E & F N Spon London & New York “INK-PHOTO.” SPRAGUE & CO. LONDON.

NEWTON CUTTING ON THE BIRMINGHAM CANAL
(TAME VALLEY).

WATERWAYS
AND
WATER TRANSPORT

IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES:

WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE PANAMA, SUEZ,
MANCHESTER, NICARAGUAN, AND
OTHER CANALS.

BY

J. STEPHEN JEANS, M.R.I., F.S.S.,

AUTHOR OF ‘ENGLAND’S SUPREMACY’; ‘RAILWAY PROBLEMS,’ ETC.

E. & F. N. SPON, 125, STRAND, LONDON.
NEW YORK: 12, CORTLANDT STREET.
1890.

[INTRODUCTION AND OUTLINE.]

It would probably be difficult to name any subject that is of more importance to the material interests of a country than adequate means of transport. Without such means, nations possessed of the most abundant natural resources in many other respects would be likely to decay. With ample facilities of transport, however, the most limited natural resources may be made to go a long way, and nations that are not possessed of great natural endowments may even rise to a high place in the economy of human industry.

Transportation facilities naturally divide themselves into the two categories of facilities by land and facilities by water. The former category embraces highways and railroads; the latter includes the navigation of seas, lakes, rivers, and canals.

It is the purpose of this volume to deal with water transport only, and more particularly that part of water transport which is carried on by means of artificial waterways. Railway transport, therefore, will only be incidentally referred to. Nor do we propose to expatiate to any extent upon the navigation of seas and lakes, which is a matter quite apart from canal and river navigation, and is usually carried on under very different conditions.

Canals are usually ranged under one or other of three great categories, namely:—

1. For purposes of navigation.
2. For irrigation, and
3. For domestic water supply.

Under the first heading there are many different descriptions of waterways, the more important being—

a. Canals intended for the purpose of connecting oceans or seas, such as those of Suez, Panama, the North Sea, and Nicaragua.

b. Canals for the purpose of bringing the sea to an inland town, such as those of Manchester and St. Petersburg.

c. Canals designed to connect and complete communication between different rivers or lakes, like the Grand Canal of China, the Erie Canal, and the Welland Canal.

d. Canals constructed for the purpose of enabling the obstructions caused by falls or cataracts on natural waterways to be overcome by artificial means.

As water transport by the most efficient and most economical means practicable is the raison d’être of the present work, we shall speak for the most part of navigation canals only.

The chapters that follow will show, that canal navigation has not only an interesting, but a very ancient history. It is, indeed, so long since canals were first projected and constructed that it is extremely difficult to trace their beginnings.

The Bœotian Canal, which is said to have drained the Lake Mœris by several channels carried in tunnels through high mountainous barriers, is of such fabulous age as to have led fiction to usurp the place of history, and even of tradition, when describing the work at a period of time so far back as prior to the conquest of Greece by Rome.

The celebrated canals of China have been assigned an unknown antiquity, but trustworthy representations have led authorities to conclude that they are scarcely older than the works in the Deccan. At all events, they date from less than 900 years ago, a century subsequent to the first irrigation of Valentia. In Spain, the Moors constructed canals to connect inland places with rivers, particularly the Guadalquiver, and connecting Granada with Cadiz. They also introduced, when they conquered that country, their own system of irrigation, with the customs and laws relating thereto, which are followed at the present hour without material change.

Cresy has pointed out that Pliny’s correspondence with the Emperor Trajan proves the importance attached to the subject of waterways. “The consul in a letter points out such designs as were worthy the glorious and immortal name of Trajan, ‘they being no less useful than magnificent.’ He describes an extensive lake near the city of Nicomedia, upon which the commodities of the country were easily and cheaply transported to the high road, and thence were conveyed on carriages to the sea coast at great charge and labour. To remedy this inconvenience, he recommends that a canal should be, if possible, cut from the lake to the sea, observing that one had already been attempted by one of the kings of the country, but whether for the purpose of draining the adjacent lands, or making a communication between the lake and the river, was uncertain. These useful works, in common with all others, fell into decay with the decline of the Roman empire. During the disastrous period which succeeded, until the time of Charlemagne, Europe is deficient in any examples of similar undertakings: this sovereign commenced the projects of uniting the Rhine to the Danube, and of opening a new communication between the German Ocean and the Black Sea.”

The Romans were great canal-makers. They were, indeed, as their extant works in Italy, Spain, and other countries show to this day, very capable hydraulic engineers. But in Roman times, canals were constructed for irrigation and water-supply purposes, rather than for purposes of navigation. It was not until some centuries after the decline of the Roman power that navigation canals began to attract attention. Previous to the time when locks, sluices, and other works of engineering art became general, canals could only be carried through comparatively level territories. Hence we not unnaturally find that some of the earliest canals for navigable purposes were constructed in Holland, where the configuration of the ground is specially adapted to their construction.

Mr. Vignoles, in his address to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1870, remarked that, when the success of canals in the Low Countries attracted the attention of Europe, a sort of mania arose in France for inland navigation. Most of these were rendered abortive, and became abandoned, “from uncertainty in the supply of water on account of irregular rainfall, and from the pre-existing monopolies of the millers, who appear at all times and places to have been, as they still are, the natural enemies and thorns in the sides of the hydraulic engineer.” Navigation on the upper branches of rivers rapidly ceased, but concessions for canals in France were then given, the Canal de Briare being the earliest, and next the Languedoc Canal, though neither was finished until about forty years after their first imperfect commencement. So early as the twelfth century, large canals had been cut in Flanders, though the great canal from Brussels to the Scheldt was not completed until 1560. This, however, was about a century before Louis XIV. had finished the earliest canal in France.

Probably the first canal constructed in England was the Exeter Canal, a comparatively short waterway, completed in 1572. But the regulation and canalisation of rivers had been attempted long before that time. The improvement of the navigation of the Thames was undertaken in 1423; of the Lea, in 1425; of the Ouse (Yorkshire), in 1462; of the Severn in 1503; of the Stour (Essex), 1504; of the Humber, in 1531; and of the Welland, in 1571.

During the seventeenth century, again, many similar works were undertaken. The Colne, the Itchin, the Wye, the Avon, the Medway, the Wey, the Bure, the Foss Dyke, the Witham, the Fal and Vale, the Aire and Calder, and the Trent were all more or less canalised during the period between 1623 and 1699.

In the next century, projects for river improvement and canal navigation proceeded apace. In 1700, the rivers Avon and Frome were regulated. In the following twenty years improvements were carried out on the Dee, the Lark, the Derwent, the Frant, the Stour, the Nene, the Kennett, the Wear, the Weaver, the Mersey and the Irwell. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal was commenced in 1720, the Stroudwater Canal in 1730, and the Bridgwater Canal in 1737.

From this date, until 1794, canal navigation was extended rapidly, while Acts of Parliament were obtained for the improvement of the Ley, the Avon, the Cart, the Blyth, the Hebble, the Stort, and the Clyde. Between 1763 and 1800 upwards of eighty different canal projects were put forward, and most of them were completed. The Trent and Mersey, the Staffordshire and Worcestershire, the Droitwich, the Coventry, the Birmingham, the Forth and Clyde, the Oxford, the Monkland, the Leeds and Liverpool, the Chesterfield, the Bradford, the Ellesmere, the Market Weighton, the Bude, Sir John Ramsden’s, the Gresley, the Dudley, the Stourbridge, the Basingstoke, the Bedford, the Thames and Severn, the Shropshire Union, the Andover, and the Cromford Canals were all undertaken between 1767 and 1790. The following ten years, however, may be regarded as the heyday of canal-making in England. In 1791 the Hereford and Gloucester, the Leicester, the Manchester, Bolton and Bury, the Leominster, the Melton Mowbray, the Neath, and the Worcester and Birmingham Canals were commenced. Eighteen more canals were undertaken in 1793, and twelve others in 1794.

The same year that witnessed the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, saw also the construction of the English and Bristol Channels Canal, otherwise the Liskeard and Looe; but the number of canals constructed since 1825 has been very limited. Eight different canals were opened between 1826 and 1830, including the Macclesfield, the Birmingham and Liverpool, the Avon and Gloucestershire, and the Nene and Wisbech; but since 1830 the only canals for which Parliamentary sanction was obtained, until the Act was passed for the Manchester Ship Canal in 1886, were the Ellesmere and Chester Canal, and the Droitwich Junction Canal.

Since 1830 the canals of Great Britain have been under a great ban. The superior speed and the greater punctuality provided by railway transport have caused them to be neglected, and, with only a few exceptions, more or less disused. The railway system has been extended so rapidly, and has secured the carrying trade of the country so completely, that canals have until lately been regarded as practically obsolete and useless. Many miles of canal navigation have passed into the hands of the railway companies, while a considerable mileage has become derelict.

Although the railways have secured possession of some 1700 miles of canals in Great Britain, they do not appear to have profited much thereby. The Great Western Railway Company owns no less than seven canals, on which they have expended a million sterling. In 1887 one of these canals earned 2700l. profit, while the other six lost 1300l., besides the whole of the interest upon their capital cost.

