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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2023
‘I have no fear but the work will soon be done. In that part of the country there are a great many men known by the name of “navigators” who have much experience in work of this description.’ So spoke H. C. Lacey, Chairman of the Ely & Huntingdon Railway at the half-yearly meeting of the company held on 29th July 1845. These words are of interest because they show that the term ‘Navigators’ was coming into general use, soon to be shortened to ‘navvies’.
An enormous number of workmen was needed to build a railway, and they were concentrated in a small area. When the line was finished, the men were turned adrift, and might live as vagrants until a new scheme was advertised, and this would seldom be in the same neighbourhood as the last. These figures give an indication of the scale on which work proceeded:
Total railway route mileage completed 1825-44 2,235
Total of new mileage completed by 1845 .. 2,523
Total of new mileage completed by 1846 .. 3,157
Total of new mileage completed by 1847 .. 3,870
Total of new mileage completed by 1848 .. 5,123
Hamilton Ellis, is his work British Railway History says :
‘The engineering contractor was a new figure in British commercial life. With the coming of the railways the country saw the largest programme of heavy public works which it had known since the building of the great cathedrals and abbeys in the middle ages. The only thing which anticipated railway construction had been that of the canals, and from this stemmed the navigators, quaintly named for they had nothing to do with working any sort of craft - the navvies, the cream of British heavy labour and perhaps the most ferocious and voracious race of men to be let loose on the land since Cromwell produced his Ironsides. They formed the contractors’ armies and the king of contractors was Thomas Brassey. The Grand Junction Railway gave Brassey his real start. One fact that emerged from Brassey’s Grand Junction contract was his extraordinary ability to deal with the navvies.
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