The majority of people visiting Liverpool intent on experiencing the splendours of the contemporary and surprisingly eye-catching architecture of the city’s new multi million pound Liverpool One development, opened during its successful European Capital of Culture year, may all of a sudden stumble upon an observation window set into the pavement outside the new John Lewis department store.  They may not have heard of the gentleman whose home and place of work was for many years only a matter of yards away from where they stand at the observation window.  Throughout Liverpool’s 800 year history, especially following the inception, through an Act of Parliament in 1708, and the completion in 1715 of the world’s first commercial wet dock that instigated the subsequent explosion in its commercial activities.   This resulted in making Liverpool the second port of the British Empire, and by 1861 the second largest city in England.  

Liverpool has been the home of some remarkable and unique people whose endeavours and achievements have been documented in newspapers, articles and publications over the last eight centuries.  Unfortunately this is not the case of a gentleman who was given the notable epitaph by the town’s privileged of “the most significant Liverpudlian of 1797”.

The gentleman was William Hutchinson. Although not born in the town, that he resided in for the rest of his long and industrious life, his epitaph hints at the admiration in which he was held by the town’s Aldermen and merchants when Liverpool achieved the status of the principal port for trade with the ports of Norway, Hamburg, the Low Countries and Baltic as well as West Africa and the Americas.  Throughout his long assiduous life he was at various times: a seafarer, privateer captain, ship owner, boat-builder, trader, local politician, inventor, marine author, philanthropist, trustee of the Liverpool Infirmary and in 1759, at the age of 43, appointed Liverpool’s Head Dock Master and Principal Water Bailiff.  The only surviving picture of him is an old photograph of a portrait in Liverpool Central Library now lost.  His character was Puritan in nature although he combined the aggression of a privateer with a strict religious adherence.   One time following the shipwrecking of his vessel and being washed ashore without food on a barren coast, he and his crew drew lots to be put to death to feed the remainder.  Hutchinson lost the draw, but was saved from being killed, when another vessel appeared on the horizon.  On a particular day every year he observed a day of devotion, in thanks for deliverance and survival after the loss of a vessel that he had commanded.   He abhorred and was intolerant of swearing, which must have made life difficult for his crew aboard ship.

He was born the son of a Smith in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the Autumn of 1715, appropriately the same year the Old Dock, that was to become his home for more than Forty years, was completed.  Following his father’s tragic death in January 1727 he was compelled, through necessity, to seek employment at sea as a cabin boy, at the tender age of eleven years on a Newcastle collier working the lucrative coal trade from North East England to London.   The Newcastle to London coal trade followed the hazardous shipping route south on the unpredictable North Sea.  The strong tidal currents off the coast of East Anglia and the shallowing waters, together with unmarked sand bars around the Thames, claimed many ships and countless lives and was probably instrumental in directing Hutchinson life’s work to improving navigational systems.
   
Through diligence and hard work William slowly rose through the ranks becoming a cook, a beer drawer and later in 1738 a forecastle man on an East Indiaman sailing to India and China.   He served as mate on a bomb’s tender1 The Hyères Bay, in the Royal Navy, under Mathews and Lestock during the Mediterranean war of 1743.  He later served in a Letter of Marque2 vessel on the West Indian and Leghorn Trade3 routes.

