It is significant, in view of the later developments of the firm of Vosper, that the company began as engineers. Herbert Edward Vosper himself was an engineer with a very considerable talent for innovation. The first recorded instance of this is his 1870 patent (No 2657) when he was 19 or 20, for a direct-acting steam engine -the device being a lost motion linkage to the slide valve. He also designed a simplified boiler feed pump, using a rotating piston to distribute the steam, which Vosper & Co continued to manufacture up to the mid-1920s. H E Vosper, at an early age, must have allied business ability and resources to his technical knowledge and inventiveness, for in 1871, when he was 21, he was setting up workshops on the Camber, the small commercial dock on the east side of the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour, which were to form the base for the work of Vosper & Co until the late 1930s. The early years were employed largely in refitting and repairing coasting vessels, but Vosper quickly built up its own range of steam reciprocating engines, compound (ie, two cylinders) and triple-expansion. These were fitted to a variety of craft yachts, tugs, tenders, and launches for the War Office and Admiralty. Many orders were for export, particularly in South American river boats.
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