Jan Verbruggen (1712 – 27 October 1781) was a master gun-founder in the

Dutch Republic The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...

and later at the

Royal Arsenal The Royal Arsenal, Woolwich is an establishment on the south bank of the River Thames in Woolwich in south-east London, England, that was used for the manufacture of armaments and ammunition, proof test, proofing, and explosives research for ...

in Woolwich, London. He was also an artist.

Early life and career

He was born in 1712 in

Enkhuizen Enkhuizen () is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland and the region of West-Frisia. History Enkhuizen, like Hoorn and Amsterdam, was one of the harbour-towns of the VOC, from where overseas trade ...

in the Netherlands, son of Pieter Verbruggen and Maria Brouwer. In 1734 he married Eva van Schaack, and they had three children.De Vries van Doesburgh
VERBRUGGEN (Jan)
'' Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek''. Volume 3, page 1282. In 1740, he became gun-founder of the Dutch admiralty's foundry in Enkhuizen, and from June 1755 he was master gun-founder in

The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...

. After a few years he was suspended, the guns produced being considered unsound; his attempt in 1763 to obtain an appointment at the

in Woolwich, London was unsuccessful.

Artist

Verbruggen, a student of the artist Jan van Call the Younger, was also a painter of seascapes and coastal scenery, such as pictures of yachts and

East Indiamen East Indiamen were merchant ships that operated under charter or licence for European Trading company, trading companies which traded with the East Indies between the 17th and 19th centuries. The term was commonly used to refer to vessels belon ...

at or near Enkhuizen.

At the Royal Arsenal

By 1769 the British government's contracted gun-founders, William Bowers and Richard Gilpin, were due to retire, and Andrew Schalch, the master founder at the Royal Arsenal since 1718, produced few guns; his work had been considered unsatisfactory for several years. In consequence, on 12 January 1770 Jan and his son Pieter (1735–1786) were appointed master founders at the Royal Arsenal. In May 1770 they moved to England. At the Royal Brass Foundry they introduced a

horizontal boring machine A horizontal boring machine is a machine tool used to enlarge an already drilled or cast hole with high precision. It ensures the required diameter, coaxiality, and concentricity within very tight tolerances, often up to the micrometer level in hi ...

, for guns cast solid (instead of vertically reaming guns cast round a core); this system had been installed by Verbruggen at The Hague in the 1750s. They also rebuilt the furnaces and casting pits, and used precast moulds for cascabels. Verbruggen's horizontal boring machine was the first industrial size

lathe A lathe () is a machine tool that rotates a workpiece about an axis of rotation to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, deformation, facing, threading and turning, with tools that are applied to the w ...

installed in England.

Henry Maudslay Henry Maudslay ( pronunciation and spelling) (22 August 1771 – 14 February 1831) was an English machine tool innovator, tool and die maker, and inventor. He is considered a founding father of machine tool technology. His inventions were a ...

, the later inventor of many improvements to the

, worked as an apprentice in Verbruggen's workshop in Woolwich. The first guns made by the Verbruggens passed

proof test A proof test is a form of stress test to demonstrate the fitness of a load-bearing or impact-experiencing structure. An individual proof test may apply only to the unit tested, or to its design in general for mass-produced items. Such a struct ...

s in April 1774. Cannons,

mortars Mortar may refer to: * Mortar (weapon), an indirect-fire infantry weapon * Mortar (masonry), a material used to fill the gaps between blocks and bind them together * Mortar and pestle, a tool pair used to crush or grind * Mortar, Bihar, a village i ...

and

howitzer The howitzer () is an artillery weapon that falls between a cannon (or field gun) and a mortar. It is capable of both low angle fire like a field gun and high angle fire like a mortar, given the distinction between low and high angle fire break ...

s were made at the foundry; the proof record was higher than in earlier years, and the foundry was able to satisfy the requirements of the British services. Jan Verbruggen died in London on 27 October 1781 and was buried at the Dutch Church, Austin Friars on 2 November. His son Pieter continued as master founder at the Woolwich foundry.

Notes and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Verbruggen, Jan 1712 births 1781 deaths 18th-century Dutch engineers 18th-century Dutch painters 18th-century Dutch male artists Dutch marine artists Dutch mechanical engineers Government munitions production in the United Kingdom Military history of the Netherlands People from Enkhuizen Emigrants from the Dutch Republic Immigrants to the Kingdom of Great Britain