Privateer
In 1740 England was at war with France and Spain, Hutchinson was now an experienced and skilful seafarer and decided to move to Liverpool, the town that would remain his home for the rest of his life.  During 1746 he was attached to the West Indiaman, Perl which had been fitted out as a private and he was taken prisoner by a French squadron, but released shortly afterwards.  In 1747 he took command of a privateer and joined forces with Fortunatus Wright, the son of John Wright, who was possibly born in Wallasey and baptised on the 8th May 1712 in St Peters church, Liverpool.  Wright  was the most famous and successful of the Liverpool privateers.  They began a successful partnership and captured many foreign merchant ships, which they subsequently sold or ransomed their cargos amassing themselves a small fortune.  In April 1748 whilst master of the privateer St George he captured the French ship St Jean off Malta.  The prize lay in Valetta harbour, pending legal complications until it was eventually sold in 1751 for a fraction of its original value.  In 1750 he became master of the ex-Royal Navy frigate Lowestoft, which was armed with 20 cannons and was purchased by Fortunatus Wright, and traded to the West Indies and the Mediterranean.  By 1752 Hutchinson was able to afford the cost of building his own boat specially constructed for the Jamaica Trade.  One of his more eccentric developments was his special method for making tea, using a quart bottle containing tea boiled in the ship’s kettle with the salt beef.  His method of tea making that he continued to use until the end of his life was probably developed because crockery on board sailing ships had a short life, due to high seas and storms.  Wright was subsequently lost at sea in 1757 in command of his privateer St.George.

Following his successes in Privateering, in 1755 Hutchinson was made Freeman of the town of Liverpool ‘in consideration of his efforts for the better supplying the town with sea fish by fitting out cod smacks for the purpose’.  Hutchinson was described as ‘the ablest and boldest of the Liverpool privateers’ and he remained a privateer up to July 1758 when England was engaged in the Seven Years War with France (1756-63).  The Seven Years War was arguably the first global war in modern history.  Britain fought with France not only in the Americas and Europe, but also in India.  By 1762, Spain had entered the war on the side of France and Britain eventually emerged victorious from the war in 1763. Under the Treaty of Paris, Britain acquired the island of Minorca, territories in Quebec and Florida but more importantly large parts of India and the West Indies.  The Indian province of Bengal passed into British control after the Battle of Plassey between Siraj Ud Daulah, the last independent ruler of Bengal, and the forces of the British East India Company led by Colonel Robert Clive.  The defeat of the French backed Daulah led to the province of Bengal passing into the control of the East India Company’s and was an important factor in establishing British control over all of India.

As captain and part-owner of the privateer, Liverpool, a 22 gun frigate, 18 of which were 12 pounders with a crew of 160-200 men launched soon after the start the Seven Years War he had two years of successful cruises in the Mediterranean and in home waters.  The ship was sold in April 1759 and later used for the New York – Liverpool trade.   The last privateering adventure by Hutchinson was when he retook command of the privateer Liverpool in an unsuccessful attempt to ‘curb the insolence’ of the notable French privateer Francois Thurot4 (1727-60) who was attacking British shipping in the Irish Sea.  Thurot was eventually killed, off the Isle of Man, during a battle between three British and his three French frigates on 28th February 1760.

Liverpool Dock Master
Visitors peering through the glass of the observation window in Liverpool One will be greeted with a glimpse of an important remnant of the port’s maritime history.  This unique porthole into Liverpool’s maritime past exposes, for the first time since the late 1880`s, the sea worn and weathered red brick walls of Thomas Steer’s Dock.   Later known as the Old Dock it was the world’s first wet dock and provided Liverpool with an important advantage over its other chief maritime rivals at the time, namely the ports of Bristol and London.   The Old Dock was constructed to accommodate up to 100 sailing ships and was accessed directly from the river through wooden dock gates.  These permeable dock gates allowed around 10% of the dock’s water to seep out between tides, resulting in the water level dropping several feet, which was offset by water entering the dock from an ancient stream called the Pool.

From 1737 access to the dock was altered and shipping obtained entry to the dock through the nearby Canning Dock, opened in 1737, and named after the politician, George Canning.  The Old Dock’s walls were built from bricks laid directly on to sandstone bedrock and were constructed with an integral graving dock, a second being added in 1746 and in 1759 a third graving dock completed its development.  By the late 1880s the dock was considered too small for the growing port.  The quays were considered too narrow and the town’s sewage entering the old Pool stream had to a great extent polluted the dock’s water. A narrow wooden drawbridge crossed its entrance causing traffic jams and the Old Dock was eventually closed in 1826 and filled in. Twelve years later in 1837 Liverpool’s prominent architect John Foster built the town’s fourth Custom House on the site.

