Thomas Brassey completed wrapping the world in British rails, building an exotic roll call of lines in India and Norway and Canada and France and Argentina and Italy and Australia and Poland and Mauritius. The Calcutta-Ganges, the Warsaw-Galatz, the Vienna-Trieste.
These and the others were all the Queen's men.
Not least of the breed was Frederick Murdoch Weed. A young Scotsman, he had won minor laurels as a naval and marine engineer at the great yards of Clydebank.
Intrigued by the series of innovations brought on by the American Civil War, he crossed the ocean to study and became particularly fascinated by the quick change from ironclads to the steel blockade runners built by the Confederacy.
His brain became a fountain of ideas but he was constantly frustrated by the entrenchment of the establishment in Glasgow, Liverpool and Newcastle. Greener fields had to be sought and, in keeping with the giants the day, fertility of mind ran hand in glove with enterprise. He looked over the Irish Sea and liked what he saw. There had always been a small but substantial shipbuilding industry around Belfast. Harland & Wolff had established a yard and prospered. This made the thought of cutting his own ties with the mother island more palatable. The Belfast City Corporation was continually expanding and reclaiming land at the mouth of the River Lagan for this purpose and there existed an excellent nucleus of skilled ship workers who had immigrated from Scotland.
Starting with the capital of a few thousand pounds, Weed bought out a small yard covering eight acres on the newly reclaimed Crown Island. He attacked with the same fury that had marked his glory days as a rugby great.
Frederick Weed's first daring came when he doubled the length of the conventional oceangoing steamer/sailer without widening the beam. In the beginning his long narrow needles were guffawed over as Weed's coffins. He was never to be laughed at again. Innovating with above-deck iron superstructuring and a unique hull design below the water line, the ships not only proved more stable but were the quickest afloat.
As the orders poured in, Crown Island continued to reclaim, doubling and tripling in size. Weed converted from iron to steel ships with spectacular results. His genius at shaping steel alloy and prefabrication kept him well up in the pack. By 1878, the year he received his knighthood, he had established his own marine engine plant as well at his own steel mill, and had become the largest single employer in the province of Ulster. He systematically looted the Clyde of its best engineering and building talent at every level. Liverpool's decline as a shipbuilding center was quickly reflected in Belfast's growth. The median and core of his work force were tightly imbedded East Belfast which was often referred to as the "second plantation of Ulster."
*
Final stop on the inspection tour was the research and design department. After a quick walk through his half acre of architects, scientists and draftsmen, he was alone with its chief, Walter Littlejohn, a foremost metallurgist.
The weightiest problem confronting shipbuilders had merely been dented. The most costly and time-consuming part of the process in metal ships had proved to be the casting and hand riveting of each plate. For nearly three years Walter Littlejohn had devoted himself and a number of his staff to Sir Frederick's mania for finding a method of welding ships without rivets.
The most recent in the series of experiments had been concluded a few days earlier in the recurring pattern of failure. Over sixty new alloys had been tested in an effort to create stronger steel. The best of the formulas was rolled and fused into the hull of a hundred-ton experimental ship. It was towed to Rathlin Island where the North Channel ran hard between Ireland and Scotland. The boat was anchored in an exposed cove, and for two breathless months held together under a fearful pounding. Then she broke apart as the others had done.
Sir Frederick whipped through Littlejohn's report. He brushed the fallen cigar ashes from it, his eyes watering. “Goddamrnit, Littlejohn, I could have sworn we had it this go-round."
Walter Littlejohn was weary and discouraged and it made him appear more pallid than usual. His thin lips were lost under a drooped mustache. He shrugged to Weed's questioning look.
"Same old story, Sir Frederick. The steel proved to be too brittle without rivets, yielding point too low, and our welding techniques are simply not advanced enough."
"I thought we had it with the new torch."
"The properties of acetylene are still in question. Perhaps, if we could come up with a more perfected torch . . ."
"Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps," Sir Frederick said, "perhaps if the dog hadn't stopped to take a shit he would have caught the rabbit."
