle of Thanet, 

 &c. Major Rennell died on the 29th of March 1830, and on the 6th 

 of the following April his remains were interred in Westminster Abbey, 

 where a tablet with an appropriate inscription is placed over his tomb. 

 Biographical notices of him wre inserted in the periodicals of the 

 time, in which both his public and his private character were spoken 

 of in those terms of praise which he justly deserved. 



The merits of Major Rennell as a laborious investigator and an 

 acute critic are universally acknowledged. Love of truth, patient and 

 persevering research, and sound judgment, are eminently displayed in 

 all that he did. It is a matter of surprise, with the limited means at 

 his command, that he accomplished so much in the department of 

 comparative geography; and though we are now enabled by new 

 discoveries to rectify many of his conclusions, the results to which he 

 did attain will always remain as evidence of his unrivalled sagacity. 

 His ' Geographical System of Herodotus ' is a monument worthy of 

 the writer whom he illustrated. Though unacquainted with the Greek 

 language, and obliged to trust to the very inaccurate version of Beloe, 

 he succeeded in producing a commentary on a classical author which 

 is not surpassed by the labour of any scholar. The blundering of 

 Beloe, and his occasional complete perversion of the original, did not 

 mislead the geographer, who could detect the author's meaning even 

 under the disguise of the translation. (' Journal of Education,' vol. i., 

 p. 330, &c.) As a geographer, Major Rennell was one of the first 

 Englishmen who has earned any permanent reputation ; and in illus- 

 trating Herodotus and the ' Retreat of the Ten. Thousand/ he occupies 

 a place by the side of D'Anville. 



RENNIE, JOHN, was born on the 7th of June 1761 at Phantassie 

 in Haddingtonshire, Scotland, where his father was a respectable 

 farmer. He acquired the rudiments of education at the school of the 

 place, and afterwards received instruction in the elementary part of 

 mathematics at Dunbar, where, on the promotion of the master, he 

 for a short time conducted the school. It does not appear that Rennie 

 pursued his studies far in pure mathematics, but his taste leading him 

 to contemplate the nature and properties of machines, he probably 

 applied himself chiefly to those parts of science which relate to 

 elementary mechanics, and it is certain that he made himself a pro- 

 ficient in the useful art of drawing machinery and the different objects 

 which belong to practical architecture. He also took advantage of 

 such opportunities as his avocations afforded to attend the courses of 

 lectures on mechanical philosophy and chemistry which were then 

 given at Edinburgh by Drs. Robison and Black. Prepared thus with 

 what books and professors could teach, he entered the world ; and it 

 may be said that during all the course of his useful life he was adding 

 to his stock of knowledge or seeking the means of improving his 

 practice by observing the operations and effects of his own works, as 

 well as of those which were executed by other men. 



Mr. Renuie was employed for a time as a workman by Mr. Andrew 

 Meikle, a mechanist of his native parish, under whose superintendence 

 he assisted in the erection of some mills in the neighbourhood ; and 

 he is said to have rebuilt, ou his own account, one near Dundee. Soon 

 aftet this work was finished, or about 1780, he set out for London. 

 On his way he visited the docks at Liverpool, and spent some months 

 at Soho near Birmingham, in examining the works of Messrs. Boulton 

 and Watt, to whom he had brought letters of introduction from the 

 professors at Edinburgh. Soon after he was established in the metro- 

 polis, Mr. Rennie was employed by those gentlemen in the construction 

 of two double steam-engines and the machinery connected with them, 

 at the Albion flour-mills near Blackfriars Bridge. All the wheel-work 

 was made of cast-iron instead of wood, which had before been used in 

 such machinery ; and the talents of Mr. Rennie were particularly 

 manifested in the methods which he adopted to render the movements 

 steady. The works were finished in 1789; but they continued in 

 operation only during two years, the whole of that great establishment 

 having been unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1791. 



Mr. Rennie continued to the last to be employed in the construction 

 of steam-engines, or of the different kinds of machinery to which, as a 

 motive power, steam is applied; and at the same time he was almost 

 constantly engaged in designing or superintending those public works 

 which have given his clairi to celebrity. Between 1799 and 1803 he 

 constructed the elegant stone bridge at Kelso, below the junction of 

 the Tweed and Teviot; this bridge consists of five elliptical arches, 

 carrying a level roadway. Mr. Rennie also built stone bridges at 

 Musselburgh and other places in Scotland; but his master- piece of this 

 kind is the Waterloo Bridge over the Thames. This bridge, so much 

 distinguished by its grandeur and simplicity, was begun in 1811, 

 and finished in sis years. It consists of nine equal elliptical arches 



125 foot in span, and the faces of the piers are ornamented with 

 coupled Doric columns. Besides the elegantly designed iron bridge 

 over the Witham in Lincolnshire, he also built that which is called 

 the Southwark Bridge, over the Thames. The latter consists of 

 three cast-iron arches resting on stone piers, and the span of the centre 

 arch is 240 feet. 