In 1758 Liverpool City Council began looking for a competent and experienced seafarer to become the principal sinecure holder 5 Dock Master of the Old Dock in its rapidly expanding and industrious port.  In February 1759 William was approached to take up this important position.  Three months after taking up his employment as Dock master there was an unsuccessful attempt on his life by a seaman called Murphy from the privateer, New Anson.  He was heard to yell “Damn you, you are a villain” he only survived because the pistol used by Murphy misfired when he pulled the trigger.  Murphy and was later sentenced to serve in the Royal Navy for the rest of his life.  

The year 1759 was a significant period in Britain’s industrial development with the opening of Britain’s first cotton mill.  The weaving of cotton cloth had become a major industry by the 1760s, with a significant and growing trade in raw cotton and finished goods transiting the port of Liverpool.  Inventor Richard Arkwright opened the first cotton mill at Cromford, Derbyshire in 1771 for the spinning of yarn carried out by his patented machine known as a water frame6. This was a significant step towards the automation of labour intensive industries and heralded the beginning of the ‘Factory Age’ in Britain and the exponential rise in trade through ports such as Liverpool and Bristol.

Tidal Records
Liverpool’s Old Dock was only accessible twice a day because the Mersey produced powerful tides and significant currents that only allowed sailing ships access to the dock during specific tidal conditions.  With totally inadequate tidal predictions, it is little wonder that Hutchinson put his extensive marine experience and skills into improving navigation of the River Mersey and access to the dock.  One of the most important of Hutchinson’s achievements that needs to be recognised was his provision of the first sustained set of tidal and meteorological measurements in the United Kingdom.  Encouraged by the astronomer James Ferguson F.R.S (elected 1763), he measured the heights and times of high waters and meteorological parameters for almost 30 years at the gates of the Old Dock as he lived only fourteen yards from them.  In the year 1764, Ferguson provided him with “schemes, tables and plans relating to the tides”.  In the same year Hutchinson began meticulously recording the tides and his data enabled Richard and George Holden to calculate expected times and heights of tides and to publish their annual tide tables.  Hutchinson continued his observations and the Holden’s in their 1773 tide tables preface, congratulated themselves on the fact that “their calculations agreed with his observations within seven inches and within five minutes’. Liverpool had always had a tradition of supporting the study of Mathematics and related subjects. These measurements are claimed to be the UK`s first systematic tidal measurements.  John Flamsteed`s famous research in the Thames a century earlier, for example, being based on an extremely small data set by Hutchinson’s standards. For this reason Hutchinson deserves to be known to the oceanographic community.  Many new societies were being formed in the town including a `Ship Club` and the Liverpool (later Lyceum) Library, the first gentleman’s subscription library in England established in 1758 to which both he and Holden both belonged.   High waters were measured by Hutchinson at all times of day and night and in all weathers with very few gaps.  In 1793 aged 78 Hutchinson was forced to abandon his tidal and metrological measurements noting “ I could not continue any longer to make observations, for want of the command of our dock gate and gauge rod to take the night tides”.  He presented his data records to the Lyceum Library later there were bound preserving them and a manuscript copy of his records made in 1814 by J.Lang is preserved in the Liverpool Athenaeum and a second copy for 1774-92 only is kept at the Royal Society.  His data proved to be essential to the construction of a long term sea level record for Liverpool which has become of significant importance to recent climate change studies.  Hutchinson’s data has also been used to study changes in the frequency of severe storm events and of the ocean tides at Liverpool during the last 230 years.   Tidal data was later collected by Jesse Hartley, who constructed many of Liverpool’s docks and the Bidston Observatory.  In time it became the requirement of all Masters and Pilots to carry the tidal predictions as calculated by the Holden family, whose new and secret method was originally checked against Hutchinson’s data7.

