CHARLES MARK PALMER

The extensive shipbuilder, Charles Mark Palmer, to whom the town of Jarrow upon Tyne owes its wonderful rise and great prosperity, was born in King Street, South Shields, Having received a good education - first, in his native town, and then at Dr Bruce's Academy in Newcastle - he entered the office of Messrs Redshaw and Ridley, with the view of still further equipping himself for following the life of his father, who held a good position in the district both as a ship owner and merchant. He afterwards, for the same purpose, sojourned for some time in the South of France; and, on his return to England, at once entered upon a commercial career, which has, from the very first, proved exceptionably brilliant. First joining the firm of Messrs. Palmer, Beckwith, and Company, of which his father was the principal, we find him, while only in his twenty-third year, associated with such men as John Bowes, Esq., Sir William Hutt, M.P., and the late Nicholas Wood, Esq., in the manufacture of coke at Marley Hill, and also in the ownership of the Marley Hill colliery, in the county of Durham. Messrs. John Bowes and Partners, of which firm Mr. Palmer is the sole acting member, take rank amongst the largest colliery proprietors in the United Kingdom.

In the year 1852 - while still a young man of thirty - Mr. Palmer, in company with his brother George commenced operations as a shipbuilder in Jarrow. He began in a small way; but already, after the lapse of twenty years, this Tyneside town is everywhere known to contain one of the largest and best shipbuilding establishments in the world. The works at their commencement engaged only a small number of hands; to day, over five thousand are employed. In 1852, the population of Jarrow was less than a thousand now it is estimated at thirty thousand.

As a Northern coal owner, Mr. Palmer had found how difficult it was to compete with the coal owners in the South of England; for, while the railway system enabled them to reach the great markets both speedily and cheaply, the owners of collieries in the North had to depend for the transit of their coal on sailing vessels alone. "A coal owner and ship owner myself," he has since explained, "I felt doubly interested in the subject of coal conveyance. It occurred to me that steam power on the sea afforded the only means of competing successfully with steam power on land; and I commenced the business of an iron-ship builder mainly with the object of carrying out this idea." An iron screw-steamer - named the John Bowes - was accordingly designed, built, launched, and sent forth upon her first voyage. Like every other inventor, Mr. Palmer had to encounter much opposition and ridicule. Wiseacres shook their heads and argued that it would be impossible for steamers carrying 650 tons of coal, and costing about £10,000 to compete with vessels that consumed no fuel, and which, though carrying only half the quantity, cost little more than £1000, or only one-tenth the amount." But he was not the man to be turned aside by short sighted and prejudiced statements like this. His own clear intellect assured him that he was on the right track in the matter. On her first voyage - which many, of course, prophesied would likewise be her last - the John Bowes, the first screw - collier, was laden with five hundred tons of coal in four hours; in forty - eight hours from her departure, she reached London; in thirty hours

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She discharged her cargo; and, in forty-eight hours more, she was again in the Tyne; "so that in five days she performed, successfully, an amount of work that would have taken two average - sized sailing colliers upwards of a month to accomplish." The new firm soon began to be spoken of, and their fame caused orders to pour in upon them, not only from private gentlemen and public Companies, but also from our own and foreign governments. Mr. George Palmer retired from the concern in 1862, and, three years later, the subject of this sketch, though still retaining a large interest in the business and becoming Chairman of the new firm, disposed of the entire works to a limited liability company, the shares representing a nominal capital of £2,000,000 and their properties consisting of ironstone mines and harbour at Port Mulgrave, near Whitby, York - shire; blast furnaces rolling mills, engine works, shipyard and graving dock, at Jarrow, on the south bank of the Tyne; and premises at Howdon, on the opposite side of the river, for the building of smaller ships and iron girder bridges. Mr. Palmer has thus stated his reasons for parting with the works; "But being alone, as it were," he says, "and having such large undertakings on my hands, I felt it not only due to myself, to my family, to the whole district of the North of England, and I may also say to the nation, that such a gigantic Concern should be placed upon a broader basis than depending upon one individual." Anything more honest and disinterested than the motives and objects here set forth, it would, we believe, be difficult to find in the whole record of commercial enterprise. The rapid rise of the Jarrow works can only be attributed to the genius of their founder. In the year 1862, rolling mills were erected in connection with them, in which 35,000 tons of iron can be manufactured per annum, and Mr. Palmer himself believed he had really "completed the efficiency of the works" when three years later, he opened the largest Graving Dock on the north-eastern coast of Great Britain. And now, it should be noticed, the Jarrow Company dig their own raw material, bring it to the Tyne, smelt it, pass it through all the intermediate stages of manufacture, and send it away in the form of steamers, engined and in all respects ready for navigation. From the commencement in 1852, down to the end of 1872, there have been launched from Mr. Palmer's yard 351 vessels, of 326,200 tons in the aggregate, for most of which the firm has also manufactured engines. Of these steamers may be mentioned the following war-vessels for Her Majesty's navy: -Terror (iron-plated battery), 2000 tons, which was built in the short space of three months and a half to operate against Cronstadt in the Russian war; Defence (iron-plated frigate), 3668 tons; Fumna (troopship), 4173 tons; Triumph and Swiftsure, the two latter being of a tonnage of 3892 each. It likewise deserves to be mentioned here, that it was the subject of this sketch who first introduced the use of rolled armour - plates in the construction of vessels of war. And so the formerly almost "deserted village" rapidly assumed an importance and interest in the commercial world equal to what it had long enjoyed in the ecclesiastical. Henceforth, when men think of Jarrow-upon-Tyne, the achievements of Mr. Palmer, as well as the writings of the Venerable Bede, will rise up before their minds. A new spirit was infused into the place by the Palmer Brothers. By a wave of their magic wand they effected transformations, one after another, the marvellous character of which was sometimes so great as almost to make one question their reality. Workmen hastened to the place in hundreds; tradesmen followed in large numbers; prosperity abounded on every hand; and, ere many years had come and gone, the previously unimportant hamlet became such a noted

