NOVEMBER 2019
While reading last
month’s issue, my
eye was caught by a
profi le of the Victorian
railway pioneer,
Robert Stephenson,
who is probably best known as the
designer of the innovative steam
locomotive Rocket, which won
the Rainhill Trials and achieved
the distinction of being involved
in the fi rst railway fatality after it
struck and killed an MP who was
standing on the tracks.
Stephenson designed railways
in the United Kingdom, Columbia,
and Egypt, and bridges, such as the
Britannia Bridge across the Menai
Straits between mainland Wales
and Anglesey. Like his friends,
Isambard Kingdom Brunel and
Richard Trevithick, he was one of
that breed of Victorian engineer
who were seemingly able to turn
their talents toward any challenge,
be it steam locomotives, railway
bridges, or steamships.
Brunel, famous for his
railways, steamships, tunnels and
bridges, was also responsible for
designing prefabricated hospitals,
forceps, viaducts, and Paddington
Station.
With such talent in play, the
science fi ction writer in me can’t
help but wonder what might have
happened if circumstances had
been subtly diff erent.
For instance, what might
have happened if Stephenson and
Brunel had been recruited by the
military? With their knowledge
of steam-powered locomotion, it
is not unreasonable to imagine
they might have produced the
fi rst tanks to the ba lefi eld
decades before their actual debut
appearance in World War I. How
that would have aff ected history
is a question for the scholars, but
it’s not hard to imagine such an
innovation kicking off an arms
race between Great Britain and the
other imperial European powers,
and thereby precipitating the
Great War in the late 1800s rather
than the early 1900s.
The same goes for Brunel’s
The victorian
rocketmen
Could history have been very, very different?
Science fi ction author Gareth L Powell looks at the
way a few small changes could have drastically
altered our world—and put a Victorian in space!
revolutionary steamships. When
the ss Great Britain was launched
in 1843, she was more than just
the fi rst iron-hulled steamship;
she was also the largest vessel
afl oat. At a time when the majority
of the world’s warships were still
constructed of wood and reliant
on wind power to get around,
she could have cut a mean
swathe had she been equipped
for ba le instead of passenger
transport. And if the Admiralty
had commissioned another two
or three identical vessels and
installed cannons, Britannia really
would have ruled the waves—at
least, until the other powers
April 2020 / www.theengineer.co.uk 54
caught up with the technology.
But these changes, while
interesting to consider, aren’t
really all that world-shaking.
Had they happened, it’s likely
our present would look much
the same as it does now. All that
would be diff erent would be that
a few confl icts happened slightly
earlier. The general progression of
history wouldn’t have been unduly
aff ected. It is only when we start
to consider weaponry that there is
the potential for drastic change.
Imagine for a moment
that Stephenson and Brunel
are building a warship. Would
these great minds not also turn
their a ention to increasing its
fi repower?
The aeolipile, also known as
Hero’s Engine, dates back to the 1st
century AD. Considered by some as
the fi rst steam engine, it consists
of a radial turbine spun by steam
jets. Using the same principle, it
may have been possible to produce
a steam-powered projectile—
either some form of rocket or a
torpedo—capable of delivering a
devastating payload.
From there, it’s not a
huge stretch to imagine such
technology following a similar
developmental process as the Nazi
rocketry programme, with larger
and larger steam-powered rockets
being built. In our timeline, it took
24 years from the end of WWII to
the fi rst moon landing. If you apply
a similar timescale here, driven
by a Cold War between the British
and German Empires (and maybe
infl uenced by Jules Verne’s 1865
popular classic, From Earth to the
Moon), we can wildly speculate
about Victorian astronauts in orbit
by the turn of the century, and
maybe a moon landing by the early
1910s.
Now, I’m picturing a union
jack on the surface of the moon,
with two astronauts wearing
cumbersome diving suits, their air
supplied by thick hoses that run
back into their spacecraft—a huge
contraption built of riveted steel
plate and powered by the exhaust
from gigantic coal-fi red boilers
within. Now, that would have
changed history!
The discovery of nuclear
power would have led to steam
rockets of increased effi ciency
and power and, by now, people
might have been living on Mars
for the past seventy-fi ve years.
There might be half a dozen
se lements on the moon, and
great steel ships lumbering out
towards Jupiter and Saturn—
and all because two Victorian
gentlemen were persuaded to
concentrate on the military rather
than civilian applications of their
inventions.
S c i - f i eye
deshoff /stock.adobe.com
gareth L. POWELL
/www.theengineer.co.uk
/stock.adobe.com