Littlejohn became an instant recluse as Weed skimmed the report again.
"I say a higher percentage of nickel and manganese. What do you say?"
Littlejohn doffed his specs, rubbed both eyes with heels of his hands, allowing his mind to grow deliberately vacuous.
"Well, what, what, what, what?"
The scientist threw up his hands.
It was fist-on-desk time. "I know, by Jesus, there's j way of doing it and I can't stomach any more of this fucking frustration."
"Haste," Walter Littlejohn replied, "is the enemy of research."
"Oh, Jesus, Littlejohn! This is 1885. All up and down the Clyde they've got wind of our program. Some son of a bitch is going to beat us to it."
Littlejohn scratched his head aimlessly. "Alloying steel is still an infant field," he repeated for the umpteenth time to the restless bull who charged at his cape. "Unless someone accidentally spills the proper contents of the proper bottles and creates a miracle formula we are still a decade away from finding the ultimate hardness of steel. And even if we do find it we are still more years away from a concurring hull design and methods of fusion."
Weed wagged his finger beneath the man's nose “If some son of a bitch beats us to it, I'll die. I want this fucking ship more than anything in my life."
"We shall continue to do our best," Littlejohn mumbled.
*
Sir Frederick's brougham was waiting outside the research department and clip-clopped him back to the main administration building where be plunged into a final round of work.
The last paper Kendrick had placed on his desk renewed his rage. A Select Committee of the House of Commons had finished a study on the growing problem of industrial waste in the United Kingdom's manufacturing and mining centers. Belfast, they concluded, was the worst in the British Isles, where the air had reached hazardous levels of pollution actually endangering persons with respiratory ailments. Furthermore, industrial discharge (particularly from Weed's steel mill) into Belfast Lough were putrefying the water. Sir Frederick's solicitor wished to have his comments to attach to the minority opinion.
He snatched up his pen and scrawled "HORSESHIT!" over its cover. Kendrick came in with a tray of tea and as he cleared Sir Frederick's desk of papers glared wordlessly at the commission report.
"Just return it," Weed ordered.
"No further comment, Sir Frederick?"
"Oh, very well, take this down. This is the same kind nonsense a Select Committee attempted to pull twenty years ago on the linen mills. It is contemptuous bullying by the Liberals to impede progress, combined with a long-standing conspiracy to snuff the life out of Belfast. If they want to clean up filth, let them go after their own in the Midland cities. Belfast's progress will not be compromised or waylaid by political chicanery, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera."
He walked to the window. Belfast was not to be seen through the pall. "Polluting the air and water, indeed! What do they want these people to do here, starve?" The six o'clock whistle screamed. The yard disgorged its thousands. Legions of begrimed, tweed-capped marchers in ragged rhythm passed on their way to those melancholy regiments of red brick. Sir Frederick nodded patronizingly as his army tipped their caps en masse in homage Halfway through their march he returned to his desk.
"When is Brigadier Swan's train due?"
"Half seven," Kendrick answered.
&
nbsp; "Good. Send a carriage for him. I'll see him at the hotel."
"Very well, sir," Kendrick said, and left.
With a stout cup of tea laced with brandy, Sir Frederick slowly banked the fires of his feverish mind, then allowed his thoughts to drift to the newest thrust of his empire.
When the decision had been made several years back to open his own steel mill, Weed bought out a number of small iron mines in mid- and north Ulster. This began his involvement with the narrow-gauge railroads which operated in the mines. Fascination with trains led to standard gauge and this in turn led to designing and building a prototype locomotive which won note as the Red Hand Express.
He looked restlessly beyond the mid-Ulster termination points of his Belfast & Portrush Line until it became his latest obsession to own the first trans-Ulster railway. Belfast to Sligo. After that, who knew?