The experience of the other railway companies has been more or less similar to that of the Great Western. The railways have been nursed and developed; the canals have been neglected and allowed to perish. The railway companies have been accused of acquiring canal property in order that they might destroy it, and thereby get rid of a dangerous rival. This is probably not the case. The railway companies are fully aware of the fact that water transport under suitable conditions is more economical than railway transport. It would therefore have suited them, at the same rates, to carry by water heavy traffic, in the delivery of which time was not of much importance. But the canals, as they came into their possession, were really not adapted for such traffic without being more or less remodelled, and this the railway companies have not attempted.

When we consider the enormous disadvantages under which the majority of the canals of this country now labour, the great matter for wonder is, not that they do not secure the lion’s share of the traffic, but that they get any traffic at all. A railway is usually carried from point to point by the most direct route possible, and the cases in which there is any considerable diversion from the most direct route are comparatively rare. But in laying out the canals the designers and promoters appear to have endeavoured to take the longest instead of the shortest route available. Thus, for example, the distance between Liverpool and Wigan is thirty-four miles by canal while it is only nineteen miles by railway. Again, the railway route from Liverpool to Leeds is eighty miles, whereas by canal the distance is not less than 128 miles. If the canal rates were very much lower than the railway rates, these differences would still be very much against them. But there is not really much difference between them at present, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, which is a fairly representative one, charging a halfpenny to twopence per ton per mile, according to the nature of the traffic. Then again, the speed on British canals can seldom be carried above 2½ miles per hour, not to speak of the delay in getting through the locks, of which there are ninety-three between Leeds and Liverpool.

It would be the idlest of idle dreams to expect that the canal system of this or any other country, as originally constructed, can be resuscitated, or even temporarily galvanised into activity, in competition with railways. Canals as they were built a century ago have no longer any function to fulfil that is worthy of serious consideration. Their mission is ended; their use is an anachronism. They do not provide the means of cheaper transport, and they have no other advantage to offer to the trader that would be a sufficient equivalent for the tedium of their transport. The canals of the future must be adapted to the new conditions of commerce. What we now require is that our great centres of population and industry shall be made seaports—that Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and other places, shall not suffer hurt because they are inland towns. The existing canals may serve as a valuable nucleus for the new departure. Their importance as a means to this end has already been practically recognised. The Manchester Ship Canal Company has acquired the Bridgwater Navigation. For the purposes of the projected Sheffield and Goole Ship Canal it is proposed to acquire several of the old navigations, including the Dearne and Dove Canal, the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, and other waterways. Other improved canals have been suggested, and Mr. Samuel Lloyd has advocated the construction of a great national canal which would connect all the principal industrial centres of the kingdom with each other and with the sea. There appears to be no insuperable difficulty in the way of realising such a project. Capital alone is wanted. Whether that essential will be forthcoming is, however, very doubtful. Much is likely to depend on the extent to which the Manchester Ship Canal is successful. It would be a mistake to go too quickly. If ship canal transport is likely to be a means of salvation to British trade and commerce, we shall not be much the worse if we wait for it a little longer. It is not well to do anything that would tend to destroy or discount the value of the vast railway property of this country. The traders have long been trying to “agree with their adversary,” in so far as they have differences with the railway companies; and if the latter are duly reasonable, the future may still be theirs.

It has been objected that a canal could not provide large manufacturers, mine owners, or others who now enjoy the advantages of sidings, giving direct connection with the railway system upon which their works or mines are situated, with the same facilities as they are now possessed of. This, however, is a mistake. The fact is that a wharf may be provided almost as easily and as cheaply as a railway siding. On some canals, as for example on the Birmingham system, the different works along the route of the canal have been supplied in almost every case with wharves, until they are now counted by hundreds.

Broadly stated, the problem that now presses for solution amounts to this—In what way can we best take advantage of the well-ascertained fact that under ordinary conditions a ton of goods can be transported about 2000 miles by water for the same cost that it can be sent 100 miles on land? It is no unusual thing to find that a ton of goods can be transported 40 miles by steamer for one penny, making allowance for every charge.[1] It is not, of course, pretended that goods can be carried by inland navigation for anything like this rate. But it has been well established that even on canals, with all the disadvantages of slow speed, limited depth, small boats, frequent locks, and other drawbacks, the transport of heavy traffic can be effected for less than one-sixth of a penny per ton per mile, which is not one-half of the lowest rates at which the railways of Great Britain carry mineral traffic at the present time. It is necessary to add that canal companies do not, in Great Britain at least, carry for anything like the low rate stated, except perhaps on the Weaver Navigation, which is quite exceptional.

An important question that naturally occurs to any one who has studied the history of canal navigation in foreign countries is that of how far it is the duty of the State to take such waterways under its control. This is really a political problem, which scarcely belongs to that part of the subject which we have undertaken to consider. It may, however, be observed that in the United States, in France, and in one or two other countries, canals have been acquired by the State, and made as free of tolls as the rivers. This, of course, affords to canal transport in those countries a striking advantage over the system in Great Britain. It has been calculated by a high authority[2] that an expenditure of 12,000l. per mile would be required to put the inland navigations of England into good order, and to adapt them generally for larger traffic, with steam-tugs and barges or boats of sufficient size. This would mean for the 3000 miles of canal already constructed an expenditure of 24,000,000l. It is calculated that about 20,000,000l. have already been expended upon our waterways,[3] so that the total outlay, after the expenditure suggested by Sir John Hawkshaw, would be about 44,000,000l. If the State were to borrow this sum, it could procure it, no doubt, at 3 per cent., which would mean that the total annual burden entailed upon the country by the freeing of the canals would be 920,000l., or only a ¹⁄₁₂₅ part of our total national expenditure. This is certainly a small price to pay for so desirable an object. But upon the proposal as just stated there are two important remarks to be made—the first, that the suggested expenditure of 12,000l. per mile would only give us canals adapted for the navigation of large barges or vessels of not more than 150 to 200 tons, whereas what is chiefly required is internal water communication that would enable an ordinary merchant steamer to sail right up to Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford, and other large towns; the second, that no such maritime ship canal has hitherto been constructed for less than 120,000l. per mile, including all contingencies.[4] The raising of this sum is a very different item from the raising of 12,000l. per mile. The most serious objection, however, would be the outcry on the part of the railway interest that the Government was entering into competition with private enterprise. This, of course, would be no new thing. The New York State canals compete with the railways, which are private property, and so do the canals of France. The duty of the State stops at providing the waterway. It does not, of course, undertake transportation. That business is left, like the same business on the railways, to private enterprise. The canals might, therefore, if acquired by the State, be regarded as so many additional miles of navigable rivers possessed by the country, or so many more miles of seaboard provided for the benefit of towns that have hitherto been shut out from direct maritime advantages. Canals are, indeed, entitled to be regarded in the same light as a common turnpike road. The State would hardly be likely to permit private ownership in turnpikes. The community at large are taxed for their maintenance, and there has never been any serious contention that it should be otherwise. The time has come when it behoves us to consider whether canals should not be similarly controlled and administered, since they are, without doubt, as necessary for the transport of goods as turnpike roads are for the passage of vehicles and pedestrians.

As to the reasons that have led the author to undertake the publication of the present volume, a remark or two may be permitted. In 1875 he undertook the preparation of a work[5] on the growth of the railway system up to that time for the Directors of the North-Eastern Railway, on the occasion of their celebration at Darlington of the Jubilee of the Stockton and Darlington line—the first passenger railway constructed in this country on which locomotives were employed. In inquiring into the history of that railway, he was struck with the importance that was attached half a century before to the possession of canal navigation, and with the great facilities that it afforded to the districts through which it was carried. Since then he has from time to time had occasion to look into the same subject, and especially so in 1882, when he was required to give evidence before the Select Committee on Railway Rates and Fares,[6] as to the differences that exist on English and Continental railways in the charges made for the transport of heavy traffic. He found also that, notwithstanding the lower rates of transport on Continental railways, very great importance was attached to the maintenance, in a high state of efficiency, of the waterways of all other countries in Europe except our own, and that in most other countries the State specially charged itself with the duty of seeing that this was effectually done. It was but a short step from the acquisition of this knowledge to the natural endeavour to ascertain why English canals were not deemed equally important to the trade and commerce of the greatest of commercial nations. The results of that inquiry are set forth in the following pages; but the author has not been content to examine the economic side of the case alone. Finding not only that the canals of the world had a most interesting history, which has never hitherto been set forth in the form of a continuous narrative, but that one of the most remarkable movements of the present time was a demand for artificial waterways, in order to reduce both the time and the distance now required for the intercourse of different important centres of our planet, and give inland towns a more direct connection with the sea, he has devoted much research to the investigation of the origin and growth of these enterprises, and has set down the results in as interesting and useful a form as he could.

A good deal of attention has been given in this work to the subject of isthmian canals. It has been suggested that a “ship and barge” railway would be an improvement upon both railways and canals in the joint advantages of economy and speed of transport This is an “American notion,” which has not yet, so far as we are aware, been put in practice, although it was put forward by the late Captain Eads, in the form of a project for a ship railway across the isthmus of Techuantepec, as the true solution of isthmian transit. It has been claimed that such a railway “can be operated and maintained at less cost than the canal, employ a rate of speed five times as great as is possible in the canal, can be operated for the whole twelve months of the year instead of six—or during the lake navigation, like the ship canal—will require no breaking bulk, and through freight can be hauled over it at 2½ cents per bushel of wheat,” i.e. for a distance of about 340 miles.[7] On the other hand, however, no one appears to have seriously prosecuted this enterprise since the decease of its gifted author, while two ship canals have been promoted across the American isthmus.

