Enoch Hughes
Migrating to Australia, at a time when there was little technical knowledge of the iron industry in the colonies, Hughes became an influential figure, largely because he was self-confident in his own abilities, a tireless worker, and an avid self-promoter.
In partnership with Benjamin Marks,[4] he set up the Victoria Rolling Mill and Iron Fencing Company, in Dudley St, West Melbourne, which opened in June 1860.
From 1860 to mid-1862, Hughes was winning tenders for ironwork, including wrought-iron fencing for the Melbourne Botanic Gardens[7] and a grate for Pentridge Prison.
[16] It seems likely, however, that Hughes had been working to interest Lattin in providing the financial backing for the venture—since late 1862 at least—with the prospect of a contract for 10,000 tons of iron rails as the key incentive.
[19] Hughes had left England at a time when blast furnace technology was changing rapidly, and he had not kept his knowledge current.
[27] This venture initially reworked scrap iron, rolling into it into metal bars, but later for a time also puddling imported pig-iron;[26] it operated successfully for many years at Pyrmont,[28] relocating to Alexandria in 1938[29] and still in business in the 1950s.
A statement that he made under oath during his bankruptcy hearing, about his father's control of the brick-making venture, led to Hughes's committal and trial on a charge of perjury in December 1865.
[25][38] In October 1867, under the pseudonym "E.H.", he wrote the first of a series of letters to newspapers extolling Newcastle, N.S.W., as a location for an iron works, complete with estimates of production costs.
[40] Enoch Hughes and his brother leased the puddling furnaces and rolling mill of the Fitzroy Iron Works between February and June 1868.
[48][49] But apparently he fell out with his partners in this potential iron-making venture,[50] and they held the lease over the ore-bearing land at Piper's Flat.
[51] The site near Wallerawang was, in the eyes of experts at the time, a uniquely promising location for an iron and steelworks, but, despite some later attempts, nothing was ever built there.
[54] This time, the venture was able to obtain some important and influential shareholders, particularly James Rutherford, John Sutherland (N.S.W Minister for Public Works),[53] Daniel Williams, and Thomas Denny (owner of the Denison Foundry in Bathurst), resulting in the establishment of the Lithgow Valley Iron Company (later the Eskbank Ironworks) at Lithgow.
[58][59] The end of the rival blast furnace operations at Mittagong, in March 1877,[60] boosted the prospects of the newer Lithgow works.
[61] With a scarcity of suitably skilled labour in the colony, Hughes recruited workers from the ranks of immigrant ironworkers arriving from Great Britain.
Hughes had engaged in a public debate—via letters to newspapers in August–September 1885—with W. M. Foote, lecturer on iron and steel to the Board of Technical Education.
In a speech that he had made, Foote had advanced the proposition that it was not the lack of tariff protection that had resulted in the failures of the iron-making operations at Mittagong and Lithgow, but rather, "ignorance, bungling stupidity, and mismanagement".
[73][74] Although Foote had been very rude to Hughes, in the way that he had stated his argument, the demonstrably poor outcomes tended to support the thrust of his accusations.
As a footnote to this controversy, by 1892, Foote had changed his tune somewhat and was advocating protection of locally-rolled iron,[76] but he remained implacably opposed to a bonus payment as an inducement to commence local production.
[82] Hughes took over as manager of the Onehunga works in August 1887, contracted to erect and operate the rolling mills to re-roll iron made from scrap.
[91] He should have been aware of the failure of an earlier attempt to smelt iron sands, in a blast furnace near New Plymouth, but seems to have drawn the wrong conclusions from its partial success in making some pig-iron.
In early September 1890, the furnace was 'allowed to cool', reportedly as a result of insufficient coal, due to industrial trouble at the mines,[96] and was never used again.
In late October 1890, Hughes was advocating the erection of a blast furnace at Kamo near Whangārei, where there was an iron ore deposit, with coal and limestone nearby.
[101] In September 1892, Hughes was made general manager of The Australian Gas Retort and Firebrick Manufacturing Company, of South Yarra, in Melbourne.
Although other erstwhile business associates held less favourable views of his character and abilities,[50][64][63][107] Hughes was, nonetheless, a pioneer of the industry, for better or worse.
[13][30] However, the iron works at Onehunga closed by August 1895,[108] and a commercially-viable process to smelt ironsand[109]—now the basis of the modern steel industry of New Zealand—was not developed until the 1950s.
Although he was there only at its very beginnings, the enterprise that Hughes founded at Lithgow, in 1874, did carry on, under various ownership and operating arrangements,[63][110][111] until it was relocated to the coast at Port Kembla, between 1928 and 1932, as Australian Iron & Steel.