Weed assigned his strong right arm, Brigadier Maxwell Swan, to test the waters. Arthur Hubble, the Earl of Foyle, controlled a combination of bits and pieces of short lines out in the west. An inquiry was made of Glendon Rankin, who ran the Earl's affairs. The response was noncommittal but warm. Maxwell Swan was dispatched to Londonderry to negotiate.
Sir Frederick glanced at the clock. Swan would be back in Belfast in a little over an hour. He broke into a sudden burst of laughter as he felt a rush of exhilaration. All the energy of that shouting brain poured into thoughts of cutting the ribbon.
SIR FREDERICK WEED INVADES WESTERN ULSTER!
CHAPTER THREE
As Sir Frederick Weed pressed his courtship and love affair with railroads, acquisition of a fleet of private cars followed. A confirmed Americanophile, Sir Frederick had long adored George Pullman's Palace cars and the opulent work of Webster Wagner. Manning Fitch, who designed the luxury cabins on Weed's steamers, was dispatched to America, commissioned and licensed to study and blueprint their work. Weed's private cars were executed right at the Works. In addition to the executive car, there was Sir Frederick's personal car, a scandalously lavish affair, a car used to transport his rugby team on its annual tour of the English Midlands and three lesser cars. With a Red Hand Express engine up front, the train served as the commander-in-chief's land flagship.
The train passed through Templepatrick toward Monkstown, where rolling and evergreen land began to flatten near the sea and thicken with cottages and people, indicating that the outer fringes of Belfast had been reached.
A single passenger was aboard.
The lone man in the dark polished mahogany and leather splendor of Sir Frederick's Belfast & Portrush executive car was Brigadier Maxwell Swan, D.C.L., D.S.C., C.V.O., C.V.E., Retired. What made his otherwise middling appearance so acute was a bald, clean-shaven head holding a most penetrating pair of azure eyes which radiated constantly.
Swan, an Ulsterman, had retired from the army after a quarter-century service, still in his forties, somewhat of a mystery figure, moving silently through the backwaters of the Empire to potential hot spots. His role had been to ferret out brewing insurrections and nip them in the bud. Movements were hush-hush as he maneuvered behind the scenes of the Indian Mutiny, the Maori wars in New Zealand, at Peking, and in the African territories to finish off the Ashanti.
Swan's final years of Crown service were spent in Dublin Castle where he proved a master in the use of the informer to penetrate secret and rebellious societies. His counteroperations were merciless, clean and final. Small wonder that Sir Frederick grabbed him on retirement and placed him in charge of labor matters.
A divine Ulster principle was to keep its working class a decade behind the mother island. Swan went into deadly combat against poaching trade unionists and other agitators, building a penetrating espionage system which no one could escape.
It was simpler to do in Belfast. The entire work force was jammed into East Belfast and the Shankill where tribal existence was almost totally ritualized by the Orange Order and the Reformation. Few men could stand up to the wrath of an Orange Grand Master, the preacher and his neighbors by refusal to join.
Using the Orange Order as his power base, the Grand Master was endowed with special powers of hiring and firing as were many of the preachers. It was Swan who encouraged Sir Frederick to patronize the Orange and even join himself through formation of a "gentlemen's" lodge.
While the Orange had a surveillance grip, the ministry pounded home the gospel that these Ulster folk were a special folk gifted with the twin virtues of godliness and industriousness and had been chosen to do work in Ireland. Fathers passed their Orange bowlers to their sons and purchased apprenticeships in the yard to assure family continuance. Poor little intellectual thought, liberal ideas, curiosity or content was allowed to penetrate the twin-shrouded bastions of East Belfast and Shankill.
When sniffings of trouble did emerge from these areas, a simple ploy was used over and over with unerring success. Fear of the Catholics, the anti-God heathens, the sloths, was kept as a razor blade pressing their wrists. Loyalty, Orange loyalty, Protestant loyalty, Crown loyalty, anti-union loyalty was rewarded by the job upon which their livelihood depended. Deviation from that total loyalty could infer that the Catholic might get their jobs.