In the appendix will be found a large mass of information as to the extent of the British canal system, and the dates at which the principal canal and river navigations were executed. Some data as to the extent and character of the principal river systems have also been introduced in tabular form. It is not pretended that this latter information is by any means complete. The merest epitome of the rivers and river systems of all the countries of the world would itself fill a volume; but it is hoped that the most essential data have been supplied with sufficient fullness and accuracy.

In the best interests of British commerce and industry, we cannot do better than attempt to follow the excellent counsel given by Ald. Bailey, of Manchester, when he urged[8] that we should “make England to the world what London is to England: make every part of the verge, fringe, shore, creek, bay, river, and inlet of our map as equal as possible in relation to distance from the shores of foreign countries; increase the value of the silver streak, double the coast line, resuscitate the ancient ports, extend some more inland, make Britain narrower, shorten the distance from coast to coast, from sea to sea, and increase the setting of Shakespeare’s

‘Fortress built by nature for herself, This little world— This precious stone set in a silver sea.’”

FOOTNOTES
INTRODUCTION:

[1] Mr. Bailey, in his interesting address to the Manchester Association of Foremen Engineers, in 1886, stated that he had found this to be the cost of transport with a vessel of 2360 tons, including interest, depreciation, and insurance.

[2] Sir John Hawkshaw, in his evidence before the Select Committee on Canals, 1883.

[3] The total expenditure has been variously stated. Smiles, in his ‘Lives of the Engineers,’ puts it at one figure, while it was stated before the Select Committee on Canals at another.

[4] The actual cost of construction of the Suez Canal was about this amount, but the additional expenses incurred, and in the majority of cases necessary to such an enterprise, brought the cost up to 200,000_l._, which was also the average cost of the Amsterdam Ship Canal. The Manchester Ship Canal is estimated to cost some 250,000_l._ a mile.

[5] ‘Jubilee Memorial of the Railway System,’ Longmans.

[6] Report of Select Committee.

[7] ‘Transactions of the American Institute of Civil Engineers,’ vol. xiv. p. 48.

[8] Address to the Manchester Association of Engineers.

CONTENTS.

WATERWAYS AND WATER
TRANSPORT.

[SECTION I.]
THE WATERWAYS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.

[CHAPTER I.]
THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM.

“Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for civilisation.” —Macaulay.

The history of transportation is largely, and of necessity, the history of material progress. It is hardly possible to conceive of the prosperity of a people to whom the most precious possessions that the arts and sciences have bestowed upon mankind for the purposes of commerce were unknown. Such a people could, no doubt, exist, and perhaps maintain a considerable amount of rude health. But, like the aborigines of an unsettled and uncultivated territory, they would find themselves shut out from participation in the advantages which civilisation confers upon mankind. They would be exclusive, uncultivated, ignorant, incapable of great effort, limited in their capacity for enjoyment, subject to the constant danger of famine, and without the command of those amenities which have created such a gulf between the “rude forefathers of the hamlet” and the happy possessors of all that civilisation can bestow.

Only a very perfunctory acquaintance with the physical configuration of our planet is required, in order to show that the natural arrangement of land and water is not the most convenient that could be devised for the purposes of commerce and travel. The oceans and seas do not afford in all cases the most direct and desirable routes between one part of the world and another. Rivers of otherwise gigantic dimensions are now and again found to be possessed of rocky and shallow beds that are unsuited to navigation except by the tiniest craft. Promontories are projected into “the waste of waters,” compelling the navigator to sail for hundreds or thousands of miles further than “the crow flies” in order to reach his destination. Every here and there an isthmus is found to divide waters that appear as if they were intended by Nature to be joined together.

The same remarkable absence of facilities for promoting the requirements of commerce is apparent on land as on water. The surface of the earth, and the divisions of land and water, appear to have been left by Nature in such a condition as to tax the highest powers and capacities of man. The knowledge of roads, of bridges, of canals, has been laboriously acquired and slowly applied. The aboriginal inhabitants of a country usually care for none of these things. Beasts of burden are seldom used in the most primitive conditions of existence, and, without these, roads are not so much of a necessity. Man, however, found out, in course of time, that it suited his interests and his convenience to establish a system of interchange of commodities. The simple and self-contained habits of the trapper and the hunter gave place to a more composite order of being. Then it was that the primeval forest, the jungle, the morass, and the prairie became rectangulated with roadways over which traffic could be rudely transported on the backs of mules, horses, or other beasts of burden. As exchange and barter extended, the pack-horse was found inefficient. He could only perform a very limited day’s work, whether measured by quantity or by distance. For transport over great distances he was virtually useless. In the absence of any other system of transport, districts near the sea, or placed on navigable rivers with easy access to the ocean, became developed at the expense of other districts that had equal, and perhaps greater, facilities otherwise except those of transport. A notable case in point is that of the coal trade. For many years the export coal trade of this country was limited to an area within 12 miles of convenient ports, because coal could not be transported beyond that distance except at a virtually prohibitory cost.

A hundred and thirty years ago, England was in a very different position to that which she occupies to-day. So, also, was the rest of the world. The woollen trade was the greatest of our national industries. The cotton industry was just beginning to take a firm root The quantity of coal produced in Great Britain was estimated at five or six millions of tons per annum. The quantity of iron produced was believed to be about 100,000 tons. The only coalfield that had been developed to any extent was that of Durham and Northumberland. The working of coal far from the seaboard was impossible on a large scale, because there were no means of transportation that would allow of anything being carried more than a few miles, unless it were of the highest value. The cotton, woollen, silk, and other textiles were made by hand-looms, and for the most part in the private dwellings of the workers. The modern factory system had not come into being.

The condition of the roads, even so late as the middle of the eighteenth century, was in a very large number of cases a matter for just and serious complaint. Lord Hervey wrote from Kensington in 1736 that the road between that village (at that time) and London had become so bad that “we live here in the same solitude as we would do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean, and all the Londoners tell us that there is between them and us an impassable gulf of mud.” In London itself the pedestrians who made use of the public thoroughfares had to walk on the ordinary round paving-stones which are still employed in some towns for the centre of the road, pavements being unknown. The streets were lit with oil-lamps sufficiently to make darkness visible, gas not having been introduced. The common highway was also the common sewer. The ruts in the thoroughfares, even in the streets of London, made it dangerous to employ vehicles, which, indeed, except in the form of sedan-chairs, had not yet come to be largely employed.

But these dangers and troubles, manifest and inconvenient though they were, by no means exhausted the list. In the absence of a proper system of police, and with streets enveloped in darkness, there was serious danger incurred in stirring abroad after nightfall. The public thoroughfares were infested by bands of footpads and robbers. The main streets of London were the worst off, and so serious was the danger of going out at night that it was the rarest thing to find any one stirring after dark. So far was this system carried that robberies took place in broad daylight. Even such public places as Piccadilly and Oxford Street were not exempted from the common danger. Horace Walpole relates that he was robbed in this way, with Lord Eglinton, Lady Albemarle, and others. Those who had to travel to the adjacent villages of Paddington and Kensington were afraid to proceed alone. It was therefore customary to wait until a sufficiently numerous band had been collected to enable the pedestrians to resist any possible attack of footpads. The Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens, then the chief places of amusement in the vicinage of the metropolis, had to employ patrols to keep the way clear to London.

As in the metropolis, so in the provinces. The roads, both in the towns and outside them, were in many cases as bad as bad could be. Their not unusual condition was that of “a narrow hollow way, little wider than a ditch, barely allowing of the passage of a vehicle drawn by horses in a single line.” This deep, narrow road was flanked by an elevated causeway, covered with flags or boulder stones, along which the traffic of the locality was carried on the backs of single horses, so that “it is difficult to imagine the delay, the toil, and the perils by which the conduct of the traffic was attended.” Under these circumstances, “there were towns, even in the same county, more widely separated for all practical purposes than London and Glasgow in the present day.”[9] Business was done slowly, and involved so great an expenditure of time and trouble that prices were necessarily high. News travelled more slowly still, and it was sometimes months before the people who lived at the extremities of the island knew what had happened in the metropolis.

