Industry | Engineering |
---|---|
Founded | 1821 |
Defunct | 1890 |
Fate | Wound up |
Headquarters | Millwall, London |
Key people | George Rennie |
Products | Marine steam engines |
J. and G. Rennie was a British engineering company based in Millwall, London, England. They were involved in manufacture of marine engines, and some complete ships, as well as other diverse onshore engineering projects. An association with railway engines is usually attributed to G. and J. Rennie, which may suggest they used a second company to keep the books separate, and there was also George Rennie & Sons, which is associated with the development and patents of the steam disc engine. All three companies appear to have been in existence at the same time.
The company was founded by John Rennie and his brother George Rennie after the death of their father John Rennie (senior) in 1821, who at that time was engaged in the building of London Bridge, an activity which the younger John Rennie took over, and on completion in 1831 he was knighted. George Rennie was an equally distinguished civil engineer with many academic publications, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1822. Both brothers continued their civil and hydraulic engineering interests, with their joint company participating in diverse ways. Their hydraulic engineering interest involved them with work on docks, canals and bridges, and apart from civil engineering the company specialised in building marine steam engines such as those for the SS Archimedes in 1838, which was the world's first steamship driven by screw propeller. This side of the business being a particular interest of George Rennie.
Apart from marine engines, Messrs Rennie were listed with Boulton and Watt as one of two suppliers commissioned in 1845 to make engines to create the vacuum for the South Devon atmospheric railway. [1]
In an advert of 1882 [2] the company listed the following among their products :
More of the products of the Rennie company can be deduced from a catalogue of exhibits from the 1876 exhibition at the South Kensington Museum, [3] which records a number of models exhibited :
The brothers' involvement in the support for the screw propeller was significant, as the British Admiralty was reluctant to change away from paddle wheels, believing the pitching of a ship would lift the propeller clear of the water in heavy seas causing the engine stress and rendering the vessel hard to control. Francis Pettit Smith and Captain John Ericsson had been trying to demonstrate the potential of the propeller for five years, and eventually it was Smith who formed a company to finance the building of the Archimedes (107 ft length) fitted with a Rennie single cylinder engine and 5 ft 9in screw propeller. It was her successful trials that began in 1839 that led to the admiralty purchasing the Mermaid in 1842 (130 ft length), which was built and engined by Rennie, and fitted with the Rennie's patent propeller of 5 ft 8in diameter. [4] This was followed by the Admiralty fitting a 10-foot diameter Smith's propeller to the unfinished sailing sloop Ardent, which was launched in April 1843 renamed HMS Rattler. [5] The Archimedes was also loaned to Brunel and resulted in him changing the design of the SS Great Britain to screw propulsion, even though the paddle wheels were part constructed, setting back the project by 9 months.
The nutating disc engine was an unusual development, based on a design that dated back to the 1820s. In this engine the normal piston and cylinder was replaced by an oscillating disc. In 1849 Rennie employed George Daniell Bishopp as a foreman at their works, and he held an 1848 patent regarding this form of engine. Although the engines appear to have worked sufficiently well for several full scale trials, they had an inherent problem with their seals, and this appears to have been the main reason they were not a success.
A Rennie disc engine, with 27 inch disc, was fitted in HMS Minx in 1849, but as a supplementary engine, the original engines still being in situ. A working model of the Rennie disc engine was exhibited by George and John Rennie at the 1851 Great exhibition.
In addition to the stationary engines to create the vacuum for the South Devon atmospheric railway, the company had other involvement with the railways. John Rennie was involved with the surveying of a route for the London and Brighton Railway, which was in competition with a route by Stephenson. Among the engines purchased by the railway are several listed as supplied by G. and J. Rennie (as opposed to J. and G. Rennie). It appears the brothers formed a separate company for this activity to keep the books separate. The locomotives were:
A fourth locomotive was supplied to the 'Joint Committee' which was a co-operation of the Brighton, Croydon, and Dover railways to pool rolling stock. This arrangement was dissolved at the start of 1846.
Rennie also supplied two 0-4-2 locomotives to the London and Croydon Railway in 1838 and 1839 which were used for banking and named "Archimedes" and "Croydon".
Five locomotives were built for the London & Southampton Railway, but problems were experienced and all of them were rebuilt by W Fairbairn & Son in 1841. [6]
Other locomotives include two of the GWR Firefly Class (hence broad gauge), "Arab" and "Mazeppa", both 2-2-2s built in 1841, and withdrawn in 1870 and 1868 respectively.
A propeller is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon a working fluid such as water or air. Propellers are used to pump fluid through a pipe or duct, or to create thrust to propel a boat through water or an aircraft through air. The blades are specially shaped so that their rotational motion through the fluid causes a pressure difference between the two surfaces of the blade by Bernoulli's principle which exerts force on the fluid. Most marine propellers are screw propellers with helical blades rotating on a propeller shaft with an approximately horizontal axis.
