Page:Cornwall; Cambridge county geographies.djvu/158

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142 CORNWALL of which the mutiny is one of the most familiar tragedies of the sea, was perhaps in great measure the author of his own misfortunes, for he was a man of very overbearing temper, but his journey of 3618 miles in an open boat after having been set adrift with others by the mutineers was a remarkable feat. The Pellew family has added at least two names to the roll of distinguished sailors. Edward Pellew, when in command of the Nymphe^ manned by Cornish miners, captured the French man-of- war Cleopatre under peculiarly gallant circumstances, the first of a series of brilliant exploits which led to his being created Baron Exmouth. Later, in 1816, he bombarded Algiers, reduced the Dey to submission, and put an end to the Barbary corsairs. His brother, Admiral Sir Isaac Pellew, commanded the Conqueror at the battle of Trafalgar. Cornwall being a land of mines has developed machinery and furthered invention in this direction. The most notable of the inventors she has produced is Richard Trevithick, who first made the high-pressure engine, and is still more remarkable as the early pioneer of motor traffic, putting his road locomotive on the Camborne highway on Christmas Day, 1801, and obtaining a speed with it of 12 miles per hour. In 1812 he laid before the Navy Board his invention for a screw propeller for ships, only to meet with a refusal. Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, born in 1793, also ran steam-motors on the roads until they were forbidden by Act of Parliament, and the work of a lifetime and his fortune of ^30,000 vanished into thin air. The oxy-hydrogen blowpipe and the steam-jet