The reader who desires to obtain a graphic and eloquent account of the circumstances of England previous to the canal era could not do better than consult Macaulay, who, in the famous third chapter of his ‘History,’ has devoted a considerable amount of space to the consideration of the social and economic changes that had come over the country since 1685. The description given of the condition of the people in that year might almost be literally applied to their condition in the middle of the eighteenth century. The population had increased, it is true, and commerce had been developed in the interval. But the facilities for rapid and economical transportation had not been materially altered for the better. The great mass of the people were as ignorant, as superstitious, as shiftless as in the seventeenth century. Their sanitary surroundings were as unwholesome, their industrial pursuits as improvident, their habits as deplorable, their hardships as irksome, their discomforts and inconveniences as tiresome. From this remarkable record of the days of our forefathers we quote the following passages as being specially germane to the subject under consideration:—

“It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally passed from place to place; and those highways appear to have been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of wealth and civilisation which the nation had even then attained. On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the unenclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thoresby, the antiquary, was in danger of losing his way on the great North Road between Barnsley Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between Doncaster and York. Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger of having to pass the night on the Plain. It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the right and the left, and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quagmire. At such times obstructions and quarrels were frequent, and the path was sometimes blocked up during a long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way. It happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a team of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm to tug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the traveller had to encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded in his Diary such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert of Sahara.[10]

“The markets were often inaccessible during several months. It is said that the fruits of the earth were allowed to rot in one place, while in another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far short of the demand. The wheeled carriages were in this district generally pulled by oxen. When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth, in wet weather, he was six hours in going nine miles, and it was necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach in order to prop it. Of the carriages which contained his retinue several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party has been preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when his coach was overturned and stuck fast in the mud.”

A story is told of an old stage-coach driver who, finding that his occupation had been seriously interfered with by the modern innovation of railways, thought he would strike a blow for the old system by attacking the railway in a vulnerable part. “Consider,” he argued, “what happens in case of a collision. If two stage coaches come into collision, and there is an upset, why, there you are. But in a railway collision, where are you?” In those days stage coaches did not enjoy the immunity from disaster that they do in these, when macadamised roads enable them to roll along almost as if they were on a billiard table.[11] When the canal system was being fairly started in England, only one stage coach ran between London and Edinburgh, starting once a month from each city, and taking ten days for the journey in summer, and twelve days in winter. It took fourteen days to travel between London and Glasgow. In 1760 it took three days to travel from Sheffield to London, and in 1774 Burke travelled from London to Bath with what was described as “incredible speed” in twenty-four hours.

Much of the discomfort, the high range of prices, the general existence of poverty, the limited extent of commercial operations, in the early part of the eighteenth century was no doubt due to the imperfect development of the modern processes of manufacture and distribution—to the production of textiles by the old hand-loom, of iron by the old-fashioned type of blast-furnace, of steel by the costly cementation process, of clothing without the aid of the sewing-machine, and of agricultural crops without any of the mechanical aids to husbandry that are now so general and so conducive to economical working. But the high cost of transport had also much to answer for. Before the period of Macadam, it cost 2s. 6d. per mile to transport coal by the old pack-horse on an ordinary road. At this rate, it would have cost from 10l. to 15l. to transport a ton of coals from the Midland coalfield to London, a service which is now performed for 6s. to 7s. per ton. With only the old pack-horse facilities it would have cost an almost incredible sum to have performed the same service which the railways now render to the people of the United Kingdom in the transport of minerals and merchandise.

While the knowledge of the arts, and especially of the arts that relate to transportation, were in so backward a state, it was inevitable that the prices of commodities should be high, and their interchange limited. Having to pay so much for the articles that they did not grow or produce themselves, the people of England, in the middle of the eighteenth century, were extremely poor, as a rule, and had very little chance to increase their wealth. The wages of the working classes were very low. A shilling a day was deemed to be excellent earnings. In Scotland the wages of a day labourer were only 5d. per day in summer and 6d. in winter. The price of bread was ordinarily much higher than it is at the present time.[12] The prices of clothing and of the usual requisites for domestic comfort and convenience were very much more than at the present day. The rates of wages were hardly enough to enable the great mass of the people to keep body and soul together. Butchers’ meat was all but unknown, even among those who were tolerably well off.[13] Plain homespun was almost the only description of clothing that was worn. Shops were hardly known in the smaller towns or villages, and the country people were mainly supplied with such requirements as they were able to indulge in, outside of their own productions, by hawkers, who carried packs everywhere, as they sometimes do in remote country places in our own day. In localities where coal was not produced, it was not to be purchased for love or money, unless at seaport towns, and the fuel ordinarily used was either turf or wood.

From this condition of things England was largely rescued in the latter part of the eighteenth century by the introduction and development of internal waterways. This movement gave a remarkable stimulus to commercial and industrial progress. It enabled raw materials to be transported at about one-tenth of what they had formerly cost, and facilitated the interchange of commodities between the different parts of the kingdom to an extent previously undreamt of.

It is remarkable what a large crop of important discoveries and inventions were made about the time that canals began to be generally used as waterways. Robinson’s project for working steam locomotives on common roads was put forward the year after Brindley commenced the Bridgwater Canal. In the same year the manufacture of thread and gauze was commenced at Paisley, and Jedediah Strutt made his first improvement on the stocking loom. Two years later Arkwright obtained his first patent for the spinning-frame, and Watt made his first experiments on the power of steam with Papin’s digester. It was in 1762 that the production of Wedgwood ware was first begun, and the same year witnessed a notable development of the linen manufacture of Ireland, while in 1763 Hargreaves the weaver produced his spinning-jenny in his house adjoining the print works of the first Sir Robert Peel. These are but a few of the concurrent and collateral movements of the period. Of the measure in which they were aided by internal transport we shall have more to say by and by.

An examination of the geography of European countries will disclose the fact that the United Kingdom is almost unique in regard to its possession of a magnificent coast-line, studded with harbours and docks, and approached by a large number of navigable rivers, which afford easy communication with the sea. If we compare our facilities with those of Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Italy, or indeed any other European country, we cannot fail to be struck with their enormous superiority. Scarcely any part of the United Kingdom is more than a hundred miles distant from a good harbour. In many European countries there are important towns that are very much further, while some countries, like Switzerland, have no seaboard at all, and others, like Austria, besides having very few ports worthy of the name, are landlocked on more sides than one.

Again, let us look at the recent history of European politics. Do we not find that a more extensive seaboard is the ruling passion of such nations as Germany and Russia, whose outlets are few and inconvenient? The half-suspected designs of Germany upon Holland, and of Russia upon Turkish and Chinese territory, have been mainly ascribed to this ambition. To obtain such an outlet for the Asiatic part of her dominions, Russia is at the present moment laying down a railway across Siberia, which will give her a closer connection with China than the Chinese seem to care for, and is likely, in the opinion of some shrewd politicians, to eventuate in her obtaining possession of a large slice of the Celestial Empire. The neutralisation of certain prominent waterways is, moreover, regarded as a matter of so much importance, that costly and protracted wars have been undertaken with a view to that end, nor would it be difficult to trace a connection between the passion for more ports and the costly armaments which have now for many years threatened the peace and impoverished the resources of Europe.

Nevertheless, with a command of the sea that makes us at once the envy and the despair of rival nations, and has placed our shipping supremacy on such a pinnacle of power and prosperity as the world has never before been acquainted with,[14] we still require to pay more for reaching our ports, relatively to the distance traversed, than any other nation in Europe, and very much more than either the United States of North America, or our own possessions of India and Canada. It is not too much to say that if we possessed the same transportation rates as some of these countries, our trade with the rest of the world would be much greater than it is; while if we had the same distances to traverse as in these countries, at the existing railway rates of our own, competition in neutral markets with the low-rate countries of the Continent would be impossible.

In making these statements we impute no blame and make no reflections. We are only concerned to state the simple truth. It may be that the railway companies in this country cannot afford to carry goods at cheaper rates. That is their look-out. They have undoubtedly incurred vast expense in providing the most ample and the most admirable facilities of transport, short of the all-important item of its cost. In no other country do we find such a splendid service. No other country has better roads nor more capable administration, nor quicker and more reliable dispatch, nor greater conveniences for traffic of all kinds. Unfortunately, also, in no other country have the railways been so costly; so that for the same volume of traffic English railways require to have higher rates, in order that the charges on capital may be met.[15] But why should trade suffer, and freighters find themselves in extremis, because British railways have made cheap rates all but impossible? There is sure to arrive, sooner or later, a point—which in England is seldom far distant—when railway rates become prohibitive. That point has almost been reached when traffic can be delivered in England from the heart of Belgium at 5s. per ton, as compared with 10s. and 12s. per ton for railway transport between the Midlands and the metropolis. The real question now is—Can nothing be done to remedy this state of things, not in a spirit of hostility to the railways, which may have done their best, but with a view to the preservation and increased development of British trade and industry? The nation is either hopelessly at the mercy of railway boards, or it is not. Our trade and manufactures are either compelled to pay every year an undue proportion of their hard earned receipts to railway shareholders, or they are not. If they are not—if there is a way of escape from this bondage—it is well that the nation should know what it is, and how best to take advantage of it. This is mainly the purpose of some of the chapters which follow.

Up to the period of the first Canal Acts, English waterways were under the control of the State, or of authorities appointed by the State for the conservancy of navigation; and that such an arrangement was, on the whole, not without its advantages, is proved by the fact already referred to, viz.: that in the middle of the eighteenth century the advantages with regard to water carriage enjoyed by England enabled her to outstrip other countries in the development of her manufactures. With the construction of the first canal began the era of private enterprise in respect of inland navigation, which owes its existence, as it is hardly necessary to remark here, to the genius of Brindley, and to the unflagging determination of the Duke of Bridgwater—whose efforts in the cause of progress were, like those of Stephenson, and the pioneers of railway enterprise after them, at first strenuously opposed by the public, and almost entirely neglected by the State.

