steam power

steam power was first reliably put to use by Thomas Newcomen in the early 1700s, in water‐pumping machines. It was being used as such in the Leinster coalfields by the 1740s. In 1746 the first steam pump in the north was erected in Drumglass Colliery in Co. Tyrone. Pumping engines were also used to return water to the top of a waterwheel, where there was an insufficient water supply. This was the case in Belfast's first steam engine installed in 1790 at Springfield cotton mill. Watt's improvement on the Newcomen design, using only a quarter of the coal, could drive rotating machinery directly. Cotton mills could now be set up on sites where water was unavailable. The virgin site of Prosperous in Co. Kildare was one of a number of huge centres of steam‐powered cotton spinning and weaving established in southern Ireland. Others were located at Cork, the Dublin liberties. Stratford‐on‐Slaney, Co. Wicklow, Balbriggan, and Malahide. The most succesful of these enterprises, set up in 1826, in Portlaw, Co. Waterford, by the Lurgan‐born Quaker David Malcolmson, lasted for half a century. As the 19th century continued, Ireland as a whole was also affected by the transport revolution ushered in by steam‐powered railways, ships, and traction engines.

The most extensive use of steam power was, however, in Belfast, Ireland's only major centre of factory‐based manufacturing industry. From 1800 to 1812 fifteen steam engines of 212 hp were erected in the Belfast area. By the 1830s eighteen steam engines of 690 hp were used in powering linen wet spinning in Belfast. Steam engines were used in foundries, flour mills, paper and whiskey making, and even in grinding coffee. In 1838 there were fifty steam engines in Belfast, about a third of the total in Ireland. By the 1860s linen weaving was becoming mechanized by steam‐powered looms.

The steam‐powered industrial revolution radically changed the lives of thousands of workers who now became subject to the tyranny of the factory system. Belfast replaced Dublin as the centre of steam‐engine making, with leading firms such as McAdam Bros., John Rowan & Sons, Victor Coates, and the Falls Foundry of Coombe, Barbour & Coombe. Although Ireland had few coal resources, costs of imports from Britain were to an extent offset by low labour costs. Water power nevertheless prevailed in many manufacturing processes until the 20th century. Many industries moved directly from water to electric power, missing out the intermediate stage of steam power.

Peter Collins