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Cotton Magnates Looked Askance

Frederick Henry Royce, the son of a miller, was born in 1863 at Alwalton near Peterborough; he died at his English home at West Wittering, near Chichester in Sussex, on the 22nd day of April 01 1933. A man of the people, with little background and still less theoretical “education”, in his lifetime he carved for himself a place unparalleled in his profession. In 1930, his sovereign created him a baronet after England captured the world’s airspeed record and won the Schneider Trophy with an aircraft designed by R. J. Mitchell (designer later of the Battle of Britain Spitfires) and powered by Royce’s latest engine. He was one of the very few men of any age to whom a statue was erected in a public place during his lifetime; the statue in bronze designed by P. Derwent Wood, R.A., was unveiled in the Arboretum, Derby, on the 27th June 1923. At a very early age, his father’s business having failed, he was thrown on his own resources, and when only 10 years of age was selling newspapers on the streets of London for W. H. Smith and Son. Between the ages of 13 and 14 he was a telegraph boy, and then due to help unexpectedly offered by an aunt, he was apprenticed to the Great Northern Railway Company in their Peterborough workshops. Before this apprenticeship was half completed, money troubles in his aunt’s household compelled him to leave the railway, and young Royce found his next job, after tramping the streets of Leeds for fourteen days, in a machine tool works engaged on work for the Italian Royal Arsenal. There, for months on end, he started work at 6 a.m. And finished at 10 p.m. But neither then, nor indeed at any other time in his life, was Royce to shun hard work. His great regret then was that his long hours at work left too little time to study. When 18 years old, in 188l, he was offered a job with the Electric Light and Power Company. With characteristic foresight, Royce saw in this company enormous possibilities. He went to them, employed as a tester, his greatest satisfaction being that in his new sphere he had leisure time to study in the evenings. This he did at night school in Finsbury, London, under Professor Ayrton. So highly was the young Royce thought of by his employers that after a little over a year with them, he was sent to a subsidiary company, the Electrical Company of Liverpool, as chief electrician. In 1884 Royce celebrated his 21st birthday by losing his job. The Electrical Company had failed; he also celebrated it by founding his own company, F. H. Royce Ltd., in Manchester, with a capital of seventy pounds, most of which was borrowed, in partnership with A. E. Claremont. Despite this inconspicuous start the business of Royce Ltd. Prospered and progressed from the manufacture of lampholders and electric bells to the making of cranes and dynamos which, perhaps quite naturally, were much in advance of those produced by their competitors. Travelling cranes produced by Royce Ltd., with a capacity of 100 tons and giant spans found their way into famous Scottish shipyards, and many of Royce’s early cranes were in use up to the late ’70s. By the time he was approaching 40 the one time paperboy was head of a prosperous business whose initial capital of £70 had been expanded to one of many thousands with orders on their books worth £20,000. Royce was now living in the fashionable small town of Knutsford, in Cheshire, and devoting such time as he could spare from his work to producing the finest rose garden in the district. It is interesting to note that today there are a firm of Rolls Royce dealers in Knutsford. In 1902 he decided to buy for himself a motor car. I imagine that if there would have been such a car as a Ferrari for sale then, that is what he would have bought. It is very certain that the ultra conservative cotton magnates living in Knutsford looked askance at this new fangled contraption, as indeed, after a few months’ ownership, did Royce himself, though for a very different reason. The 10 h.p. 2 cylinder Decauville, which Royce had acquired, was neither better nor very much worse than any other motor car of that day. It was dirty, smelly, very noisy and extremely unreliable. To its owner, any one of these failings in a machine was anathema, and after a very brief attempt to remedy the failings, he abandoned the idea. He realised, and said, that the only motor car which would meet his standards would be one he designed and built for himself. In fact he built three; one for himself, one for his partner Claremont and the third, which carried Royce’s star of destiny, and was the first Rolls Royce for sale, was sold to Henry Edmunds, recently appointed a director of Royce Ltd. The first Rolls Royce cars for sale, were small 2 cylinder cars, having an engine of 1800 c.c., bore and stroke being 95 mm. X 127 mm., in a simple channel steel frame. Springs were semi elliptic front and rear, those at the rear having shackles at both ends and being located by torque arms. External contracting brakes on the rear wheels were operated by a hand lever and a transmission brake by foot pedal. From the beginning Royce’s car was to have none of the vices of current motor cars. It was quiet and free from vibration. To this end, the chrome steel crankshaft was balanced and ran in three large bearings. Overhead inlet valves were used, and the aluminium crankcase and cast iron cylinders were all cast in his own factory, as are the parts used in a new Mercedes and a Rolls Royce Ghost nowadays.