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town for shipbuilding that commissions poured in from all parts of the world. The sound of the forge, the whiz of machinery, the whistle of the steam-engines, and the cease-less strokes of the riveters' hammers, fell like a new voice upon the ear of Tyneside, and proclaimed that one of her greatest sons had brought her fresh glory, power, and good. Mr Palmer's success at Marley Hill, too, has been almost as great as that attained at Jarrow. The annual produce of the colliery, when he first became connected with it, was very trifling; now it is a million and a quarter tons. He is also connected with a large number of other commercial undertakings, such as lines of steamers trading between Liverpool and the United States; the Tyne Steam Shipping Company, trading between the Tyne and Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Dunkirk, and London; Messrs Palmer, Hall, and Company, the well-known ship owners and merchants; the Bede Metal Extracting Company; the Tyne Plate Glass Company, who lately removed their works from Newcastle to South Shields, and greatly extended them; and the Iron Shipbuilders' Association, of which he is Chairman. Mr Palmer's life, as statements like the foregoing abun-dan~y show, has been essentially a busy one. Still, he has never failed to find time to discharge his duties as a citizen, as a Christian, and as a friend, with all that wonderful ability evinced by him in business. He is Lieutenant-colonel of the Jarrow Engineer Volunteers, now about a thousand strong, and pronounced by competent judges to be one of the finest regirnents in the United Kingdom. He is a magistrate of the county of Durham and, a159, the North Riding of Yorkshire, and lord of the manor of Easington, and Hinderwell. Proprietor of the Seaton Hall and Grinkle Park estates, Saltburn, he has likewise given much attention to the science of agriculture, and has expended no small amount of money, as well as displayed ~l his accustomed 1I 268 TYNESIDE CELEBRITIES.

originality of skill, in the erection of model dwelling-houses for his workpeople there. Though a warm friend of the Church of England, his views both upon religion and other subjects are distinguished alike for their liberality and charity. His relations with his own workmen have always been of the most heart)', honest, forbearing, and kindly character. When, however, any dispute between them has happened to lead to hostilities, Mr Palmer's straightforward and conciliatory manner has generally paved the way to a speedy and satisfactory settlement. In terminating the great Iron Trade Lock-out in the North of England, in 1865, and the equally important Engineers' Strike in Newcastle and Gateshead, in 1871, he also rendered services for which the working classes and society at large must ever feel grateful. With its ripe Mechanics' Institute, numerous places of worship, and many excellent streets, Jarrow is a surprising monument not only to Mr Palmer's success as a shipbuilder, but also to his thoughtfulness as a master, his public spirit 5 a citizen, and his clearness of intellect and warmth of heart as a man. Although unsuccessful in contesting South Shields in 1869, there can be little doubt that the remarkable man of whom this chapter so inadequately speaks will soon obtain a seat in Parliament-and then, perhaps, we may be privileged to witness his taking a foremost place as a Statesman, just as he has done as a Shipbuilder.