Lighthouses
Hutchinson developed an interest in mirrors and illumination mechanisms for lighthouses for use as navigational aids for shipping.  The Liverpool Council Minutes in 1763 record that he had experimented with the formation of large reflecting mirrors for use in lighthouses and subsequently constructed a large one-piece mirror 12 feet in diameter.  His initial experiments with his reflectors took place at the Bidston Hill Signal Station. His parabolic mirrors were constructed using large numbers of small pieces of silvered glass set into plaster moulded on a wooden former.  His first practical reflecting mirrors for lighthouses were initially tested at the Bidston Signal Station in the same year which was the first time this type of mirror was used in a lighthouse anywhere in the World.   The signal station became Bidston Observatory, with the first Bidston lighthouse constructed in 1771.   One of his original mirrors still exists at Trinity House Museum, London.  Lighthouses around this time were usually lit by ‘fire baskets’ containing wood or coal and were not particularly effective during storms or fog and so Hutchinson put his inventive mind to producing a practical oil burning light generating apparatus to create a more intense light required by mariners to assist navigation particularly for the treacherous Hoyle Bank off the North Wirral coast and the Mersey Bar situated at the mouth of the river.   In 1763 Hutchinson was instrumental in the construction of two noteworthy and revolutionary lighthouses built at Hoylake and Leasowe that were later equipped with his ingenious and innovative reflecting parabolic mirrors that concentrated the comparatively weak light to form a directional beam.

The first successful lighthouse projector was designed by Hutchinson in 1763, and it was not until 1822 that the first flashing lighthouse ‘optic’ was designed by the French physicist, Augustin Fresnel who was in part responsible for the wave theory of light and invented the Fresnel lens for use in lighthouses

Marine Publications
The growth of the British Empire and the increase in marine traffic resulted in unprecedented naval expansion.  Hutchinson in the publication of his first book “Treatise on Practical Seamanship” in 1777, the first of four editions which contained anecdotes from his vast personal experience at sea, and drew from his own extensive marine career to guide aspiring naval and marine officers on the manoeuvring of square-rigged vessels.  A second version was published 1787 with the last edition, in 1794, including his” Treatise on Naval Architecture”.   His description on the frontice piece of his publication included; “Hints and Remarks Relating Thereto: Designed to Contribute Something towards Fixing Rules upon Philosophical and Rational Principles; to Make Ships, and the Management of Them; and also Navigation, in General, more Perfect, and Consequently less Dangerous and Destructive to Health, Lives, and Property.”

Marine Safety
Liverpool Corporation in 1776 attributed Hutchinson as being instrumental to the initiative for the establishment of a life boat station situated at Formby “ordering the establishment of a boat, dedicated to the purpose of saving life from drowning, to be stationed overlooking the outer reaches of the port at Formby, financed by the Dock Committee”. Although the term ‘lifeboat’ had not as yet been invented, this was in effect Britain’s first Lifeboat Station, a half century before the establishment of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a claim fully accepted by Lifeboat historians. Another of his distinguished achievements was the formation of the Mersey Pilot Service, following the passing of the Liverpool Pilotage Act by Parliament in 1766.

Liverpool Institution for Recovering Drowned Persons
Along with the distinguished Liverpool Physician Dr. Thomas Houlston of the Liverpool Infirmary situated in Lime Street (where St. George’s Hall stands today,) Hutchinson developed some of the earliest methods of artificial respiration.  They also established the Liverpool Institution for Recovering Drowned Persons, and a resuscitation hospital in a house near the Old Dock.  This was successful in reviving a significant number of dockers and seafarers who had fallen from the quays or overboard from ships into the town’s growing dock network.

In April 1778 at the age of 62, a remarkable age for a man of the Georgian period, he commanded the ‘Queen’s Battery’ in Liverpool, this had been set up to defend the town against the American corsair, John Paul Jones (who fortunately, or unfortunately failed to appear).  In 1778 he improved upon a quick-match priming mechanism for large guns originally developed by Henry Ross, another Liverpool inventor.