A steamship, often referred to as a steamer, is a type of steam-powered vessel, typically ocean-faring and seaworthy, that is propelled by one or more steam engines that typically move (turn) propellers or paddlewheels. The first steamships came into practical usage during the early 1800s; however, there were exceptions that came before. Steamships usually use the prefix designations of "PS" for paddle steamer or "SS" for screw steamer. As paddle steamers became less common, "SS" is assumed by many to stand for "steamship". Ships powered by internal combustion engines use a prefix such as "MV" for motor vessel, so it is not correct to use "SS" for most modern vessels.
Steam frigates and the smaller steam corvettes, steam sloops, steam gunboats and steam schooners, were steam-powered warships that were not meant to stand in the line of battle. There were some exceptions like for example the French Napoléon class steam ship of the line was meant to stand in the line of battle, making it the world's first steam battleship. The first such ships were paddle steamers. Later on the invention of screw propulsion enabled construction of steam-powered versions of the traditional ships of the line, frigates, corvettes, sloops and gunboats.
The British Rail Class 07 diesel locomotive is an off-centre cab 0-6-0 diesel-electric shunter type built by Ruston & Hornsby in 1962 for the Southern Region of British Railways. The 14 members of the class were primarily used at Southampton Docks and later also at Eastleigh Works.
Sentinel Waggon Works Ltd was a British company based in Shrewsbury, Shropshire that made steam-powered lorries, railway locomotives, and later, diesel engined lorries, buses and locomotives.
The 1361 Class were small 0-6-0ST steam locomotives built by the Great Western Railway at their Swindon railway works, England, mainly for shunting in docks and other sidings where track curvature was too tight for large locomotives.
Jones, Turner and Evans was a locomotive manufacturer in Newton-le-Willows, England from 1837, known as Jones and Potts between 1844 and 1852.
A & J Inglis, Ltd, was a shipbuilding firm founded by Anthony Inglis and his brother John, engineers and shipbuilders in Glasgow, Scotland in 1862. The firm built over 500 ships in a period of just over 100 years. Their Pointhouse Shipyard was at the confluence of the rivers Clyde and Kelvin. They constructed a wide range of ships, including Clyde steamers, paddle steamers and small ocean liners. In wartime, they built small warships, and in the period after World War II, they built a number of whalers.
HMS Rattler was a 9-gun steam screw sloop of the Royal Navy, and one of the first British warships to be completed with screw propulsion. She was originally ordered as a paddle wheel 4-gun steam vessel from Sheerness Dockyard on 12 March 1841. She was reordered on 24 February 1842 as a propeller type 9-gun sloop from HM Royal Dockyard, Sheerness, as a new vessel. William Symonds had redesigned the ship as a screw propeller driven vessel.
The North Eastern Railway (NER) Class K classified as Class Y8 by the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) is a class of 0-4-0T steam locomotives designed for shunting. It was designed by Thomas W. Worsdell and five of these tiny engines were built in 1890. These were numbered 559-63.
A nutating disc engine is an internal combustion engine comprising fundamentally of one moving part and a direct drive onto the crankshaft. Initially patented in 1993, it differs from earlier internal combustion engines in a number of ways and uses a circular rocking or wobbling nutating motion, drawing heavily from similar steam-powered engines developed in the 19th century, and similar to the motion of the non-rotating portion of a swash plate on a swash plate engine.
SS Archimedes was a steamship built in Britain in 1839. She was the world's first steamship to be driven successfully by a screw propeller.
A screw steamer or screw steamship is an old term for a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine, using one or more propellers to propel it through the water. Such a ship was also known as an "iron screw steam ship".
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TS King Edward was an excursion steamer built at Dumbarton for service down the River Clyde to the Firth of Clyde and associated sea lochs on the west coast of Scotland, as far as Campbeltown. The first commercial vessel to be driven by steam turbines, King Edward was remarkably successful for a prototype, serving as a Clyde steamer for half a century from 1901 until 1951, interrupted only by service in the two world wars. The success of the vessel quickly led to the adoption of turbine propulsion for all manner of merchant vessels, from channel ferries and coastal steamers to transatlantic liners.
Caird & Company was a Scottish shipbuilding and engineering firm based in Greenock. The company was established in 1828 by John Caird when he received an order to re-engine Clyde paddle-tugs.
HMS Phoenix was a 6-gun steam paddle vessel of the Royal Navy, built in a dry dock at Chatham in 1832. She was reclassified as a second-class paddle sloop before being rebuilt as a 10-gun screw sloop in 1844–45. She was fitted as an Arctic storeship in 1851 and sold for breaking in 1864.
SS Empress Queen was a steel-hulled paddle steamer, the last of her type ordered by the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company. The Admiralty chartered her in 1915 as a troop ship until she ran aground off Bembridge, Isle of Wight, England in 1916 and was abandoned.
John Penn and Sons was an English engineering company based in London, and mainly known for its marine steam engines.
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