| Sharpe of Co. Durham - Genealogy Home Page |
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The Sharpe family were a working class family from Co. Durham, who had for a number of generations lived in the
parish of Redmarshall. In the 1820's, at the start of
the railway boom, John Sharpe, the eldest of three brothers,
started to work on the railways, initially as a navvy.
John worked his way up to be a foreman on the Great Western and then later became a sub-contractor on the same line. His two younger brothers followed suit, and soon John, Robert and Paul were taking contracts on the Bristol and Exeter, the Gloucester and Birmingham, the South Devon and the South Wales. By the 1850's Robert and Paul were working in Cornwall.
In 1860 Robert Sharpe signed a more ambitious contract than any of the brothers had hitherto attempted. Under the company name Robert Sharpe & Sons, he and his two sons Paul Wallace and William John made an agreement with the San Paulo Railway Company to build the whole of the track from Jundiahy to the port of Santos (via São Paulo) for the sum of £1,745,000. During the building of this line, they encountered several problems. An existing bridge which the line was intended to use was found to be insufficient, and they were required to build a new bridge, of great magnitude and difficult construction. Later the Cubatas River flooded and washed away a different bridge which they had built to the engineers plans, and they were required to rebuild a new bridge, greater than before and more expensive. Towards the completion of the work they encountered yet more problems, this time on the stretch of line running up a mountain called Serra. The original plans which the engineer had made were scrapped, and new plans were drawn up which required 4 million cubic yards of earth to be excavated - double the original calculation.
Robert Sharpe & Sons Railway Contractors 1 Victoria Square, Westminster The work was completed and handed over on 1st October 1866, and was accepted by San Paulo Railway Company. Robert Sharpe & Sons claimed that it was entitled to payment for works carried out which were outside the scope of the contract, but the company refused to pay. Robert Sharpe died in 1868, but his sons continued to try to reclaim the money in court, from both the Company, and from the chief engineer James Brunlees. The 1873 court case Sharpe v. San Paulo Railway Company is still quoted in modern day contract law Presumably Robert Sharpe & Sons sank into insolvency. Paul Wallace continued to work as a civil engineer until he died in 1908. |
