When was the first motor race held?

If you'd asked me a couple of weeks ago, I would said 1894, for most authorities cite the Paris – Rouen event as being the first motor race and with internal combustion engine engines it probably was the first. But what if the motors were steam powered?

The suggestion that two road steam motors had raced each other in Manchester in 1867 came from Karl Petersen. Karl is a steam car builder in the USA. He e-mailed me to say "Hi" and to introduce himself after my website and blog had turned up on various searches that he'd conducted. He went on to say that during a visit to the Science Museum library in 1971, he'd found an old book on steam road vehicles built before 1890 - William Fletcher's The History and Development of Steam Locomotion on Common Roads. This had belonged to a relative of the legendary locomotive builder and operator Isaac Watt Boulton and contained annotated notes on various matters that subsequently proved quite accurate. Upon revisiting his copy to transcribe his notes into a pdf copy, Karl made a vital connection.

"I noted with some surprise that IWB was the Boulton’s Siding guy and that he was half of the first automobile race in 1867. I tried to websurf up some of the international recognition and accolades he got for being an important first. Nada, zip."

And from this simple beginning, a story began to unravel. It’s drawn me into it and the more I know about it the more I like it.

Isaac Watt Boulton has cropped up on Engine Punk before. He is what you might call a hero of mine, even if he didn’t agree with trade unions. Boulton’s varied collection of steam railway engines and the adventures he had with them are described in the wonderfully evocative book by Arthur Rosling Bennett, The Chronicles of Boulton's Siding, which had fascinated me as a young lad when it had been reprinted by David & Charles in 1971, having originally been published in 1927. It's a book to which I constantly return and one day I would like a similar chronicle about my own adventures with internal combustion engines to be my memorial

I began to wonder if there was indeed some foundation behind Karl's assertion that the first motor race of all time had been held in Manchester. Although brought up to believe that the first motor race had been on French soil in 1894, this not only appealed to my imagination, it also rang a distant bell. Karl sent me a pdf copy of Fletcher’s book and this is roughly what it said.

In 1867, an engine built by Messrs. Daniel Adamson entered into a race described by the technical papers of the day. This road motor was a steam-powered, four-wheeled affair and a first-rate job. But the smaller machine constructed by I W Boulton "passed it during the first mile, and kept a good lead of it all the way, arriving at Old Trafford under the hour, having to run slowly through Manchester."

It seemed that Karl was onto something.

By now, the bells of something once read and part forgotten were ringing loudly. I grabbed my copy of The Chronicles of Boulton's Siding and flicked through to a chapter where I was sure I'd read about this Adamson engine.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered the description of an engine built by not Adamson but Adams and converted by Boulton for road use.

And there, on page 239, was Bennett's description of the race, this time told from Boulton's point of view. "The Boulton engine ran the first four miles in sixteen minutes and after slowing through Manchester finished under the hour, beating her rival very decisively."

Not only that, but there was a reference to the source document that Fletcher had alluded to – the Engineer of 30th August, 1867. Karl and I immediately set out to obtain a copy and through the connections enjoyed by my mate Phil Hosken, Chairman of the Trevithick Society, I got hold of what Karl had christened the "mother lode." My thanks are due to the archivists at The Institute of Mechanical Engineers for speedily helping unearth not an article but a short item of news.

“A NOVEL RACE. – On Monday morning, the 26th instant, in accordance with previous arrangement, two road steam carriages, one made by Mr. Isaac W. Boulton, of Ashton-under-Lyne, having only one 4¼ in. cylinder 9 in. stroke, the other, made by Messrs. Daniel Adamson and Co., of Newton Moor, having two cylinders 6 in. diameter, 10 in. stroke, started from Ashton-under-Lyne at 4.30 a.m. for the show ground at Old Trafford, a distance of over eight miles. The larger engine, made by Messrs. Adamson and Co., is a very well-constructed engine, and had a good quarter of a mile start of the smaller machine. The little one, with five passengers upon it, passed the other in the first mile, and kept a good lead of it all the way, arriving at Old Trafford under the hour, having to go steady through Manchester. The engine made by Mr. Boulton ran the first four miles in sixteen minutes. The running of both engines is considered very good. On arrival at Old Trafford they tested their turning qualities, and both engines turned complete circles of 27ft. diameter, both to right and left, frequently.”

As usual with this sort of thing it poses a few new questions. What does "in accordance with previous arrangements" mean? It could be that it was a well organised affair with the city fathers giving the competitors special approval to conduct their road race.

However, a 0430 start could suggest they wanted to do it away from the gaze of the general public. That really is “sparrow’s fart” o’clock and, although I could be wrong, for summer seems such a distant memory at the moment, I don’t think it would have been light in Manchester on a late August morning. In any case, it doesn’t sound as if they were able to avoid the Manchester rush hour so there must have been plenty of people about who witnessed this event.

The story gets better.

Phil Hosken, Chairman of the Trevithick Society, points out that this race took place two years after the famous "Red Flag Act" of 1865, in which Parliament decreed that every "road locomotive" went no faster than 4mph on the open road and 2mph in towns. There was also the requirement that each self-propelled carriage had to be accompanied by three people, one of whom was supposed to walk well ahead of the vehicle carrying a red flag. Obviously, nobody could walk at speeds of up to 15 mph so this road race was an outlaw road race!

Maybe that is why there is some reticence surrounding this achievement.

As Karl puts it, now is the time “to write/blog/twit to promote this really basic and well kept secret.”

