Two Weeks Later – March 31, 1778.
The air in Shropshire was thick with the scent of coal smoke and damp earth. Rolling hills stretched beyond the horizon, patched with heather and dotted with squat cottages, their chimneys belching pale ribbons into the cold spring sky. A river snaked through the valley below, sluggish and brown, but wide enough to bear barges. For Phillip, this was no rustic scene—it was the stage on which he would set fire to an empire.
He stood at the edge of a muddy clearing, boots sinking slightly into the damp soil. The land had cost him a tidy sum from a local squire, but it was perfect: iron ore deposits within a day's haul, coal pits already active nearby, and the Severn canal only a few miles downstream. Behind him, a temporary camp had sprung up—canvas tents for lodging, wooden sheds hastily erected for tools, and wagons piled high with charcoal, limestone, and iron pig stock.
And then there were the men.
Sebas had done his part in London, sending word through agents and taverns, spreading quiet offers of work for those with iron in their blood and skill in their hands. The result was a small but capable force:
12 blacksmiths, hardened men from Birmingham forges, with arms like iron bars and tempers to match.
8 furnace men, recruited from small foundries, each familiar with tending blast furnaces, stoking heat, and pouring molten iron without flinching.
5 carpenters, tasked with constructing the heavy timber scaffolding, trusses, and hoists the converter would need.
4 masons, experienced in lining furnaces with brick and clay, their knowledge invaluable for the refractory lining of the converter itself.
10 general laborers, broad-backed locals willing to haul, hammer, and dig so long as wages flowed.
In all, 39 men stood ready, gathered in a semicircle before Phillip as the morning mist curled around them. Their faces were wary—some doubted this young noble with his fine coat and strange ideas. But wages were wages, and his purse had spoken louder than their doubts.
Phillip let the silence hang a moment before speaking.
"Gentlemen," he began. "You've worked furnaces, forges, and smithies all your lives. You know iron—how stubborn it is, how brittle it can be. I am here to tell you we can do better. Stronger. Faster. Steel."
A murmur rippled through the group. The word was not foreign, but rare—an exotic import, not something ordinary men produced in bulk.
Phillip stepped forward, unrolling a set of drawings onto a makeshift table—a plank laid across two barrels. Rough sketches of a pear-shaped vessel, mounted on trunnions, with channels and pipes scrawled in bold ink.
"This," Phillip said, tapping the parchment, "is a converter. We will pour molten pig iron into it, blast air through the bottom, and in less than half an hour, what was brittle cast iron will become strong, workable steel."
"How does it work?" One of them asked.
Phillip leaned forward, resting both hands on the plank table.
"You've all made wrought iron," he said, his voice even. "You take pig iron from the furnace, hammer it, reheat it, hammer again. You work out the slag until the bar bends without breaking. It takes time. It takes muscle. And even then, the iron you get is softer than we'd like."
Several blacksmiths nodded—this much they knew too well. Hours of hammering, and still their tools bent if pushed too hard.
"Now," Phillip continued, tapping the sketch of the pear-shaped vessel, "imagine instead of hammering out the bad parts, we burn them away inside the metal itself. The carbon, the slag, the weakness—it turns to fire, to sparks, to smoke. The iron cleanses itself while it's still liquid. What comes out at the end is stronger than anything you've hammered on your anvils. That, my friends, is steel."
The men muttered, exchanging uncertain looks.
One of the older smiths spat into the dirt. "But air cools iron. Everyone knows that. You blow on a hot bar and it loses its heat."
Phillip allowed himself a small smile. "True—when the iron is solid. But when it's liquid?" He lifted his hand, palm open. "Inside, the carbon burns hotter than any forge you've tended. The blast of air doesn't cool it. It feeds the fire. The metal rages like a storm, boiling with sparks. And when the fury dies, what's left is steel that no hammer can match."
The crowd grew quiet. A few crossed their arms, frowning. Others leaned closer, eyes catching the edge of curiosity.
"Think of it like brewing ale," Phillip added, shifting his tone to something even plainer. "When you leave the dregs in, the ale turns sour. But when you let the yeast eat through it, when you let it burn itself out, what's left is clear, strong drink. This converter is a brewer's vat—for iron. Only instead of dregs, we burn away the impurities. Instead of ale, we draw out steel."
That drew a chuckle from one of the carpenters, who muttered, "If it makes iron as strong as I feel after a pint, then I'll believe it."
Phillip straightened, letting his gaze sweep the men. "I won't lie. It will be dangerous. The first time you see it, you'll think the vessel will burst, that the fire will burn us all alive. But I promise you—it will work. And when it does, you'll be the first men in all of Britannia to make steel by the ton, not the ounce."
The men were silent again, but this time, the silence was heavier—charged. Skepticism lingered, but so did possibility. They had all sweated over stubborn iron, cursed at brittle castings, prayed their work wouldn't crack under strain. To make steel in minutes, in bulk? It sounded like sorcery. And yet, the noble's confidence carried weight.
Sebas, standing a little behind Phillip, caught the shift in the men's faces and gave a small, approving nod.
Phillip rolled up the drawings with a snap. "Enough talk. Carpenters, you'll begin framing the scaffolding for the converter. Masons, start shaping the firebrick for lining. Furnace men, keep the pig iron flowing—we'll need plenty for our first pour. Blacksmiths, I'll need fittings for the tuyeres—pipes that will carry air into the heart of the vessel. Laborers, fetch stone, haul timber, dig where needed. By the time this month ends, we will have built the first true steelworks in this kingdom."
