st determine what I was
"to be" in life. I had no hesitation in deciding to be an engineer,
though my father wished me to be a barrister. But I kept constant to my
resolution; and eventually he succeeded, through his early acquaintance
with George Stephenson, in gaining for me an entrance to the
engineering works of Robert Stephenson and Co., at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
I started there as a pupil on my fifteenth birthday, for an
apprenticeship of five years. I was to spend the first four years in
the various workshops, and the last year in the drawing-office.

I was now in my element. The working hours, it is true, were very
long,--being from six in the morning until 8.15 at night; excepting on
Saturday, when we knocked off at four. However, all this gave me so
much the more experience; and, taking advantage of it, I found that,
when I had reached the age of eighteen, I was intrusted with the full
charge of erecting one side of a locomotive. I had to accomplish the
same amount of work as my mate on the other side, one Murray Playfair,
a powerful, hard-working Scotchman. My strength and endurance were
sometimes taxed to the utmost, and required the intervals of my labour
to be spent in merely eating and sleeping.

I afterwards went through the machine-shops. I was fortunate enough to
get charge of the best screw-cutting and brass-turning lathe in the
shop; the former occupant, Jack Singleton, having just been promoted to
a foreman's berth at the Messrs. Armstrong's factory. He afterwards
became superintendent of all the hydraulic machinery of the Mersey Dock
Trust at Liverpool. After my four years had been completed, I went into
the drawing-office, to which I had looked forward with pleasure; and,
having before practised lineal as well as free-hand drawing, I soon
succeeded in getting good and difficult designs to work out, and
eventually finished drawings of the engines. Indeed, on visiting the
works many years after, one of these drawings was shown to me as a
"specimen;" the person exhibiting it not knowing that it was my own
work.

In the course of my occasional visits to Scarborough, my attention was
drawn to the imperfect design of the lifeboats of the period; the
frequent shipwrecks along the coast indicating the necessity for their
improvement. After considerable deliberation, I matured a plan for a
metal lifeboat, of a cylindrico-conical or chrysalis form, to be
propelled by a screw at each end, turned b