Not only is there scope for confusion between Adams and Adamson – more than one Boulton pops up. Fletcher quotes the claims of Mr Thomas Boulton for a small road locomotive built by Mr Isaac W. Boulton of Ashton-under-Lyne. Motoring historian David Burgess Wise credits J W Boulton with making half a dozen cars between 1848 and 1860. Both these other Boultons were the sons of Isaac Watt Boulton. In fact James Watt Boulton supplied much of the material to Bennett for his chronicles. Bennett credits IWB (not JWB) with building "a good many of them of different designs and sizes." It's such a shame that Fletcher did not cover these in more detail. Isaac Watt Boulton also designed a patent road wheel for road locomotives that cunningly increased the footprint of the wheel and gave better adhesion whilst reducing destructive forces on the road but his greatest claim to fame was as the operator, rebuilder and manufacturer of steam railway engines.

This seems to have eclipsed his fame as a racing car constructor – possibly the first one ever!

I think the remarks about the smaller machine being fleeter are highly significant. It won the race despite its opponent having a head start of a quarter of a mile. Without knowing the details of Adamson's machine, my guess is that it was a beautifully made, lumbering great beast. It was only when bicycle manufacturers began toying with powered vehicles later in the nineteenth century that the virtues of lightweight and nimbleness were really realised. The Adams road motor was probably a pioneer of these virtues and demonstrated that less was more.

Quite who the intrepid drivers were seems lost in the mists of time. In view of Phil’s point about the "Red Flag Act", maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. So what do we know of the victorious machine in this race?

For this we have to turn to of The Chronicles of Boulton's Siding. According to Bennett, Boulton created his road racer from a rail motor that had originally been built as a rail motor by W B Adams of the Fairfield Works at Bow, London. Rail motors were an attempt to make passenger vehicles more efficient and many railway companies made what were effectively powered railway coaches around the beginning of the twentieth century. Our man Adams was about fifty years ahead of his time with his engines. Bennett states that Adams was known to have built two well known rail motors, the Express that worked on the Eastern Counties Railway and the six-wheeled Fairfield, which worked on the broad gauge (7’ 0¼”) Tiverton branch of the Bristol & Exeter Railway. No mention of any other rail motors built by Adams seems to have occurred beyond Boulton’s example and Bennett suggests that his one may have been an experimental forerunner.

The circumstances of how it came into Boulton’s hands make me like this story even more – he found it on a scrap heap!

As Bennett puts it, “Late in the eighteen-fifties, Mr I W Boulton, being one day at the Ashbury Carriage Company’s Works, notices a peculiar machine in their scrap-heap which, on examination, proved to be a small steam-carriage… in excellent condition.” Recognising a bargain, “Mr Boulton made an offer which saved her from the scrap-heap and initiated a career that under various guises endured for about forty years.”

This illustration is from The Chronicles of Boulton's Siding and, is as Bennett describes it, "a fair representation of the machine" as a rail motor. It had only one 4¼ in. x 9 in cylinder under the footplate that drove the rear axle. The front axle was unpowered. It had a vertical boiler and frames were made of oak, 3” thick by 12” deep with space for about a dozen passengers but – in the tradition of all the best sporting machinery – no roof.

After a period of using the rail motor as a rail motor on the tracks of the Manchester, Sheffield & Leeds Railway – with their permission – Boulton rebuilt it into a road motor by substituting the front axle for a single wheel that could be steered. On 2’ 5” wheels, 20mph could be attained and in 1866 bigger rear wheels of 5’ 2” were fitted, which would have raised the potential for speed even more.

After the road race against the Adamson engine, Boulton hired it to the LNWR for experimental road cruises between Stafford and Birmingham, a distance of about 30 miles.

Later on, Boulton converted it into tramway engine and later still, in 1883, the Adams boiler and engine were adapted to drive machinery in the workshops of Boulton’s Siding. Ultimately, it was sold in 1897 to a farmer in Cheshire who used it for chopping hay, as Bennett puts it “perhaps the only instance of a steam horse being made to prepare fodder for its ancient rival.”

Tantalisingly, Bennett says that Boulton “issued a circular with a picture of the Adams as a road-motor.” Bennett's main concern was establishing what this engine looked like as a rail motor. Boulton's road motor exploits get more than a passing mention but a facsimile of this hand bill did not make it into The Chronicles and I’ve never seen a picture of it.

So was this the first motor race? It seems to me that it was. I wonder if any local papers in Manchester or Ashton-under-Lyne mentioned the race at the time. Frankly, I doubt it. Many people regarded such signs or progress on the road as dangerous and frightening - just like the parson who was chased by the model of Murdoch's Flyer (and didn't Trevithick call his first road motor ever the Puffing Devil?) The government was against them and public opinion favoured horse drawn carriages. I've never understood why - in my admittedly limited experience they handle like they have a mind of their own and not a very big mind, either. The readership of the Engineer would have been a more sympathetic audience and less likely to "dob" these guys in to the authorities.

So Old Trafford should be some kind of hallowed ground for all steam punks and gearheads. Maybe the site could be cleared and some sort of motordrome erected to commemorate. I am reliably informed that Old Trafford has only minor sporting associations these days - something to do with over-paid and over-rated prima donnas kicking around a pig's bladder to the adulation of one or two armchair fans watching on the telly. (Thanks for this, Andy.) It occurs to me that they could do that anywhere - nowhere else can claim to be the finishing line for the world's first motor race.