BOLCKOW, VAUGHAN & CO. LTD. This British steel company is associated with one of the most important in ventions in the iron and steel industry, the "Thomas-Gilchrist" process, which was invented as recently as 1879. This process enables steel to be made from the phosphoric ores which form by far the greater part of the world's supplies of iron ore. The phos phoric slag from this process gave to agriculture the valuable fertilizer known as basic slag.
The firm was founded in 1841 by H. W. F. Bolckow, who was born in Sulten, Mecklenburg, in 1806 and came to Great Britain in 1827, and John Vaughan, who had had experience in the iron works at Dowlais. They chose the site for their engineering works at Middlesbrough under the advice of John Harris, engi neer to the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and became builders and ultimately owners of blast furnaces. In 1843 the first steamboat built at Stockton, "The English Rose," was engined by Bolckow and Vaughan. In 1846 the firm erected four blast furnaces at Witton Park, and by 1864 the firm owned ironstone mines in Cleveland, four collieries in Durham (and it is interesting to record that coal was then being raised from one of the collieries at a cost of only 3s. 4d. per ton), 17 blast furnaces at Cleveland, Middlesbrough and elsewhere, plate mills and bar iron works at Witton Park and Middlesbrough, and foundries at Cleveland and Middlesbrough.
It was in 1864 that a public issue of shares was made and the company formed. The first Directors were H. W. F. Bolckow, John Vaughan, Benjamin Whitworth and H. D. Pochin; the only connecting link in 1928 on the Board was the Hon. H. D. McLaren, a grandson of the last named. The circu lar of the solicitors to the promoters stated that "the production of iron during the year 1863 from 16 blast furnaces amounted to 180,00o tons of pigs. From the rolling mills about 4o tons of bar, plate, sheet iron and hoops and 38,00o tons of rails, and from the foundries about 20,000 tons of castings." In the following years various other properties were acquired, and in 1871 the company obtained a licence from Henry Bes semer and Robert Longsden to work under the Bessemer patents. The growing demand for steel was the reason for this purchase. It had already been decided to move the works at Witton Park to the south bank of the Tees, where the new blast furnaces were smelting the Ironstone from the Cleveland hills. Steelworks were to be erected at Eston (where the works still stood in 1928), and the works at Gorton, near Manchester, were acquired to fulfil orders for steel pending the completion of the new works, where steel was produced by the acid Bessemer process, for which a pig iron free- from phosphorus was required. Iron ore properties in Spain were acquired in 1872. By 1877 the market for iron rails had disappeared and the company was making a thousand tons of steel rails a week. In 1876 the Gorton Works were sold to the Standard Iron and Steel Company, in which John Bright and other eminent men were interested, and were later acquired by Beyer Peacock and Co., Limited.
In 1878 Windsor Richards, then general manager, met Sydney Gilchrist Thomas on a visit of the Iron and Steel Institute to the Creusot Works, and experimental work was undertaken at Eston on the famous Thomas-Gilchrist process. These experiments were successful, and by 188o four 15-ton Bessemer converters were making steel from the phosphoric Cleveland pig-iron, with an output of 3,500 tons per week. In 1884 the company began to make steel plates and adopted the Siemens open hearth acid process in 1886. In 1899 the basic open hearth furnace began to supersede the basic Bessemer converter. In 1900 the blast furnace gases were used to fire boilers, the steam going partly to mixed pressure turbines and partly to the large mill engines, whose exhaust was also utilized to drive the turbines. By this method power was generated to blow the furnaces and drive lighting and auxiliary plant and a surplus was left for pumping and traction purposes. In 1922, to find further outlets for steel, the constructional firm of Redpath Brown & Co., Ltd., was acquired.
In 1887 the number of men employed was 13,000 with a wages bill of £820,000, and in 1927 11,500 men were employed, exclud ing employees of subsidiary companies, and were paid £ 1,618,000 in wages. In 1928 the properties and plant of the company con sisted of 15 open hearth furnaces, 16 blast furnaces, rail, plate and section mills, sleeper and soleplate plants, collieries, coke oven and by-product plants, ironstone mines, limestone quarries, and mines in Spain. (L. C. M.)