rnment supplies, while the cast iron was considered of too brittle
a nature to be suited for general use.[1] Indeed the Russian
government became so persuaded that the English nation could not carry
on their manufactures without Russian iron, that in 1770 they ordered
the price to be raised from 70 and 80 copecs per pood to 200 and 220
copecs per pood.[2]

Such being the case, Cort's attention became directed to the subject in
connection with the supply of iron to the Navy, and he entered on a
series of experiments with the object of improving the manufacture of
English iron. What the particular experiments were, and by what steps
he arrived at results of so much importance to the British iron trade,
no one can now tell. All that is known is, that about the year 1775 he
relinquished his business as a navy agent, and took a lease of certain
premises at Fontley, near Fareham, at the north-western corner of
Portsmouth Harbour, where he erected a forge and an iron mill. He was
afterwards joined in partnership by Samuel Jellicoe (son of Adam
Jellicoe, then Deputy-Paymaster of Seamen's Wages), which turned out,
as will shortly appear, a most unfortunate connection for Cort.

As in the case of other inventions, Cort took up the manufacture of
iron at the point to which his predecessors had brought it, carrying it
still further, and improving upon their processes. We may here briefly
recite the steps by which the manufacture of bar-iron by means of
pit-coal had up to this time been advanced. In 1747, Mr. Ford
succeeded at Coalbrookdale in smelting iron ore with pit-coal, after
which it was refined in the usual way by means of coke and charcoal.
In 1762, Dr. Roebuck (hereafter to be referred to) took out a patent
for melting the cast or pig iron in a hearth heated with pit-coal by
the blast of bellows, and then working the iron until it was reduced to
nature, or metallized, as it was termed; after which it was exposed to
the action of a hollow pit-coal fire urged by a blast, until it was
reduced to a loop and drawn out into bar-iron under a common
forge-hammer. Then the brothers Cranege, in 1766, adopted the
reverberatory or air furnace, in which they placed the pig or cast
iron, and without blast or the addition of anything more than common
raw pit-coal, converted the same into good malleable iron, which being
taken red hot from the reverberatory furnace to the forge hammer, was
drawn into bars according to the will of