The Forgotten Man
Thanks are due to PP Gordon Millington who gave an impromptu address on the the "forgotten Belfast engineer - Alexander Mitchell" Monday 23 March, as the scheduled speaker was unable to attend due to being unwell with flu. The influential Mitchell received the special honour of being made a member of the Institute of Chartered Engineers - significant as he had no university degree - however he has been largely forgotten by his home city and thus PP Gordon has begun to research him believing he deserves increased recognition.
One of 13 children and 8 sons Alexander was born in Dublin 1780, his father being an Inspector General of Army Barracks, and then moved to Belfast when he was 7. He received his formal education at BRA where he excelled at mathematics and music playing the harpsichord, violin and harp. Following progressive sight loss in his teens he became totally blind aged 23. Undeterred, on leaving school he used his £300 inheritance, due when he was 23, to borrow a further £100 and set up a successful brick factory in Ballymacarett inventing several machines to automate the process. He capitalised on this success using the money to invest wisely in property and selling the business whilst still in his 20's.
However it is as the inventor of the "screw-pile" system for erecting structures on uncertain marine foundations that he is renowned. It was designed initially for a ship repair company who wanted a means of securing ships to be tied up for repair without a quay; but his "mud screw" famously underpinned its first lighthouse built on Maplin Sands in the Thames Estuary and was then employed for lighthouses and other structures all over the world. He modestly described it as 'a simple means of constructing durable lighthouses in deep water in shifting sands'. PP Gordon revealed that he used his screw system to build a pilot and lighthouse in Belfast Lough between Carrickfergus and Cultra – a fact not many people know.
He had an office in London's Great George Street, near the seat of Government as at that time any major engineering work needed an Act of Parliament! However he continued to live in Belfast where he was friendly with and visited often by many of the notable progressive men of the day including Henry Joy McCracken and James McDonnell, founder of the now Linenhall Library.