Swan showed all of Ulster how to apply the cardinal principle of divide and rule by keeping the Catholic and Protestant working classes separated and hating each other. He was flint and his operation textbook. Generous donations to the proper causes were coldly effective. His special peace-keeping squads of ex-pugilists, toughs, informers, detectives and spies were no less effective. Peace reigned at the Weed Ship & Iron Works and Belfast remained years behind the unionization of the English Midlands.
Maxwell Swan advanced in swift order until he was a permanent fixture at Sir Frederick's right hand. Always the background figure, he carried out the black work which allowed Frederick Murdoch Weed to create a public image of charity and gregariousness.
*
Choppy Belfast Lough came into view at Newtownabbey. The train hugged the coastline to the northern suburbs, slowing into the harbor build-up where the aroma of tobacco and coffee and hemp hung both pungent and dingy. As the Red Hand Express hissed into the York Road terminal Swan caught a glimpse of the smokestacks of the Ship & Iron Works across a conglomerate of channels and docks and warehouses and factories.
He snapped his brief bag shut, buttoned on a caped Inverness coat and stepped directly from the private car to a waiting carriage at platformside
Hotel Antrim was a single jewel in Belfast's otherwise drab hostelries. Located on Victoria Street a few blocks from Donegal Square and the Linen Hall, it sat in the heart of Belfast's cultural, government and commercial matters.
Sir Frederick had purchased the hotel as part of the Belfast & Portrush Railroad holdings and renovated it to a standard of luxury unmatched in Ireland. The entire fourth story was converted to his in-town residence, housing himself and containing suites to accommodate visiting ship and rail executives, dignitaries, aristocracy and nobility.
His personal quarters consisted of ten rooms decorated from a warehouse of leftovers from his principal residence, Rathweed Hall in the Holywood Hills.
Weed spread himself out in the drawing room, disposing of a pair of stiff Bushmills while his man quietly picked up strewn jacket, cravat, hat, gloves, cane and shoes and replaced them with a smoking jacket and slippers. As he poured his third drink, his daughter Caroline flowed in begowned and bejeweled.
Ah, Caroline! He smiled inwardly and outwardly. Caroline his joy, Caroline his bane. Caroline, the sole offspring of widower Weed. She had grown splendidly handsome in her twenty-eighth year but it had been a monumental undertaking to get her that far.
When her mother died years earlier, Caroline had gone on a continental tear which ended up in a short, disastrous marriage. Perplexed in his efforts to tame her and thwarted in his efforts to get her married and produce suitable male heirs, Sir Frederick toyed with the idea of a second marriage for himself. Yet he could not cross the bridge on t
hat point, his love for his daughter a powerful countergravity.
During Caroline's annulment she returned to Belfast and calmed somewhat, showing good hard traits, indicating she might be cut from Weed's mold after all. He wanted the future in her hands and the hands of her sons. Caroline continued to be independent and self-indulgent but she developed a keen business mind and each time he saw those four smokestacks from the balcony of the Antrim there could be little doubt of her own ambition. Sir Frederick was getting nervous about the business of heirs but one had to tread softly on that subject.
The two exchanged affections. Tonight it was a ballet troupe from Russia, a real coup for Belfast, arranged largely because of Caroline's patronage. Most of the guttural meanderings did Sir Frederick in with boredom unless they involved personal attention and a bit of a chase with an actress or diva. He sponsored culture because Caroline adored the scene and it had spiraled her to a social lioness and kept her in Belfast.
"Who's the lucky chap tonight?” he asked.
"Marquess of Monaghan, father, mother, two daughters and that son."
"Oh, them."
"Are you joining us, Freddie?"
"Better shrink off to the old study," Weed said, winking. "I'm expecting the Brigadier back from Londonderry. Mind terribly?"
"Of course not," she answered, working a long opera glove up her slender arm and making a final primp in the mirror. "Any word how Max managed?"
"No, and I'm damned keen. He's been gone most of the week."
"Well, that could only indicate that he's been in some good stiff negotiations," she said.