The turning point of public opinion, as regards both canals and railways, was the discovery that money might be made out of them. Brindley’s grand project of uniting the four great ports of Liverpool, Hull, Bristol, and London by a system of main waterways from which subsidiary branches might be carried to the contiguous towns, had been, to a large extent, successfully accomplished at the end of the first quarter of the present century, and when canals began to pay dividends, the nation began to admit their public utility. In a very few years after Brindley’s death in 1772, an immense number of navigation Acts received the sanction of Parliament, canals began to be freely quoted “on ’Change,” and, in 1790, “the canal mania” began.[16] The Gazette of August, 1792, contained notices of eighteen new canals, and the premiums of single shares in companies had reached such figures as 155l. (Leicester), 350l. (Grand Trunk and Coventry), and 1170l. (Birmingham). Canals began to be used for passenger traffic; and we read in the Times of 19th December, 1806, of troops being despatched from London to Liverpool by the Paddington Canal, en route for Ireland, a mode of transport which the writer pointed out would enable them to reach Liverpool “in only seven days!” In the four years ending 1794, some 81 canal and navigation Acts were obtained, of which 45 were passed in the latter two years, authorising an expenditure of over 5,000,000l. No less than 1,200,000l. was spent upon the construction of the 130 miles of waterway connecting Liverpool, by way of Skipton, with the Aire and Calder at Leeds (a work begun in 1770, but not completed till 41 years afterwards); and when the last canals in England were completed, in 1830, the total amount that had been expended upon our waterways was about 14,000,000l. Out of some 210 rivers in England and Wales, 44 in England have hitherto been made navigable.[17] The Thames, the Severn, and the Mersey are connected by 648 miles of river and canal, the Thames and Humber by 537 miles, the Severn and Mersey by 832 miles, and the Mersey and Humber by 680 miles; the Fen waters have an extent of 431 miles, and the remaining canals of England and Wales amount to 1204 miles.[18] This fine system of waterways, with a total length of 4332 miles, furnishes no less than 21 through routes for traffic between London and the manufacturing districts, but, as it is scarcely necessary to observe, a very large portion of it has ceased to be of any practical value, while the utility of that which is still available to the public is constantly diminishing, through the neglect due to the impoverished condition of many of the canal companies and other causes.

In the eyes of engineers, the defects of natural geography were made to be corrected by their skill, experience, and ingenuity. Peninsulas and isthmuses, whether large or small, appear to be designed only for the purpose of being pierced with artificial waterways. Hydraulic engineers are the high priests of science, whose mission it is to publish the banns of marriage between seas and oceans, and complete the nuptials in a way that no man may put asunder. By their sacerdotal functions, the Mediterranean has been married to the Red Sea, the Caspian to the Black Sea, the North Sea to the Atlantic, the Adriatic to the Archipelago, and the Atlantic almost to the Pacific, while we have seen many unions of less distinguished members of the great maritime family. The importance of these alliances to the trade, the wealth, the intercourse, the facility of intercommunication, and the general convenience of the world, not to speak of strategical and political considerations, affecting individual nations, can hardly be over-estimated. But much still remains to be done. The high contracting parties are in some cases coy and bashful, requiring more effective wooing before they can be won. The prospective matchmakers must not forget that

“It’s not so much the lover who woos As the gallant’s way of wooing.”

There is a personal history belonging to the development of canal navigation of a much more engrossing interest than can usually be claimed for so unromantic a type of institutions. The annals of that history extend over many centuries. They reach back even to the times of ancient Egypt, the cradle of the sciences, and were contemporaneous with the building of the Pyramids. Menes, who lived 2320 years before the Christian era, constructed water-courses, which were simply canals, for carrying off the superfluous waters that reduced the greater part of Egypt in his time to the condition of an extensive marsh.[19] Sesostris, 1659 b.c., undertook the cutting and embanking of canals on a more extensive scale, carrying them at right angles with the Nile, as far as from Memphis to the sea, for the quick conveyance of corn and merchandise.[20] Ptolemy II. (Philadelphus) completed a canal, which had been commenced and continued by several previous sovereigns, and which is said[21] to have afforded a connection with the sea;[22] while even at this early date, gates or sluices were constructed, which opened to afford a passage through the Egyptian canal to the sea.[23]

In Roman times, again, Julius Cæsar, Caligula, and Nero were canal-makers, having each in his day attempted to unite the Ionian Sea with the Archipelago, through the isthmus of Corinth—an undertaking which is only in our own day being consummated. The emperor Trajan was also greatly interested in canals, as his correspondence with Pliny proves, while all the principal Roman consuls and generals appear to have possessed some knowledge of hydraulics, and applied that knowledge to useful purpose.

Charlemagne attempted to unite the Rhine with the Danube, and to establish water communication between the German Ocean and the Black Sea. Leonardo da Vinci was equally great as a canal-maker and a painter, having constructed some of the earliest canals in Italy. The Doges of Venice, “the City in the Sea,” naturally paid much attention to the same subject, which was, indeed, essential to their convenience, security, and prosperity.

It is to the credit of many of the sovereigns of France that they have sought to promote the security and welfare of their country by similar means. Henry II. employed Adam de Crapone, about 1555, to cut the Canal of Charolais; and Henry IV. continued the work. Louis XIV. engaged an Italian to construct one of the greatest of the French canals—that of Languedoc, which is elsewhere referred to. In more recent times Napoleon Buonaparte and Napoleon III. have interested themselves actively on behalf of canal navigation; and it appears to have been by a mere chance that the latter did not become a canal administrator in Central America, where he took a keen interest in the proposed ship canal across the isthmus of Nicaragua.

If we cast our eyes over the rest of the European Continent we shall find that wherever artificial waterways have been provided, Royal or Imperial encouragement has assisted in the operation. Peter the Great and Catherine attached the utmost importance to the development of Russia by this means. In Sweden, Gustavus Vasa and his successors were equally solicitous, in a country full of natural waterways, that these should be utilised and connected by artificial means.

A system that has been instrumental in giving to Europe such towns as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Venice, which has facilitated the progress of commerce in a hundred different directions, which was practically the only means of transport for nearly a century in all the chief countries of the world, and which still makes provision for the interchange of commodities at a cheaper rate than any other; which has involved the expenditure of hundreds of millions, and has found employment for vast numbers of well-remunerated employés; which abridges distance and time, and brings into closer contact different districts and countries, seas and oceans; which has engaged the attention of the greatest potentates and princes of recorded history, and has in all times been deemed a fit subject for the exercise of kingcraft; which, in our more prosaic age, brings us cheap food, cheap coal, and cheap commodities generally—such a system is one that can hardly be lightly esteemed, even now, notwithstanding that its waning light has been eclipsed by the brilliance of that other system which has been so marked a development of our nineteenth century civilisation.

Canal engineering, besides, has a very remarkable record, and has achieved many notable triumphs. These have hardly received the attention to which their importance entitles them. It is true that no canal has been carried, like the Callao, Lima, and Oroya railroad, in Peru, to the height of nearly sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea.[24] It has, however, on the Languedoc and other canals been found easily feasible to carry a canal to a height of 600 to 1000 ft. above the sea. Canal engineers have not, perhaps, pierced the Alps with a tunnel ten miles in length, as on the Saint-Gothard Railway; but they have carried a tide-water canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and they have essayed to perform the same feat through the Cordillera. Hydraulic engineering has, next to railway engineering, been the most remarkable manifestation of the applied science of modern times, and in canal construction it has attained some of its most successful results.

Sufficient credit, moreover, has hardly been given to the canal system for the important part which it has taken in opening up the resources of different countries, and thereby bringing about the remarkable development of commerce and industry which has been so marked a feature of our own times. The Act for the construction of the Bridgwater Canal was obtained in 1759, previous to which time the internal commerce of the country, as we have seen, was carried on by pack-horses or waggons, on common turnpike-roads. Mr. Wood has calculated[25] that the average cost of conveying heavy goods on macadamised turnpike-roads by this system was 8d. per mile, while light goods cost 1s. per ton per mile. As that calculation applies to a time when wages, fodder, and other items involved in the expense of such transport, were lower than now, it is a fair assumption that it will be at least as much to-day, and for facility of reckoning we may take the average at the convenient and fairly likely figure of 10d. per ton per mile over all. Now, the total quantity of merchandise carried on the railways of the United Kingdom in 1887 was about 269 millions of tons. No evidence exists as to the total mileage over which this vast tonnage was carried, or, as it is expressed in railway phraseology, of the ton-mile traffic. But if we assume that the average charge for traffic carried by railway in 1887 was 1d. per ton per mile, the total movement would be represented by the enormous figure of 8962 millions of ton-miles. To have carried the same traffic under the system of transport that preceded the canals would have been impossible, but it would have cost the country, if it had been practicable, no less a sum than 373½ millions sterling, which is about one-third of the estimated amount of our national income from all sources. But this, after all, is not the most curious part of the calculation. In order to understand how impossible our present transport system would have been under the old régime, we must assume that a horse is capable, under ordinary circumstances, of carrying one ton about ten miles a day. Working for 300 days a year, therefore, he would be able to carry a total weight of about 3000 tons one mile in the course of twelve months. To undertake the same work as that performed by our railways would therefore require close on three million horses, or, practically, the whole of the horses that exist in the United Kingdom at the present time, for every purpose, including agriculture.

