Joseph Fletcher, Shooters Hill, [London,] to Joseph Angus, Fen Court, Fenchurch Street, London, 24 September 1842.

Shooters Hill

Septem 24 1842

My dear Sir

      My good friend Colonel Nicholls has Africa engraven on his heart and holds Fernando Po as an outwork for its defense. The knowledge he has of all that relates to that interesting quarter of the globe is far superior to that of most other men and I would not presume to question what he has recommended.

      I may be excused for saying professionally that I do not approve and could not propose to any one to adopt the principle of the Archmd Screw on a vessel whose services will be so essential as those you describe because it is at present a mere matter of experiment very partially tried and comparatively not at all in use

      There is one serious objection worthy of peculiar consideration in your case, the moving power is under water and any injury it receives will require the vessel to be laid aground—the Colonel will tell you that the first sickness which eventually brought about the unhappy failure of the late expedition was occasioned by the ships being laid on shore to repair the keels of the rudders—in the common engine with paddle wheels—all the work is above water and can be repaired afloat the cost of such a vessel would be heavy and would depend as to its amount upon the nature and power of the engines which are the most costly part of the concern.

      You must also weigh one fact that the expense of maintaining and working a Steam Boat is great and unremitting employed or not. The Engineer and his Men are unceasingly at work or the Engines will be destroyed. The cost of the coal would be according to the distance run but not to the labor. and when the depreciation is taken into the calculation you may reckon at least 20£ per annum but besides the impossibility or if not so the enormous expense of effecting repair which on Steam Boats is continually wanted

      I consider that in Africa round Fernando Po that Government only holding the national purse can assure Steam navigation—A Company of Merchants trading in the River and on the Coast might find advantage in such Auxiliaries but Missionary funds are inadequate to such an expenditure.

      I have written what has occurred to my mind in answer to your note   You will of course shew it to the Colonel. I know that a large ship built in Scotland is launched, fitted with the Screw and may shortly be expected in the River—she has been constructed by proprietors of the Archmd patent and is a part of an experiment untried

                                          I am my dear Sir

                                                            Sincerely yours

                                                                              Joseph Fletcher

Revd J Angus

Text: MAW, Box 39 (BMS 1423), John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Joseph Fletcher was at this time treasurer of the Baptist Theological Education Society and the Baptist Building Fund. Lieut.-Col. Edward Nicholls became superintendent of Fernando Po in 1829, but his health soon deteriorated and he was forced to return to England. The British government withdrew officially from the island in 1834, turning control over to a couple of traders, John Beecroft and Richard Dillon. Nicholls was very supportive of the BMS and new mission at Fernando Po; he provided Clarke and the other missionaries with valuable information as well as letters of introduction to several native chieftains. Nicholls was also involved in the initial decision by the BMS to purchase an iron-clad schooner equipped with an Archimedes Screw. See F. A. Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, from 1792 to 1842, 2 vols. (London: T. Ward, and G. and J. Dyer, 1842), vol. 2, p. 360; Missionary Herald (January 1843): 51; BMS Committee Minutes, Vol. I (Jan. 1843-May 1844), fols. 33, 35, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford.

The earliest type of pump was the Archimedes screw, first used by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, for the water systems at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Nineveh in the 7th century BC, and later described in more detail by Archimedes in the 3rd century BC. In the nineteenth century the device was also used on steam-powered ships. In this situation, however, the pump was usually powered by a small steam engine that used the steam produced by the boiler. According to one marine historian, “The substitution of the screw propeller for the paddle-wheel began to grow general about the period 1845-50. The screw propeller had been invented long before, but its practical utility had not been generally recognized, and it was still regarded as being in the experimental stage. The first notable experiments as to the comparative efficiencies of paddle-wheels and screw propellers were made in 1840, when the ‘Archimedes,’ with a screw propeller, beat the paddle-wheel boat ‘Ariel’ between Dover and Calais by five to six minutes under steam and sail.”  Other races during the next several years ended in “favour of the screw propeller.”  See Richard Sennett and Henry J. Oram, The Marine Steam Engine: A Treatise for Engineering Students, Young Engineers, and Officers of the Royal Navy, and Mercantile Marine (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898), 6.