Liverpool Marine Society
Hutchinson founded the Liverpool Marine Society in 1789 for the benefit of masters of vessels and their widows and children, contributing to all the benevolent institutions of the town.   He proposed maritime academies at Liverpool, North Shields and London for students of seamanship, but was unsuccessful.  He was also responsible for inventing other marine equipment (e.g. types of rudder) and was a commentator on designs for ships which were, at this time were being built high, with extra decks, thus increasing the risk of capsizing through overloading.   His work predated the achievements of Samuel Plimsoll whose research into the coal trade highlighted the dangers faced by seafarers, the negligence of some ship owners and the indifference of government to the issue of marine safety.

There used to be small ridge of rock and gravel under the sea near Fort Perch Rock8 at New Brighton.  Hutchinson had the rock cut away and the channel deepened to remove this hazard to shipping and subsequently the channel was named after him.

William Hutchinson died on 7th February 1801 at the age of eighty-five and was interred in St.Thomas’s churchyard in Park Lane where another distinguished philanthropic Liverpudlian Joseph Williamson9 (1769–1840) known locally as the Mole of Edge Hill is also buried.  Hutchinson’s Will10 records that his estate was left to his sister and nephew and makes no mention of a wife or children.  In 1777 he simply described himself as ‘a former cook of a collier and a seaman who had done his best’.  An understated obituary typical of a man who dedicated his life to the improvement of his home town and the enhancement of mariners safety, as well as the provision of benevolence to their dependants.

In 2008, at the new Liverpool One development a fountain was constructed marking the boundary of the Old Dock. Within the pavement alongside the fountain a example of William Hutchinson’s tidal measurements have been inscribed.  The numbers marked into the paving refer to measurements of the heights and times of high water at the dock for January 1783 made by Hutchinson.  Although this long over due inclusion of his name and examples of his tidal data in the area where he once worked are a much welcome reminder, a plague outlining his many achievements would better explain to passers-by and adequately commemorate this remarkable gentleman’s achievements.

“It is lamentable that Hutchinson’s achievements go largely unrecognised by the city whose maritime heritage is renowned the world over.  Most towns with such an historically important citizen would have erected a statue fixed a blue plague or named a street after him or more appropriately a dock.  However Hutchinson remains largely ignored by the city.”(i) Perhaps a campaign should be initiated to erect a suitable memorial that would finally give the city’s remarkable, pioneering son the recognition he rightly deserves and so raise his profile amongst the increasing number of tourists who journey here to appreciate the city’s magnificent marine and maritime heritage, after all he was “the most significant Liverpudlian of 1797”.

Robert Ainsworth

This article is dedicated to the memory of William Hutchison in the hope he is eventually given the recognition by the city of Liverpool he rightly deserves.

Bibliography and further reading

Dickinson, R. 1950 Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire: Volume: 102 Page194, Notes on William Hutchinson.
Farr, G British Lifeboat Stations-A historical and geographical list, 1979.
Hutchinson, W., J. Lang and P. L. Woodworth 2000. The Journals of William Hutchinson. Hutchinson, W. 1777. A treatise on practical seamanship. Reprinted 1787.
Williams, G. 1897. History of the Liverpool privateers and letters of marque with an account of the Liverpool slave trade. London: Heinemann. Athenaeum, Liverpool.
Hutchinson, W. 1791. A treatise on naval architecture founded upon philosophical and rational principles. Reprinted 1794. Reprinted 1969 by the Conway Press.
Woodworth, P.L. 2006. The meteorological data of William Hutchinson and a Liverpool air pressure time series spanning 1768-1999.
Yorke, B and Yorke, R, 1982, Britain’s First Lifeboat Station, Formby, 1776-1918.
Youde, B. 1998 Beyond The Bar.  A Light History of Liverpool Pilot Service.