Samuel Brown (Royal Navy officer)
Captain Samuel Brown (* 1776, † March 13, 1852 in Blackheath, London) was an early pioneer of the design, construction and manufacture of chains and chain bridges ( suspension bridges ). He designed and built the Union Bridge (1820 ), the first suspension bridge for vehicle traffic in Great Britain.
Career in the Royal Navy
Brown joined the Royal Navy in 1795, and served initially on the wards Newfoundland and the North Sea. He served as a lieutenant on the HMS Royal Sovereign (1803 ) and went in 1805 as a first lieutenant on the HMS Phoenix. The following year he was transferred to HMS Imperieuse, followed joined service times on the HMS and HMS Ulysses Flore.
During his service he conducted tests on iron chains made of wrought iron. He used it as an anchor hawsers for the HMS Penelope on a trip to the West Indies in 1806. This impressed the Admiralty such that they immediately ordered his return in 1808 that four warships were equipped with such an anchor chains.
1808 he patented Brown chain compounds from open-ended arcuate parts and from ironing and rotating locks. While the former were soon abandoned, the latter were only slightly improved over the next hundred years.
In 1811 he was promoted to Commander (1842, he went with the title of captain 's retirement ) and his chains were introduced for ship anchor. He retired in May 1812 by the Navy. Only four years later, the Royal Navy standard iron chains instead of hemp linen for all new warships.
Chain production
He founded with his cousin Samuel Lenox a company as Samuel Brown & Co and Brown Lenox & Co was known and originally from Millwall in 1812 in East London was established. Then from 1816 he founded in a larger factory (previously a nail factory of William Crawshay Brown) the Newbridge Chain & Anchor Works ( Pontypridd ) in Ynysangharad that at the Glamorganshire Canal in Pontypridd in South Wales in the vicinity of large iron and coal deposits stood.
His company supplied the Royal Navy until 1916 with chains, and also made the chains Isambard Kingdom Brunel for steamship SS Great Eastern, which represented Robert Howlett in a famous photograph.
Bridge building
He received in 1816 a patent for the production chain, and in 1817 another for wrought iron chain links for suspension bridges. In the same year the other Dryburgh Bridge, the first chain bridge built in the UK. Brown had already experimented with suspension bridges with chains carrying ropes and was built in 1813, a 32 m spanning experiment construction.
Brown also made unsuccessful offers to build a suspension bridge in Runcorn. In September 1818, he gave drawings for the Union Bridge from across the River Tweed; it was completed in 1820.
Brown continued with the construction of additional chain bridges, including the Trinity Chain Pier in Newhaven, Edinburgh (1820/1821) and the Chain Pier in Brighton (opened in 1823 but finally destroyed in a storm in 1896). Most of his designs included a unausgesteifte bridge plate before it was realized that this form was vulnerable to wind forces and unstable under concentrated loads. His designs have been reviewed by outstanding engineers such as John Rennie and Thomas Telford and approved in general. However, Brown's designs were much less conservative than those of his contemporaries, by advocating greater tensile strength in his iron chains.
Larger bridges
- Union Bridge, Tweed, 1820
- The Royal Suspension Chain Pier, Brighton, 1823 ( destroyed 1896)
- Welney Bridge, Norfolk, 1826 ( replaced in 1926 )
- Hexham Bridge, River Tyne, 1826 ( replaced 1903)
- South Esk Bridge, Montrose, 1829 ( collapsed in 1830 under a crowd, three deaths, and again collapsed in 1838 due to vibrations during a severe storm )
- Stockton and Darlington Railway Suspension Bridge, River Tees, 1830 ( first railway suspension bridge in the world)
- Wellington Bridge, Aberdeen, 1830-1831
- Norfolk Suspension Bridge, Shoreham- by-Sea, opened in 1834, designed by William Tierney Clark and Brown. Replaces 1922.
- Kalemouth Bridge, River Teviot, 1835
- Bridge Kenmare, Ireland, 1840 (demolished 1932)
- Trinity Chain Pier, Scotland, in 1821 ( destroyed 1896)
Life
One of his houses stood near the Brighton project, No. 48 Marine Parade, now known as the Chain Pier House. 1827 bought Brown Netherbyres, a country house in Eyemouth in Berwickshire, south-east Scotland. He pulled down the old house and built a new 1836, which he later on 5 March 1852 sold a few days before he died.
Brown was elected on February 7, 1831 Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1838 he was knighted by Queen Victoria.
He died at the age of 75 years in Vanbrugh Lodge in Blackheath, London on 13 March 1852.