It was while we were depending exclusively upon this expensive and tedious system of conveyance, when the internal development of the country was rendered all but impossible by the heavy expense of bringing produce to the sea, and when our export trade was consequently of the most restricted dimensions, that canals came to the rescue. They worked a marvellous change in the trade of the country—a change which can, perhaps, be best illustrated by the ordinarily dry, but in this case almost thrilling, returns of our exports and imports. Burke, in one of his greatest speeches,[26] spoke of a total exportation of the value of 14½ millions, and a total importation of 9½ millions sterling, as an index of extraordinary prosperity. In another equally great oration[27] he said, speaking of the fact that we were then exporting rather over six millions a year to our colonies, that “when we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth; invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.” What would he have said had he lived to see, as we have done, our exports reach the vast total of 250 millions a year, with nearly 90 millions of exports to our colonies? Canals certainly did not complete this revolution, but they had a very important share in giving it a start. Between the time when the canal system was commenced, about 1760, and the end of the first canal period, which may be put at 1838, the export trade of the country advanced from 14 millions to about 50 millions per annum. This is poor progress, compared with what has since been attained, through the development of the steamship, the railway, the telegraph, and other modern adjuncts of commerce, but it was deemed as remarkable for that day as we consider our subsequent progress to be in ours.

It is practically impossible to arrive at a correct estimation of the tonnage of goods of different kinds that goes to make up the inland and the external trade of this country. We know that the railways of the United Kingdom annually carry about 280 millions of tons of minerals and merchandise (according to the Board of Trade returns), but a considerable part of this tonnage is duplicated, in consequence of passing over more than one railway. Of the total tonnage carried by railway, the greater part probably goes no farther. It is consumed on the spot, like the coal traffic of London and the minerals supplied to our great ironmaking centres. But a very much larger quantity is carried from inland centres to seaports, and thence shipped for places of consumption at home and abroad. The coastwise carrying trade of the United Kingdom is now represented by 60 million tons a year. The foreign shipping trade amounts to over 70 million tons a year. Only a comparatively small proportion of these quantities is consumed at the ports of shipment. The greater part is carried farther by railway, thus breaking bulk twice—once in moving it from the ship to the railway wagon, and again in removing it from the railway wagon. Much of it has to be carried from the ship in barges, and thence transferred to the railway. All this means loss of time, loss of money, and deterioration of quality, which adequate water facilities should do much to obviate.

There is no class of property that has undergone a more remarkable range of vicissitudes than canal ownership. In the early years of the present century, the value of canal companies’ shares was much higher than that of any railway property has been since that time. The price of some canal shares rose to a hundred times their nominal or par value. Enormous dividends were often paid. In other cases, where the navigation had been neglected, the properties were very lightly esteemed, and yielded unsatisfactory results. The Fossdyke Navigation in Lincolnshire was leased about 1840, by the Corporation of Lincoln, to a Mr. Elison for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, at 75l. a year! Six years later the executors of the lessee leased it to the Great Northern Railway Company for 9575l.[28] The Loughborough Canal shares, which were once worth 4500l., are now scarcely worth 100l.; and a still more notable decline is that of the Erewash Canal, whose shares, now quoted at about 50l., were once worth fully 3000l.

There are three great epochs in the modern history of canal navigation, each marked by characteristics peculiar to itself, and sufficiently unlike those of either of the others to enable it to be readily differentiated. They may be thus described:—

1. The era of waterways, designed at once to facilitate the transport of heavy traffic from inland centres to the seaboard, and to supersede the then existing systems of locomotion—the wagon and the pack-horse. This era commenced with the construction of the Bridgwater Canal between 1766 and 1770, and terminated with the installation of the railway system in 1830.

2. The era of interoceanic canals, which was inaugurated by the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, and is still in progress.

3. The era of ship-canals intended to afford to cities and towns remote from the sea, all the advantages of a seaboard, and especially that of removing and despatching merchandise without the necessity of breaking bulk.

The second great stage in the development of canal transport is of comparatively recent origin. It may, in fact, be said to date only from the time when the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Suez was proved to be not only practicable as an engineering project, but likewise highly successful as a commercial enterprise. Not that this was by any means the first canal of its kind. On the contrary, as we have shown elsewhere, the ancients had many schemes of a similar kind in view across the same isthmus. The canal of Languedoc, constructed in the reign of Louis XIV., was for that day as considerable an undertaking. It was designed for the purpose of affording a safe and speedy means of communication between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean; it has a total length of 148 miles, is in its highest part 600 ft. above the level of the sea, and has in all 114 locks and sluices. In Russia, canals had been constructed in the time of Peter the Great, for the purpose of affording a means of communication between the different inland seas that are characteristic of that country. The junction of the North and Caspian Seas, of the Baltic and the Caspian, and the union of the Black and the Caspian Seas, had all been assisted by the construction of a series of canals which were perhaps without parallel for their completeness a century ago. In Prussia a vast system of inland navigation had been completed during the last century, whereby Hamburg was connected with Dantzic, and the products of the country could be exported either by the Black Sea or by the Baltic. In Scotland the Forth and Clyde Canal, and the Caledonian Canal, were notable examples of artificial navigation designed to connect two seas, or two firths that had all the characteristics of independent oceans; and the Erie Canal, in the United States, completed a chain of communication between inland seas of much the same order.

But, although a great deal had been done in the direction of facilitating navigation between different waters by getting rid of the “hyphen” by which they were separated anterior to the date of the Suez Canal, this grand enterprise undoubtedly marked a notable advance in the progress of the world from this point of view. The work was at once more original and more gigantic than any that had preceded it—so much so that in this country, as we have elsewhere shown, it was generally discredited. Probably no other canal previously constructed had cost anything like the same large sum that was set aside for that of Suez. The canal of Languedoc, constructed in the seventeenth century, is stated to have cost fourteen millions of livres. The Erie Canal had cost five million seven hundred thousand dollars (1,140,000l.). The Caledonian Canal cost 1,035,460l. The Amsterdam Canal cost about the same amount. The Suez Canal, however, was estimated to cost 8,000,000l. to 10,000,000l., or nearly ten times as much as the largest canals constructed up to that time. Nowadays this would not be regarded as a large sum for such a purpose. We have got accustomed to big figures. A hundred millions sterling is not an uncommon capital for a railway company. The Manchester Canal, only some thirty miles long, is estimated to cost about eight millions sterling, and more than sixty millions have been sunk at Panama. But so little faith was felt in the success of the Suez Canal, with such a large expenditure, that it was seriously maintained in the “Edinburgh Review” that, “were it to become the great highway of nations between the West and the East—even the Gates of the East, as it has been the fashion to call it—and were all the local advantages predicted for Egypt to be derived from it, still, on account of the enormous expense of construction and maintenance, it would not pay.”

While these views were entertained about a waterway that promised to become the general and almost exclusive means of communication between the West and the East, between Great Britain and her Australasian and Indian possessions, it is not much a matter for surprise that other projects of a similar character remained in abeyance. But the Suez Canal once completed and successful, other ship canal schemes came “thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa.” Several of these were eminently practical, as well as practicable. The Hellenic Parliament determined on cutting through the tongue of land which is situated between the Gulfs of Athens and Lepantus, known as the Isthmus of Corinth. This isthmus divides the Adriatic and the Archipelago, and compels all vessels passing from the one sea to the other to round Cape Matapan, thus materially lengthening the voyages of vessels bound from the western parts of Europe to the Levant, Asia Minor and Smyrna. The canal is now an accomplished fact. Another proposal was that of cutting a canal from Bordeaux to Marseilles, across the South of France, a distance of some 120 miles, whereby these two great ports would be brought 1678 miles nearer to each other, and a further reduction, estimated at 800 miles, effected in the distance between England and India. The Panama Canal (projected in 1871, and actually commenced in 1880) is, however, the greatest enterprise of all, and in many respects the most gigantic and difficult undertaking of which there is any record. The proposed national canal from sea to sea, proposed by Mr. Samuel Lloyd and others for Great Britain, the proposed Sheffield Ship Canal, the proposed Irish Sea and Birkenhead Ship Canal, and the proposed ship canal to connect the Forth and the Clyde, are but a few of many notable examples of the restlessness of our times in this direction. All these canals are intended to economise time and space, which has become the greatest desideratum of our age. By fulfilling this mission they facilitate commerce, cheapen the cost of commodities, bring nations into closer touch, and materially lengthen the sum of work and knowledge that can be crowded into the average span of human life.