And with that, the camp burst into motion.
The blacksmiths broke away first, trudging toward their makeshift forges where charcoal already smoldered in stone pits. Bellows wheezed as they pumped air into the fire, coaxing the coals into a roaring glow. Iron bars, scavenged from foundries and workshops, were heated and hammered into the shape of pipes and fittings. Sparks danced in the gloom, bright showers that hissed when they landed in puddles of mud.
The furnace men worked nearby, tending to the blast furnace Phillip had ordered erected at the edge of the clearing. It was crude compared to what he knew from his own time—brick and clay piled high with iron bands tightening its girth—but the fire within was alive and hungry. They fed it coal and limestone, stoking it until the heat shimmered in the air and the first streams of pig iron dribbled into waiting molds. The smell of burning stone and sulfur coated the air, acrid and heavy.
Phillip moved between groups like a conductor directing an orchestra. At the carpenters' scaffolding site, he crouched beside a timber frame, running his hands along the beams.
"Brace these diagonally," he told them, drawing a quick triangle in the dirt. "Without it, the whole thing sways like a drunk on a Saturday night."
The carpenters laughed, nodding. One, a tall fellow with a scar across his cheek, tapped the timber with his mallet. "We'll set it straight, my lord. Strong enough to hold the devil himself if he climbs inside."
Phillip grinned faintly, though his mind remained fixed on the image of the converter. If the scaffolding gave way when molten iron was inside, it wouldn't be the devil they feared—it would be fire, metal, and death.
The masons were slower, more deliberate. They sat hunched over mixing troughs, stirring clay and powdered stone with bare hands until it clumped together. The work was messy, their arms stained red up to the elbows. They tested small batches in the furnace, drawing out chunks of hardened brick to check for cracks. Phillip watched closely, making adjustments.
"Too much sand, and it crumbles. Too little, and it won't breathe with the heat. Add more lime—yes, there."
He stayed long enough to shape a brick himself, pressing the clay into a mold. When he lifted it free, it bore the sharp edges he wanted. The masons muttered approvingly, surprised that a noble would dirty his hands so willingly.
All around, the general laborers carried the weight of the operation. They hauled timbers across their shoulders, rolled barrels of limestone, and dug pits for waste slag. Their laughter and curses rang through the camp, rough but steady, the rhythm of men who had known only hard work all their lives. Phillip made a point of speaking with them, even briefly. "You're building history," he told one man straining at a wagon wheel. "Someday, people will look back and remember this spot."
The man snorted, grinning through his sweat. "If they remember me, my lord, let it be with a mug of ale in hand."
Days passed in a haze of labor and smoke. The scaffolding climbed higher each morning, its timbers lashed with ropes, its joints tightened with iron nails forged on-site. By the fifth day, a wooden frame large enough to cradle the pear-shaped vessel stood against the sky.
The masons followed, brick by brick. They laid the lining in careful courses, curving it inward until the rough shell of the converter took shape. The trunnions—great iron pivots—were hoisted into place with groaning pulleys, the ropes creaking under the strain. When they settled into their sockets, the men cheered, for the vessel finally looked like something more than sketches on parchment.
But not everything went smoothly.
On the seventh day, a timber split under the weight of a hoisted beam, sending one carpenter tumbling into the mud below. His leg snapped with a sickening crack. Work ground to a halt until Phillip himself stepped forward. He called for splints to be cut, ordered the man carried to a tent, and promised his wages would continue.
"You'll heal," Phillip told him firmly. "When you do, you'll come back and see the steel we've made."
The men exchanged glances, their doubts tempered by respect. Nobles rarely cared for broken workers. Yet this one did.
The next mishap came when a batch of clay cracked too soon, the bricks crumbling to dust when fired. Phillip spent an evening with the masons, sleeves rolled to his elbows, mixing new batches until his hands blistered. By torchlight they tested again, and this time the bricks rang like struck stone when they cooled.
At night, the camp was alive with fire. For the blacksmiths, sparks burst like stars each time hammer met anvil. For the furnace men, molten streams hissed as they poured pig iron into molds. The laborers sat around campfires, drinking ale, their eyes darting often to the looming silhouette of the converter that grew larger each day. Some joked nervously about sorcery, others boasted of the wages they'd spend once the lord's "mad machine" worked.
Phillip, sitting at his desk inside a drafty wooden shed, sketched and re-sketched the vessel's details. Every tuyere, every brick lining, every pulley had to be perfect.
By the twelfth day, the converter stood whole. Its pear-shaped body loomed above the scaffolding, brick walls cured and hardened, tuyeres fitted snugly into its base. Air hissed through them when tested, a promise of the storm to come. The carpenters added walkways at the top, narrow platforms where men could peer into the vessel once it roared with fire.
On the fourteenth day, Phillip stood before it, boots sunk in the mud, his violet eyes reflecting the glow of the setting sun. Around him, the men gathered in silence, their faces smeared with soot and pride.
"There it is," Phillip said softly. "The first Bessemer converter in Britannia."
Phillip laid a hand against the warm stone of its side. "Tomorrow," he whispered, "we light it."