Reply To: Jamaica puddling

[Rchard Williams]

I have to agree that there is nothing to prove that John Cort did not know Henry Cort, nor ever will be, but her statements do not constitute proof of a connection between John and Henry.  But Cort is quite a rare name, so they could well have been closely related.  It is not a particularly germane to the argument however and there is a wider context here that nobody (including Bullstrode) seems have not considered.

It must actually have been pretty common knowledge amongst the iron industry in Britain what was going on at the Reeder ‘foundry’.  Knowledgable white artificers were coming and going, Reeder and his workers would have sent and received letters, reports would have got back via the navy about the repairs they could now get in Jamaica and the iron works that provided them.  The knowledge would have been disseminated around the industry and any new technique would have been widely discussed.  Why keep it secret?  There was no competition in Jamaica.

Furthermore John Reeder does not seem to have tried to interest iron masters here about any new technology after he was forced to destroy the works in Jamaica.