Mr. Rennie superintended the formation of the Grand Western 

 Canal, which extends from the mouth of the Ex to Taunton ; and, in 

 conjunction with Mr. Murray, that of the Polbrook Canal between 

 Wade-bridge and Bodmin, in Cornwall. He also superintended the 

 execution of the Aberdeen canal uniting the Don and the Dee, and of 

 that between Arundel and Portsmouth. But his chief work in con- 

 nection with inland navigation is the Kennet and Avon canal, which 

 extends from Bath to Newbury, and which required all the skill of 

 the engineer to conduct it through the rugged country between those 

 places. He also gave a plan for draining the fens at Witham in 

 Lincolnshire, which was executed in 1812. 



The London Docks, and the East and West India Docks at Black- 

 wall, are among the great works which were executed from his plans 

 and under his direction. He formed the new docks at Hull (where 

 also he constructed the first dredging-machine which was used in this 

 country), the Prince's Dock at Liverpool, and those of Dublin, 

 Greenock, and Leith, of which the last is remarkable for the par- 

 ticularly strong construction of its sea-wall. To these must be joined 

 the insular pier or breakwater protecting Plymouth Sound from the 

 waves which during high -winds used to roll in with tremendous 

 force. Mr. Rennie also gave plans for Improving the harbours of 

 Berwick, Newhaven, and other places, and the dockyards of Ports- 

 mouth, Plymouth, Pembroke, and Chatham : he also built the pier at 

 Holyhead. 



Before his death he had given plans for improving the docks at 

 Sheerness ; which have since been executed by his first and second 

 sons, Messrs. George and John (now Sir John) Rennie, of whom a 

 brief notice will be found below. It should be observed also that 

 Mr. Rennie, sen., gave the designs for the present London Bridge ; 

 and that the charge of its construction was confided to Sir John 

 Rennie, who, in 1831, finished that magnificent structure. Mr. Rennie 

 married in 1789, and had six children ; four sons and two daughters. 

 He survived his wife, and, till within a few years of his death, he 

 enjoyed excellent health. He died of an inflammation of the liver, 

 October 16, 1821, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. 



The sums expended in the construction of Mr. Rennie's bridges 

 have appeared so great as to give rise to an opinion that the measures 

 adopted for the stability of those structures exceeded those which a 

 due regard to economy should warrant. It is true that the Waterloo 

 Bridge cost more than a million sterling, but several circumstances 

 contributed to make the expense of that bridge greatly exceed that of 

 the bridges before built over the Thames ; it is, in the first place, 

 longer, the material is granite, and the piers were built in coffer-dams. 

 Now, granite is more costly than any other species of building-stone, 

 both at the quarry and in the charges for working it into form ; and 

 a coffer-dam, with the engines necessary to keep out the water, is 

 much more so than a caisson. But in a great public work durability 

 is a primary consideration ; and this is ensured by the employment 

 of the best materials and by taking the most effectual means of 

 securing the foundations. The extensive repairs which the bridges 

 at Westminster and Blackfriars have required, and will continue to 

 require, will probably, in the end, afford a full justification of the 

 measures which have been followed in the construction of the 

 Waterloo and the new London bridges. In the execution of machi- 

 nery, Mr. Rennie may be said to have been the first who made that 

 skilful distribution of the pressures, and gave those just proportions 

 to the several parts, which have rendered the work of Englishmen 

 superior to that of any other people. 



* RENNIE, GEORGE, the eldest son of the preceding, was born in 

 Surrey on Jan. 3, 1791. He received the first rudiments of a classical 

 and mathematical education under Dr. Greenlaw, at Isleworth in 

 Middlesex, and afterwards under Dr. Roberts, the master of St. 

 Paul's school, London. In 1807 he accompanied his father on a tour 

 through England, Ireland, and Scotland, visiting the engineering works 

 then conducted by his father, and was present at the laying of the 

 foundation of the Bell Rock lighthouse. He was then placed at 

 the Edinburgh University under the care of Dr. Robertson, but was 

 afterwards removed to that of Professor Playfair, in whose house 

 he had for a fellow-student the present Lord John Russell. He 

 studied classics, mathematics, chemistry, and natural philosophy, 

 under Professors Dunbar, Christison, Leslie, and Hope. In 1811 he 

 returned to London, and commenced the study of mechanical and 

 civil engineering under his father. His first attempt was the construc- 

 tion of the model of a steam engine, for which the tools were selected 

 for him by Mr. Watt, senior. From this time he assisted his father in 

 designing many of his great works, which he continued to do imtil his 

 father's death in 1821. In 1818, on the recommendation of Mr. Watt 

 of Aston, he had been made clerk of the irons (keeper of the money 

 dies) and superintendent of machinery in the Royal Mint, which 

 situation he held for several years, when he resigned it, and entered 

 into business with his brother Sir John, as civil engineers and manu- 

 facturers of machinery. Among the works executed by them we may 



