Lord Palmerston, to inspect the process. Palmerston's visit was followed in April 1863 by one from the lords of the admiralty, who saw rolled a plate twelve inches thick and fifteen to twenty feet long. The latter visit was the subject of an article in 'Punch' (18 April 1863). The admiralty were convinced of the merits of Brown's methods, and the royal commission on armour plates ordered from his works nearly all the plates they required. In a few years he had sheathed fully three fourths of the British navy.
In 1856 he concentrated in Saville Street, Sheffield, the different manufactures in which he had been engaged in various parts of the town. His establishment, styled the Atlas Works, covered nearly thirty acres, and increased until it gave employment to over four thousand artisans. He undertook the manufacture of armour plates, ordnance forgings, railway bars, steel springs, buffers, tires, and axles, supplied Sheffield with iron for steel-making purposes, and was the first successfully to develop the Bessemer process, and to introduce into Sheffield the manufacture of steel rails. He received frequent applications from foreign governments for armour plates, but invariably declined such contracts unless the consent of the home government was obtained. During the civil war in America he refused large orders from the northern states.
In 1864 his business was converted into a limited liability company, and he retired to Endfield Hall, Ranmoor, near Sheffield. He was mayor of Sheffield in 1862 and 1863, and master cutler in 1865 and 1866, and was knighted in 1867. He died without issue at Shortlands, the house of Mr. Barron, Bromley in Kent, on 27 Dec. 1896, and was buried at Ecclesall on 31 Dec. In 1839 he married Mary (d. 28 Nov. 1881), eldest daughter of Benjamin Scholefield of Sheffield.
[Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 28 Dec. 1896; Times, 11 Aug. 1862, 28 Dec. 1896.]
BROWN, ROBERT (1842–1895), geographical compiler, the only son of Thomas Brown of Campster, Caithness, was born at Campster on 23 March 1842. He was educated at Edinburgh University, where he graduated B.A, in 1860, and afterwards at Leyden, at Copenhagen, and at Rostock, where he obtained the degree of Ph.D. In 1861 he visited Spitzbergen, Greenland, and Baffin's Bay, and during the next two years he visited the Pacific, and ranged the continent of America from Venezuela to Alaska and the Behring sea. He was botanist to the British Columbia expedition, and commander of the Vancouver exploration of 1864, when the interior of the island was charted for the first time under his supervision. He visited Greenland with Mr. Edward Whymper in 1867, making a special study of the glaciers, and developing strong views upon the subject of the erosive powers of ice (cf. Geog. Journal, vols, xxxix. and xli.) Subsequently he travelled in the north-western portions of Africa. In 1869 he settled at Edinburgh, holding the post of lecturer in natural history in the high school and at the Heriot-Watt college. He became a frequent contributor to the periodical press upon geographical subjects, and wrote occasional memoirs for the 'Transactions' of the Linnean and Geographical Societies, varying geographical research with botany. In 1875-6 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the chair of botany in Edinburgh University, and his failure to obtain the post told heavily upon a very sensitive nature. He did a quantity of work for 'Chambers's Encyclopædia' and other works of reference, and in 1876 was writing for the 'Academy,' the 'Echo,' and the 'Standard,' his connection with these papers necessitating his removal to London in that year. Thenceforth he devoted a great part of his time to the preparation of popular geographical works, most of which were published by Messrs. Cassell in serial form. They include 'The Races of Mankind; being a Popular Description of the Characteristics, Manners, and Customs of the Principal Varieties of the Human Family' (London, 1873-6, 4 vols. 4to); 'The Countries of the World' (1876-81, 6 vols. 8vo); 'Science for All' (1877-82, 5 vols. 8vo); 'The Peoples of the World' (1882-5, 5 vols. 8vo); 'Our Earth and its Story' (based on Kirchoff's 'Allgemeine Erdkunde,' 1887-8, 2 vols. 8vo); and 'The Story of Africa and its Explorers' (1892-5, 4 vols. 8vo). Issued for the most part in weekly or monthly parts, and copiously illustrated, most of these works have been reissued in one form or another. These bulky compilations were commended in the press, proved widely popular, and did much to disseminate the results of geographical science, if not to advance geographical thought, but they scarcely gave Brown an opportunity of exercising his full powers. Apart from them he published 'A Manual of Botany, Anatomical and Physiological,' in 1874, and in the following year edited Rink's 'Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo;' in 1892 he collaborated with Sir R. L. Playfair in his valuable 'Bibliography of Morocco;' and in 1893 he edited Pellew's
