Armstrong: The Life and Mind of an Armaments Maker

by Kenneth Warren

William George Armstrong was one of the leading and most successful of Great Britain's nineteenth century engineers. At Elswick he began a career in mechanical and civil engineering, moving into armaments, and then on to naval and, at Walker, mercantile shipbuilding. In the later decades of the Victorian age his company was the only British firm comparable in size and range to Krupp of Essen, and by the end of his life Armstrong Whitworth was probably the largest industrial concern in Britain. Armstrong possessed exceptional powers for concentrating on practical problems, an invaluable asset which he is said to have once summed up in the homely words: `Perseverance usually pays.' It brought him a distinguished reputation, high honours and great wealth. The last was used in large part to build a revolutionary house and estate, Cragside, set in magnificent gardens near Rothbury, in his native Northumberland. Cragside was the first house in the world to be powered by hydroelectricity. It is now part of the National Trust. To contemporaries his long career was a wonderful story of success. Even now his achievement seems exceptional, but whether it was good now looks much less obvious. Today we are disturbed by contrasts between the peace and splendours of Cragside and the often blighted lives of his workers and their families in the drab terraced rows which once covered the slopes above Scotswood Road. Above all we are troubled by what, even during his lifetime, and stillmore shortly afterwards, resulted from the labours of this designer and manufacturer of weapons of war. This book explores these issues in the life of a fascinating but puzzling man.

277 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 2010

Reviews

[Brian Gowthorpe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been nagged by a feeling that the depth of my ignorance about Lord Armstrong was yet another gaping hole. I live in the North East and his influence was enormous here. He lived until 90 and was restlessly active and inquisitive for all but a short spell at the end. The energy and compulsion to solve problems and push on the development of engineering was an extraordinary Victorian phenomenon. They saw science and practical engineering as the means to improve society, which in many respects they did, but this included the development of relentlessly more effective means of killing people and destroying stuff. This book has some irritating typography, the indexing is poor and the material is arranged a little idiosyncratically, but it tells an interesting life and rightly questions the moral obfuscation of Armstrong and his associates who became extraordinarily wealthy in a dreadful trade. The warships were probably the culmination of his endeavours and sent all over the world.