Later Life
John Penn became a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1848 and served as its president on two occasions (in 1858–1859, and again in 1867–1868). In June 1859 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; the citation said:
- John Penn CE (Civil Engineer). The Inventor of Several Parts of Marine Steam Engines and Machinery Connected with Steam Navigation. Distinguished for his acquaintanceship with the science of mechanics. Eminent as a Mechanician and Engineer. From personal knowledge John Penn CE (Civil Engineer). Signed W Cubitt; Thos. Sopwith, Joseph Whitworth; Rob Stephenson and others.
In 1860 Penn was a founder member of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects.
In 1872 Penn's two elder sons entered into the firm's partnership, and Penn became less active in the business, eventually retiring completely in 1875. Towards the end of his life Penn became paralysed in his lower limbs, and later he became blind. During his retirement, he visited France, Belgium, Holland and Italy by steam yacht. He died at his home, The Cedars, Lee, London, on 23 September 1878, survived by his wife, and was buried nearby at St Margaret's Church, Lee, on 29 September. The Kentish Mercury and Greenwich Gazette wrote of him as 'Greenwich’s greatest son'. By the time of his death the firm had built engines for 735 ships, ranging from river ferries to battleships.
Aside from the advancements made in marine engineering, John Penn is remembered in Greenwich through street names and buildings. John Penn Street in Greenwich, which once ran down one side of the works site, remains, as do the Penn Almshouses in South Street, built in 1884 in memory of the second John Penn. He is also represented in Deptford, such as the arched riverfront of the boiler works, and in Lee, south of Blackheath, John Penn's grand house The Cedars still stands, although now converted into flats.
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