We are now in the very throes of the revolution that appears to be destined, before it closes, to secure for most of the great inland centres of population a large share of the advantages that result from being on the seaboard. The location of many of our large towns is difficult to understand. Their prosperity, in spite of their location, is still more unintelligible, on the first blush. Very few of our great cities are on the seaboard. London is over 60 miles from the Nore. Paris is 227½ miles from the sea at Havre, and Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid are each over or nearly 200 miles. In England we have such towns as Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, and Birmingham, situated at long distances from shipping facilities, and flourishing in spite of that disadvantage. But the fact has been recognised as a disadvantage, none the less. Manchester, less unfavourably situated than some of the towns we have named, has resolved to “burst its birth’s invidious bar” by the construction of the ship canal that is now being proceeded with. Sheffield has initiated a project with the same end in view. The people of Birmingham and the Midlands generally appear to have made up their minds to have direct communication with the Bristol Channel. In regard to all of these towns canal facilities of an inferior kind already exist. These, however, are now held to be quite unequal to the demands of modern commerce. They do not give to any town the position of a seaport, and that is the main requirement. The time has gone past when barges of forty or fifty tons, plying on a canal 60 to 80 feet wide, could be seriously put forward as contributing essentially to this end. The canal system of a hundred years ago has been put to the trial, and has been found wanting. We now carry millions where we then carried hundreds and thousands of tons.

The great commercial characteristics of our time are to have things done on a large scale, with the utmost practicable facility, and at the lowest possible cost. The existing canal system is quite out of touch with these desiderata. It “cumbereth the ground,” and must be got rid of. But the waterways that still survive may in many cases be made the nucleus of a new and better system, under which the great inland towns of Lancashire, Staffordshire, and Yorkshire may find their lines cast in more satisfactory maritime places.

There are not a few people who regard the canal system almost as they might regard the Dodo and the Megatherium. It is to them an effete relic of a time when civilisation was as yet but imperfectly developed. It is placed on the shelf of their memories and sympathies much as the old hand-loom, or the earliest forms of metallurgical processes, might be; and if by accident an old canal happens to cross their path, it is regarded with the same sort of curiosity as would be bestowed upon the Great Wall of China or the Pyramids of Egypt.

Canals do, indeed, belong to the past. In this respect they are entitled to be regarded with interest, and even with veneration. The Cnidians, according to Herodotus, the Bœtians, according to Strabo, the Babylonians, according to Ptolemy, and the Romans, according to Pliny, were all skilled in the art of canal-making, and employed their skill to good purpose. From those times until these the waterways of art have supplemented those of nature as handmaidens of trade and commerce, as fertilisers of the soil, and as military and strategical highways. That canals also belong to the present, Egypt, the American isthmus, Manchester, Corinth, and other places, fully prove; and, unless we greatly err, they are no less the heritage of the future.

FOOTNOTES
CHAPTER I

[9] Smiles’s ‘Lives of the Engineers,’ vol. i. p. 180.

[10] Judging from the diary of Mr. Justice Rokeby, which has been recently printed by Sir Henry Peek, in the time of William and Mary going circuit was arduous work, and the arrangements for reaching the scene of his labours occupied almost as much of a Judge’s attention as the execution of the Royal commission when he arrived. Mr. Justice Rokeby, according to this record (as abridged in the Times), usually travelled in a four-horse coach with his chamber clerk, while his groom or valet attended him on a saddle-horse, which also carried the Judge’s “portmantle.” Generally both coach and horses were hired for the occasion, the rate appearing to be about 22s. for each travelling day, and 12s. for each resting day. Sometimes the learned Judge economised by “putting a pair of his own horses to the wheel,” and had his own coachman to drive. But more than once it was necessary to take six horses in the coach, and occasionally a couple of servants on saddle-horses were in attendance. In the spring of 1692-93, “after the circuits were all settled and the term ended—viz. February 25—there fell a very great snow, which occasioned the King to issue out a proclamation, March 2, 1692-3, to alter all the circuits to later days but only the Norfolk and Oxford circuits, which continued upon their first appointment.” Mr. Justice Rokeby, being unlucky enough to be going on the Norfolk circuit, derived no benefit from the postponement, but “by reason of the badness of the ways was forced to take six horses,” so that he was “out of purse” on the circuit above 52l. The previous summer the waters were out, and travelling in the valley of the Thames was no easy matter. “I began my journey into this circuit (the Oxford) from London,” says the Judge, “on Monday, June 27, and baited at Maidenhead, but the waters were so great upon the road that at Colebrook they came just into the body of the coach, and we were forced to boat twice at Maidenhead, and we boated the coach, and at the second time we boated ourselves, but the coach came through the water, and it came very deep into the body of it, and that night we lay at Henley-upon-Thames, where we were forced to boat the coach again.” For years afterwards we read that the way from Oxford to Gloucester was so bad that it took 14 hours to accomplish the distance, though it was not more than 33 miles, while there was a “very bad and shaking way” from Monmouth to Hereford; and at an earlier stage of the circuit the Judge chronicles his safe arrival at High Wycombe from London with the pious but significant ejaculation, “Thanks be to God!” Sometimes the Judges, apparently, hired a coach between them, but Mr. Justice Rokeby had a little difference with his brother Judge, Mr. Justice Eyre, on his second circuit, concerning the division of expenses, and this probably led to his making independent carriage arrangements subsequently. On this occasion Mr. Justice Rokeby was called back to town at an early point of the circuit, and Mr. Justice Eyre declined to take on the coach, but finished the circuit on horseback, and it was his demand to be paid a share of the expenses of his saddle-horse which led to the difference of opinion.

[11] The difference between macadamised and ordinary roads, in the cost of conveyance, not to speak of comfort, is extraordinary. Nicholas Wood estimated that the transport of coal by the old pack horse was reduced from about 2s. 6d. to 8d. per ton on a good road of this description.

[12] According to the tables in Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’ (Book i. chap. xi.) the average price of wheat between 1637 and 1700 was 2l. 11s. 0⅓d. per quarter; from 1700 till 1764 it was 2l. 0s. 6⁹⁄₃₂d. per quarter.

[13] Even so late as 1794, Hepburn, in his ‘General view of the Agriculture and Economy of East Lothian,’ stated that, not long before, not a single bullock was slaughtered in the butcher market at Haddington except at a special time.

[14] The writer has shown, in articles published in the Times on January 5th, 1887, and again on January 2nd, 1888, what are the extent and the distinguishing features of this supremacy.

[15] The average cost per mile of the railways in England and Wales is about 50,000l., as against 12,700l. in the United States, 21,000l. in Germany, 25,300l. in Belgium, 27,500l. in France, and 20,000l. in Holland.

[16] See a paper read before the British Association at Birmingham, 1887.

[17] Report of House of Lords Committee on Conservancy Boards, 1877.

[18] Report of Select Committee on Canals, 1883.

[19] Herodotus, lib. ii. c. lxlix.

[20] Diodorus Siculus, lib. i. c. iv.

[21] Strabo, lib. xvii.

[22] Diodorus Siculus, lib. i. c. i.

[23] Cresy’s ‘Encyclopædia of Civil Engineering,’ c. iv.

[24] The railway starts from Callao at a height of 448 ft. above sea level, and at 104½ miles distance it passes through the summit tunnel at a height of 15,645 ft. above that level.

[25] ‘Practical Treatise on Railroads,’ third edition, p. 684.

[26] Observations on a late publication ‘The Present State of the Nation,’ Bohn’s series, vol. i. p. 198.

[27] Speech on conciliation with America, Ibid., pp. 461-62.

[28] The navigation had, however, been deepened in the interval for drainage purposes, largely at the expense of the Land Drainage Commissioners, which caused a considerable increase of traffic.

[CHAPTER II.]
ENGLISH RIVERS.

“Rivers, arise; whether thou be the son Of utmost Tweed, or Ouse, or gulphy Don, Or Trent, who, like some earth-born giant, spreads His thirty arms along the indented meads; Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath; Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden’s death; Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee; Or coaly Tine, or ancient hallowed Dee; Or Humber loud, that keeps the Cythian’s name; Or Medway smooth, or royal-towered Thame.” —Milton.

One of the earliest pioneers of inland navigation was Wm. Sandys, of Ombersley Court, in Worcestershire, who, in 1636, applied for Parliamentary powers to make the river Avon navigable for boats and barges, from the Severn at Tewkesbury to the city of Coventry. Part of the work which was executed in pursuance of the powers so obtained exists to the present time. In 1661 Sandys sought for Parliamentary authority to make the Salwarp navigable from the Severn to his own town of Droitwich, and to make navigable the rivers Wye and Lug, and the brooks running into the same in the counties of Hereford, Gloucester, and Monmouth.

Our great rivers, the Thames, Severn, Trent, Ouse, &c., were the recognised means of transit long before the time of the Romans, who were so far advanced in inland navigation as to cut canals of forty miles in length, as instanced in the Caerdyke, between Peterborough and Lincoln (though now filled up), as also to build docks, as shown in the old dock walls, &c., still standing at the outfall of the Trym into the Avon below Bristol.

The Fossdyke navigation from Lincoln to the Trent is also of Roman origin, and probably an extension of the Caerdyke, on their route to York. Torksey, at the junction with the Trent, was a Roman town and fort, and continued possessed of many privileges, down to the Norman period, on condition that the knights who held it should carry the King’s Ambassadors, as often as they came that way, down the Trent in their own barges, and conduct them to York. This is recorded in ‘Domesday Book.’ Itchin Dyke to Winchester was also cut by the Romans.

