BANCROFT AND D DAY

[Stanley]

BANCROFT AND D DAY

31 May 2004

Every now and again as I ferret about in the undergrowth of history I come across strange connections. These are almost always unimportant but often fascinating. I stumbled across such a connection this morning.
I was digging in my files looking for a piece of information and tripped over something I had forgotten, a short account written in 1983 of the history of a firm called Holden and Brooke Limited. The reason I had this was that twenty one years ago I wrote to them to ask if they had any information about a pump made by one of the companies they had taken over. As it happened, they hadn’t got what I wanted but were kind enough to send me the history. It makes interesting reading once you have recognised that the original three ram boiler feed pump at Bancroft was made by Frank Pearn Limited of Manchester. Here’s an extract from the history of the firm:
“The history of Frank Pearn and Company goes back to 1872 when the 21 year-old Frank Pearn set up a pump manufacturing business in Hulme, Manchester. The success of his venture was such that in 1880 he had to move to larger premises in West Gorton only a short distance from the site which was soon to be occupied by Holden and Brooke. Pearn rapidly built a reputation in this country and overseas for the manufacture of high quality steam operated reciprocating pumps. Designs such as the Manchester Pumping Engine and the Pearn Donkey Pump set new standards for efficiency and reliability. Many of the machine tools used in their manufacture were designed and made in the Pearn Works and their horizontal boring machine was offered for general sale. However, because of restricted space, their production was subcontracted to a machine tool company in Manchester and formed the original design on which today's horizontal borers are based. Another innovation, the Pearn tapper, was used in the engineering industry for some seventy years to facilitate the mechanical tapping of screw threads in casings.
Pearn's main energies however were still applied to pump design and manufacture and in 1914 a completely new design of reciprocating vacuum pump was launched. Manufacture of these pumps continued until fairly recently and many of them are still operating satisfactorily today. New designs were produced in the thirties for introduction of modern packaged pump sets for electrically driven pumps for oil pipe line applications and this experience led to Pearn pumps being specially designed and used for Operation PLUTO (Pipe Line Under The Ocean) to carry essential petroleum supplies under the English Channel to the allied armies in Europe during the Second World War.”
This bit of information about PLUTO triggered me off because I had recently seen another surprising piece of information on this subject. Luckily I knew where to go to retrieve it and here it is:
'The main 'Pipeline Under the Ocean' operation was initially based on Cherbourg and the laying process, over the 70 miles from the Isle of Wight to the Cherbourg peninsula, took as little as 10 hours. However, on the approach to the beach there was an unforeseen difficulty which catapulted ordinary individuals into dealing with issues well beyond their normal experience and sometimes drawing on long-forgotten solutions. One such problem concerned pulling the HAIS (One of the two types of pipe used in the pipeline) pipe up the beach at Cherbourg. A mobile winch was needed and when the engineers calculated the  power required there was much shaking of heads and dark muttering that no such device existed. Nevertheless one arrived on an LCT within 24 hours, a 19th century steam traction engine with a static ploughing winch!'
So, an unexpected but fascinating insight into a subject I knew very little about. Frank Pearn never realised when he was designing his pumps that he would be instrumental in solving a major problem for the Allied Forces in WW2. Fowler's at Leeds never envisaged one of their engines being used as another part of the war effort. Now of course I’m wondering what happened to the migrant engine, who owned it and did it survive?
31 May 2004