http://www.truckingmag.co.uk Summer 2019 TRUCKING 67
belt drive and a slipping clutch, thereby
creating the world’s first lorry. Even
today in India, diesel water pumps are
mounted on ox carts in a similar manner
to produce a slow-moving traffic hazard
called a ‘jugaad’.
He drove the lorry to Stockton’s
Wednesday market, hoping the farmers
there would buy one. But Teesside is where
railways started and coal was plentiful
and cheap. His lorry caused much
amusement, but was primitive compared
to the magnificent Fowler and McLaren
traction engines they were using already.
He got no orders.
Jacob carried on tinkering and
inventing. He produced a punt gun which
fired using a blast of steam, and claimed to
have produced the first UK petrol-driven
car in 1889. If true, this predates the 1894
Santler, currently accepted as the earliest,
by five years. Jacob’s car was sold,
according to the Yorkshire Evening Post of
1927, to a Leeds butcher for £26-10
shillings in 1899 – around £2000 at today’s
prices.
His No. 1 oil engine carried on powering
his workshop before being sold to
Woodside Farm, Thorpe Thewles for use as
a stationary engine.A sad end
Jacob died leaving no descendants. His
only son had drowned after falling from a
boat when on a fishing trip with his father
at the mouth of the Tees. The accident
turned him into a work-obsessed recluse
and his much younger wife left him. The
windmill is long gone and the area is now
a housing estate.
Jacob Morrison died alone and is buried
in an unmarked grave. However, his engine
survived, his legacy lives on and he will
now hopefully be recognised as the
inventor of the first diesel engine.■Early life
Jacob Morrison (1853-1928) was born in
Norton, part of Stockton, an industrial
town on the banks of the Tees on the North
East coast of England. Stockton and
nearby Middlesbrough were centres of
steel production and heavy engineering at
the time. Iron ore and coal was brought in
on the world’s first steam railway to smelt
steel, cast it and work it into girders, plate
and engine blocks. Jacob’s father had come
down from Scotland to run Mount Pleasant
Windmill, a four-sail, 50 ft high structure
built in 1786.
Jacob worked with his father in the mill.
Unfortunately, as steam engines got
smaller, they lost the contract to grind
flour – it now could be done anywhere,
anytime, even on windless days. Luckily
the windmill was next to fields of clay.
Bricks had been made nearby for some
time. Clarence Pottery had opened next
door in 1837. They made industrial brown
ware (also known as ‘Sunderland ware’),
garden pots, jugs, bowls and similar.
To make pottery, the clay needed
puddling or pounding, so the windmill was
adapted to do that. Because flour dust is
explosive, all the cogs, gears and levers in a
windmill are made from wood. When
anything broke, as it did frequently under
the heavier load of working clay, a new
part had to be quickly engineered.
Jacob proved to be exceptionally gifted
at both woodworking and fabricating. He
also understood how to control the
immense power and torque produced by
the sails through gears and clutches.
Unfortunately, the pottery decided to go
upmarket by producing white domestic
crockery using clay brought in by train
from Cornwall. So Jacob turned his
woodworking skills to building ‘wherrys’
- 20 ft long rowing boats capable of beach
landing, used for moving passengers and
cargo around docks and rivers.
Change of direction
He also worked as an engineer on call.
His advert in the Middlesbrough Daily
Gazette (1914) stated he was an expert in
gas and oil engines and electric motors.
Engines fascinated him. The first (steam)
he made was a single cylinder for the
fishing boatThe Anne of Whitby. To make
it, he carved all the parts out of wood
and took them to nearby Warner’s
Norton Foundry for casting.
Not happy with the power output, he
produced a four-bladed propeller. Existing
ones usually had two flat blades, and little
changed from those on SS Archimedes
(1840) the first propeller-driven ship. His
had the lovely curved lines which
maximised power and minimised
turbulence. He patented it and sold the
design to Blair of Norton. They had started
as Fossick and Hackworth in 1839 making
railway engines, but changed to marine
engines from 1866, employing over 1600
men at their peak of production.Hard work
Even though his new propeller improved
thrust, he knew a single cylinder was an
inefficient use of steam power. Jacob
designed a compound condensing marine
engine and sold the concept to a Hull
trawler company. Then he had to build it.
The casting of parts was easy, but
working and drilling the metal using only
hand tools was hard work. To set the
crankshaft, neighbours were called in to
help turn it while he made adjustments. He
needed a power source for his workshop
tools. He needed an engine as powerful as
a steam one, without the hassle of a big
boiler and a fire that needed feeding all the
time. However, Jacob knew oil under
pressure would self-ignite and set about
designing and building ‘No.1 oil engine’, as
he called it, in 1879.
Unfortunately, unlike his improvements
to steam engines and propellers, he didn’t
patent it. This was an amazing oversight.
He regularly advertised his patents for
sale; the Daily Gazette of July 16, 1894
carries one such. He also applied for a
patent (18517) for “a new or improved plan
of compounding an oil engine or motor” in- He certainly knew the value of
patents. We can only assume he thought oil
engines, like steam engines or windmills,
already existed; he could patent
improvements, but not the concept itself. It
cost him his place in the history books.
He did realise its potential as a
lightweight mobile power source, however.
He mounted it on a four-wheel cart, using