at Birkenhead; and in 1835, Mr. Fairbairn
established extensive works at Millwall, on the Thames,--afterwards
occupied by Mr. Scott Russell, in whose yard the "Great Eastern"
steamship was erected,--where in the course of some fourteen years he
built upwards of a hundred and twenty iron ships, some of them above
2000 tons burden. It was in fact the first great iron shipbuilding
yard in Britain, and led the way in a branch of business which has
since become of first-rate magnitude and importance. Mr. Fairbairn was
a most laborious experimenter in iron, and investigated in great detail
the subject of its strength, the value of different kinds of riveted
joints compared with the solid plate, and the distribution of the
material throughout the structure, as well as the form of the vessel
itself. It would indeed be difficult to over-estimate the value of his
investigations on these points in the earlier stages of this now highly
important branch of the national industry.

To facilitate the manufacture of his iron-sided ships, Mr. Fairbairn,
about the year 1839, invented a machine for riveting boiler plates by
steam-power. The usual method by which this process had before been
executed was by hand-hammers, worked by men placed at each side of the
plate to be riveted, acting simultaneously on both sides of the bolt.
But this process was tedious and expensive, as well as clumsy and
imperfect; and some more rapid and precise method of fixing the plates
firmly together was urgently wanted. Mr. Fairbairn's machine
completely supplied the want. By its means the rivet was driven into
its place, and firmly fastened there by a couple of strokes of a hammer
impelled by steam. Aided by the Jacquard punching-machine of Roberts,
the riveting of plates of the largest size has thus become one of the
simplest operations in iron-manufacturing.

The thorough knowledge which Mr. Fairbairn possessed of the strength of
wrought-iron in the form of the hollow beam (which a wrought-iron ship
really is) naturally led to his being consulted by the late Robert
Stephenson as to the structures by means of which it was proposed to
span the estuary of the Conway and the Straits of Menai; and the result
was the Conway and Britannia Tubular Bridges, the history of which we
have fully described elsewhere.[7] There is no reason to doubt that by
far the largest share of the merit of working out the practical details
of those structures, and thus realiz