194 The Metallurgical Industry of Cleveland. [April, 



smelting-pot. Heights of from 70 to 95 feet are common through- 

 out the whole district, while at Ferryhill there is one furnace that 

 towers up to the extraordinary height of 103 feet, and is therefore, 

 doubtless, the most gigantic iron-smelting furnace in the world. 

 In the short space of twenty years Cleveland blast-furnace practice 

 has passed through several phases. At first the furnaces were built 

 only 45 feet high, then the height was increased to 56 feet, next 

 to 60 feet, and then (in 1863) to 75 feet, and soon afterwards still 

 greater heights were adopted. Some of them had but very short 

 fives comparatively ; they were erected and in use but a few years 

 when it was resolved to raze them to the ground, and rebuild 

 them of much larger dimensions. Amongst the new furnaces now 

 in course of erection it is stated that there are two which are to 

 be built to the height of 90 feet; and even the great furnace at 

 Ferryhill is to be overtopped by one which is to reach a height of 

 120 feet ! And as is the height of the Cleveland furnaces so is 

 their internal diameter at the widest part, or what is technically 

 known as the "boshes." It generally varies from 16 to 25 feet, 

 but in the case of the Ferryhill furnace it is 27 feet. The two 

 90-feet furnaces just referred to are to be 30 feet wide at the 

 boshes, or one-third of the height; and it is proposed to make 

 the 120-feet furnace no less than 33 feet wide at the boshes. Were 

 the Vulcans and Tubal Cains of antiquity to revisit the earth, they 

 would doubtless stare on coming within sight of these immense 

 smelting crucibles. 



When compared with such primitive furnaces as are still in use 

 in Central Africa, as represented in the first of our sketches illus- 

 trating "the ages of iron-making" (see Plate I.), the contrast is 

 remarkable in the extreme. It is even still remarkable when such 

 a blast furnace as is in use at Mariedam, in Sweden (Plate II.), is 

 compared with one of the modern or Cleveland tvpe, as illustrated 

 in Plate III. 



The internal capacity of some of the Cleveland furnaces amounts 

 to 25,000 or 26,000 cubic feet — that of the Ferryhill furnace being 

 33,000 feet ; and the weekly production of pig-iron from a number 

 of the furnaces — fourteen castings, or two daily — is from 420 to 

 450 tons ; at Norton it is as much as 550 tons. A single casting 

 from one of the Ormesby furnaces has been known to weigh 45 tons. 

 With furnaces which, together with their great number, have such 

 a prodigious yielding power, it is scarcely to be wondered at that 

 the Cleveland ironmasters are now making nearly one-third of 

 all the pig-iron produced in Great Britain. One of them is the 

 greatest individual maker of pig-iron in the world, namely, Mr. 

 Thomas Yaughan, of Clay Lane and South Bank Iron Works. 

 His annual make is nearly a quarter-million tons. 



For a considerable length of time a vigorous and interesting 



