Michael Davenport (1773-1825) was born at Sheffield, the son of Matthew (1744-1809), a cutler, and his wife, Mary née Nelson.  Michael was married twice and had a large family, but less is known about his working career.  He was apparently apprenticed to his father, a knife maker, and was granted his Freedom in 1802.   But his name did not appear in directories at that time.   Michael Davenport & Co, a table knife manufacturer, was publicised in the pages of The London Gazette, 27 October 1807.  But the notice only recorded that the partners (Michael Davenport, Samuel Bentley, and Edmund Wilson) had dissolved the firm.  Bentley & Wilson was listed in 1811 as a wholesale ironmonger at Norfolk Street.  But Davenport was declared bankrupt in 1808.  He remained indebted to creditors for some years and no longer appeared in directories.  He was buried at St Peter’s churchyard on 3 February 1825.  The burial register recorded that he was a cutler, living at Cornhill, and was aged 51.  Years later he was remembered by a local worthy as a table knife cutler in the neighbourhood of Broad lane.  He was said to have had ‘a great genius for mechanical inventions .  He got a boat about three feet long, and fitted it up with a steam engine, which he himself had made’.  But a practical test in a local pond was an embarrassing failure in front of a crowd of expectant onlookers.  ‘But … Michael was perfectly right in his idea and in his firm belief that boats and ships might, and certainly would, be so constructed as to be propelled by steam power’ (Leader, 1876¹).   

^1. Leader, Robert E, Reminiscences of Old Sheffield (Sheffield, 2nd edn 1876)