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Colburn's article of 1864 seems to have been of some importance to Mushet, who, in the prospectus of the Titanic Steel and Iron Company, Ltd., issued soon after, brazenly asserted that, "by the process of Mr. Mushet especially when in combination with the Bessemer process, steel as good as Swedish steel" would be produced at £6 per ton.
The three years between 1856 and 1859, when Bessemer opened his own steel works in Sheffield, were occupied in tracing the causes of his initial difficulties. There was continued controversy in the technical press. By this time Bessemer's process was accepted as a practical one, and the claims of Robert Mushet to share in his achievement was becoming clamorous. Robert Mushet
Mushet's description of the preparation of this ingot shows that it was derived from "Bessemer scrap" made by Ebbw Vale in the first unsuccessful attempts of that firm to simulate the Bessemer process. This scrap Mushet had remelted in pots with spiegel in the proportions of 44 pounds of scrap to 3 of melted spiegel.
The Engineer, 1862, vol. 14, p. 3. Bessemer, op. cit. Mining Journal, 1864, vol. 34, p. 478. Mushet and Bessemer That Mushet was "used" by Ebbw Vale against Bessemer is, perhaps, only an assumption; but that he was badly treated by Ebbw Vale is subject to no doubt.
Mushet, in his 'Papers on Iron, says, that "although he had carefully examined every spot and relic in Dean Forest likely to denote the site of Dud Dudley's enterprising but unfortunate experiment of making pig-iron with pit coal," it had been without success; neither could he find any traces of the like operations of Cromwell and his partners.
No information is available as to whether Martien's own furnace was actually installed at Ebbw Vale, although as noted above, David Mushet claims to have been invited to see it there. Joseph P. Lesley, The iron manufacturer's guide, New York, 1859, p. 34. Martien's name is spelled Marteen.
The study of Mushet's letters to the technical press and of the attitude of the editors of those papers to Mushet suggests the possibility that he, too, was used by Ebbw Vale for the purposes of their attacks on Bessemer.
Bessemer at any rate was persuaded to approve of the presentation and attended the meeting. Mushet himself did not accept the invitation, "as I may probably not be then alive." The President of the Institute emphasized the present good relations between Mushet and Bessemer and the latter recorded that the hatchet had "long since" been buried.
Mushet, "soon gave rise to the Gartsherrie and Dundyvan furnaces, in the midst of which progress came the use of raw pit-coal and the Hot Blast the latter one of the greatest discoveries in metallurgy of the present age, and, above every other process, admirably adapted for smelting the Blackband ironstone."
Lest his qualifications should be questioned, Mushet concludes: I do not profess to be an iron chemist, but I have undoubtedly made more experiments upon the subject of iron and steel than any man now living and I am thereby enabled to say that all I know is but little in comparison with what has yet to be discovered.
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