Wigan Industrial Tycoon and MP - The Right Honourable John Lancaster

Wigan’s rich industrial heritage associated with the exploitation of the extensive coal deposits of the South Lancashire coal field, sports a long list of noteworthy working class heroes, engineers, businessmen and landowners worthy of any roll of honour. Names of individuals and companies now just a distant memory for the older generation and virtually unknown to everyone else lie hidden in dusty old archives. Haigh Foundry, Brock Mill Forge, Wigan Coal and Iron Company, Walker Brothers, Worsley Mesnes Iron Works, Blue Printers, Central Wagon, Kirkless Hall Coal and Iron Company, Winstanley Colliery, Pemberton Colliery, Rylands Brothers, the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres, the Bankes family, William Peace, Alfred Hewlett, Pearson and Knowles, Robert Dalglish, the Gerrard family of Ashton in Makerfield, John Wood and Company to name but a few.

John Lancaster was one such noteworthy person, an engineer, businessman, fellow of the Geological Society and Member of Parliament. A key figure in the Kirkless Hall Coal and Iron Company and responsible for building the blast furnaces and coke ovens on the Kirkless site he later became chairman of the Wigan Coal and Iron Company when the Kirkless Hall Company was amalgamated with the Earl of Crawford's coal and engineering interests. Mr Lancaster also had a very interesting connection with the American Civil War, becoming involved in its last great sea battle between the confederate ship Alabama and the union ship Kearsarge off Cherbourg in France.

1815 Born Radcliffe near Bury Lancashire 19^th September.
1841 Manager of Patricroft Colliery.
1847 Mineral agent for Lord Mostyn at Mostyn Colliery.
1849 - 56 Manager Earl Granville’s Ironworks and Collieries Shelton Staffs.
1855 - 58 Manager Shire Oak Colliery near Worksop Nottingham.
1860 Built five blast furnaces at Kirkless Hall Ironworks which were only the second set in Lancashire.
1863 Fellow of the Geological Society, Member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.
1864 Rescued the crew of the confederate ship Alabama when she was sunk by the union war steamer Kearsarge of Cherbourg 19th June.
1864 Contested Wigan as prospective MP July.
1870 Chairman Wigan Coal and Iron Company.
1868 - 74 MP for Wigan.
1870-84 Chairman West Cumberland Iron and Steel Works.
1884 Died age 69 at 58 Fitzjohns Avenue, Hampstead 21^st April.

John Lancaster lived with his wife and four children, John Junior, Robert, G.G. (Son George Granville) and Catherine at Ashfield House Standish. They are believed to have entertained William Gladstone and other important politicians from time to time, and presumably lived here at the time of their encounter with the Alabama. Mr Lancaster owned the steam yacht Deerhound which he sailed competitively and used for holidays and other leisure activities. Skippered by Captain Evan Parry Jones it was built in 1858 for the Duke of Leeds at the Cammel Laird shipyard Birkenhead, co-incidentally the same yard which built the Alabama completed in 1862 under the name of Enrica.

The Alabama
The Alabama was built at Cammell Lairds shipyard in Birkenhead, commissioned by the government of the Confederate States of America, but as far as the yard was concerned she was being built for a private individual James Dunwoody Bulloch, who in reality was one of the Confederate States’ purchasing agents based in Liverpool. The Alabama was launched in May 1862 and began sea trials under the command of Matthew J Butcher, a highly regarded Cunard officer. Bulloch and a party of dignitaries were also on board, only he and Butcher knew that there was no intention of returning to Liverpool and arrangements had been made to put the visitors ashore. The ship was already on her way to the Azores to be handed over to Raphael Semmes who was to command her, the small crew was increased by a further forty mostly from England and Wales. The strange goings-on in Liverpool and the risks being taken by the UK government at the time were brought about by the strictly neutral stance in respect of the American civil war, against a background of union blockades of southern ports the source of the UK’s cotton imports.

Although Cammell Laird were renowned for their iron ships, because of the limited availability of repair facilities in some parts of the world the Alabama was built in finest oak, her bottom sheathed in copper. She was rigged as a three masted sailing barque but powered by coal burning boilers and twin horizontal steam engines, she was capable of 13 knots. Her funnel could be telescoped and her propeller lifted clear of the water to reduce drag while under sail.

The fight between the Alabama and the Kearsarge off Cherbourg, June 19, 1864.
Having sunk many Union merchant vessels, the rebel raider Alabama had just put into Cherbourg for repairs when the USS Kearsarge discovered her. For days the newspapers told of the impending duel between the Alabama and the Kearsarge, and on Sunday morning 19^th June 1864 the Alabama slipped out of port to meet the Kearsarge in battle. Many people were in Cherbourg that weekend for the inauguration of a new casino, among them English tycoon John Lancaster and his family who had come over in their luxury yacht "The Deerhound", 15000 people were lining the coast.

Confederate captain Raphael Semmes, buoyed up by more than sixty naval victories, challenged captain John A Winslow to a duel. Semmes’ gunners however had had little practice against armed vessels. After the opening salvos, it quickly became apparent that the Kearsarge was the superior ship. It sank the notorious Alabama in little more than an hour. A major event in Europe, the encounter inspired a picture published in Hamburg by Gustav W Seitz (born 1826). The third ship seen in the print is the English yacht Deerhound, which rescued many of the Alabama’s crew.

When the Alabama sank all but one of the officers survived, Dr Llewellyn the assistant ships surgeon drowned as did Bartelli the captains steward, he could not swim but told no one. Nine men were killed in action, 21 wounded and 12 drowned, there was just one casualty on the Kearsarge, William Gowen from New York who died in Cherbourgs naval hospital. The Deerhound landed the survivors in Southampton that night, Semmes was lionised in England.

Later life
In the late 1860's or early 70's John Lancaster, then described as a Lancashire coal mine owner and Liberal Member of Parliament for Wigan, bought Bilton Grange a magnificent historic Victorian mansion in the picturesque village of Dunchurch, south of Rugby, Warwickshire, designed by the famous architect Augustus Welby Pugin and built in the 1840’s. He made a number of changes including replacing some of the original crests with his own, creating the main drive in use today, building the small lodge known as Island Cottage and the North Lodge, both of which have his initials on them. When John Lancaster died the court ordered his estates to be sold. His sons (John junior and George Granville) managed to put his financial affairs in order by just selling Bilton Grange and 175 acres. They kept the part of the estate called Dunchurch Lodge and in 1907 John Lancaster built the large mansion there which is now the GEC Management College. Granville bought Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire where his daughter still lives. Bilton Grange is now an independent day and boarding prep school for boys and girls aged 4 to 13.

Sources:
Proceedings of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers 1884 (402-3).
The Smithsonian Institution website.
University of Alabama W.S. Hoole collection.
Bilton Grange School website