It is usual to date the first beginning of canal navigation in England from the time when Brindley constructed the famous canal between Worsley and Salford for the Duke of Bridgwater. This, no doubt, was the first important artificial navigation throughout. But Sandys had practically undertaken canal construction about a hundred years before. The Act of Parliament which sanctioned the various enterprises that he had projected, authorised him to construct new channels, and to set up, in convenient places, “locks, wears, turnpikes, penns for water, cranes, and wharfs, to lay timber, coals, and all other materials that shall be brought down;” to have and use “a certain path, not exceeding four feet in breadth, on either side of the said rivers and passages,” for the “towing, pulling, or drawing-up of their barges, boots, leighters, and other vessels passing and repassing them, or any part of them, by strength of men, horses, lines, ropes, winches, engines, or other means convenient;” and “to dig, carry, trench, or cut, or make any trench, river, or new channel, or wharf,” &c., after having arranged with the “respective Lords, owners, or occupiers of the said lands.”[29]

Sandys, however, did not succeed in carrying out the intended navigation between the cities of Hereford and Bristol as he proposed. He attempted to make the Wye navigable by locks and weirs on the pound-lock system, which did not suit its rapid current. The enterprise was accordingly abandoned, after a trial of several years.

In 1688 the project of making the Wye navigable was revived. It was now proposed to abandon the pound-lock system, to purchase and remove all the mill-weirs and fishing-weirs between Hay, in Herefordshire, and the sea, and to deepen the channels of the shallow streams. The weir-owners rose in opposition to these proposals, and for several years the subject was the occasion of a bitter controversy. When the Bill was applied for in 1695, the city of Hereford, and thirty-two parishes in the county, petitioned in its favour; while the towns of Ross and Monmouth, and thirteen parishes, petitioned against it. The Bill, however, ultimately became law,[30] and although, owing to the uncertainty of its depth and current, the Wye was never adapted for regular navigation, it was so far improved that throughout the eighteenth century it was of great service to the county of Hereford.[31]

One of the earliest to advocate river improvements in Britain was Andrew Yarranton, an original genius, who had ideas and plans quite a hundred years in advance of his times.[32] He occupied himself with many different projects designed to effect improvements in means of communication, and in developing the resources of the country generally. At one time serving as a soldier, at another engaged in the manufacture of iron; now planning how to provide employment for the poor, and again studying how to bring about more economical processes of husbandry, Yarranton made a special hobby of the improvement of navigation, undertaking surveys of the principal rivers in the West of England at his own cost, and urging upon the people the importance of opening up the facilities of communication thereby available to them.

In 1665 Yarranton proposed to the burgesses of Droitwich to deepen the small river Salwarp, so as to connect that town, now an important centre of the salt industry, with the river Severn. He was offered terms to carry out his plans, but the offer does not appear to have been good enough.[33]

In 1666 Yarranton proposed to make the river Stour navigable between Stourport and Kidderminster, and to connect it with the river Trent by a navigable canal. He carried out this work so far as to make the river navigable from Stourbridge to Kidderminster; but his scheme was not completely adopted for lack of means. He says that he “laid out near 1000l.,” and “carried down many hundred tons of coal,”[34] although, on account of the novelty of his enterprise, it was greatly ridiculed. At a later date Yarranton proposed to connect the Thames and the Severn by means of an artificial cut, “at the very place where, more than a century after his death, it was actually carried out by modern engineers.”[35]

Although the proprietors in what was called the “Old Quay Company” had obtained an Act of Parliament in 1733 for improving by weirs and cuts the rivers Mersey and Irwell, between Runcorn and Manchester, the first association incorporated for making a regular navigable canal in England was not till more than twenty years later, six centuries after the first canals in Italy and Flanders, and a hundred years subsequent to some of the chief canals of France being in operation. It is but fair to add that England carried the movement further than most other countries.

It is unnecessary to enter into the history of the development of the navigable resources of the rivers of the United Kingdom during the last two centuries, even if it were possible, which, of course, it is not in a work of this description. The dates when the several principal navigation works were undertaken will be found set out in Appendix I. But we may, nevertheless, bestow some consideration upon the principal steps that have brought about the remarkable facilities that England, Scotland, and, to a less extent, Ireland, respectively enjoy at the present time in the matter of internal transport. The Clyde, the Tyne, the Tees, the Wear, and other prominent English rivers have been transformed from shallow brawling streams, some of them easily fordable at all states of the tide, into magnificent waterways, capable of bearing on their bosoms the largest vessels afloat. This work has necessarily involved great engineering capacity, a large expenditure, and a judicious administration of their powers and resources by the public bodies through whom it has been carried to completion.

The Mersey.

On the Liverpool side of the Mersey there are sixty docks and basins of the ordinary type, having a total water area of 368 acres and 25 miles of quay berthing. On the Birkenhead side, there are 164½ acres of docks, with 9½ miles of quayage, three graving docks, having a total length of 2430 feet, and every facility for loading and unloading ships.

The total expenditure incurred on this enormous provision for shipping has been upwards of twenty millions, and the total annual revenue of the Mersey dock estate is about a million and a half sterling.

The entire length of the Mersey is 56 miles. For the first 37 miles of this distance, the river has a tortuous course, ill-adapted for navigation, and passes through an almost exclusively agricultural country. From Runcorn to the sea, the form of the river is that of a bottle, of which the wide expanse between Runcorn and Liverpool forms the body, and the narrow part opposite Liverpool the neck. Through this neck there annually passes nearly twenty million tons of shipping, including entrances and clearances.

The unassisted efforts of nature have hitherto maintained the navigable channels of the Mersey, so that the conditions of navigation remain practically uniform. The bar, however, is gradually moving in a seaward direction, while maintaining its general form and characteristics. In Liverpool Bay there is a great range of tide, which insures a depth of at least 30 feet over the bar once in every twelve hours, even on the lowest neaps. Some two or three million cubic yards of upland water every twelve hours are discharged into the estuary, chiefly by the Mersey and the Weaver, which, with 710 million cubic yards on a high spring tide, maintains the normal capacity of the estuary, and counteracts the process of silting. Some 17,300 acres of a deposit of sand in the estuary are above the low-water mark. Through this the upland water forms and maintains a channel in its course to the sea, and any serious exclusion of this tidal water would be likely to so far injure the sea channels as to interfere with the trade and shipping of the port.

The Mersey is the outlet for several important canal navigations, including the Weaver Navigation Canal, near Weston Point, the Bridgwater Canal at Runcorn, the Sankey Canal at Widnes, the Shropshire Union Canal at Ellesmere, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at the Docks, and the Manchester Ship Canal, now under construction, at Eastham. The position of these several canals in relation to the river may be traced in a map accompanying a paper read by Mr. Lyster, the engineer, before the Institution of Naval Architects. These canals are important factors in assisting the growth of the trade of the Mersey. The Leeds and Liverpool is, however, the only canal that has a direct connection with the Liverpool Docks.

By this canal Liverpool has water communication with the important town of Leeds, and thence, by the Aire and Calder Canal, with Hull and the other ports on the Humber. By the Shropshire Union Canals the Mersey is connected with the network of canals in the Midland Counties and with the River Severn.

In Camden’s time Liverpool must have been a very obscure place. The author of ‘Britannia’ dismisses it almost in a sentence, observing that “from Warrington, the River Mersey, spreading abroad, and straightwaies drawing in himselfe again, with a wide and open outlet, very commodious for merchandise, entereth into the Irish Sea, where Litherpoole, called in the elder ages Lipen-poole, common Lirpoole, is seated, so named, as it is thought, of the water spreading itself in manner of a poole.”

With the exception of the Thames—which it rivals, and with which for a number of years past it has run a neck-to-neck race—the Mersey is, so far as its volume of business is concerned, the most important river in the world. This, however, is an attainment of comparative modern origin. The first wet dock was constructed at Liverpool, in 1708-9, on the site now occupied by the Custom House. In the latter part of the same century several other docks were constructed. The dock estate has now an area of 1078 acres, the whole of which is appropriated to basins, docks, quays, and premises worked in connection therewith.

The Weaver.

The history of the navigation of the river Weaver, which adjoins the Mersey in Cheshire, supplies a notable example of what may be made of an originally insignificant and tortuous stream in order to adapt it for the requirements of commerce. The river has been canalised between Northwich and Chester, twenty miles of the navigation being artificial navigation, and the other thirty miles being river proper.

In 1721 three Cheshire gentlemen obtained the first Act of Parliament for making the river Weaver navigable. The depth then provided for was only 4 feet 6 inches, and boats of more than 40 to 50 tons could not enter.

About the year 1760, the navigation was carried down so as to enable vessels to enter at nearly all tides, and in 1810 the river was further improved by the Weston Canal, which is four miles long, enabling vessels of much deeper draught to enter without navigating a dangerous part of the old river. This canal forms a junction with the Bridgwater Docks at Weston Point, and a dock was formed in connection with it so as to enable vessels to wait for the tide.

In 1830 the depth was increased to 7 feet 6 inches, with locks 88 feet long and 18 feet wide, capable of taking cargoes of 100 to 150 tons. There were at this time eleven single locks on the river, not including the entrances to the Mersey. About 1860, a second set of locks, having 10 feet of water on the sills, and 100 feet long by 22 feet wide, was placed by the side of the existing locks, and the number was reduced to nine pairs. The larger size, owing to the vessels being built almost to the shape of the lock, were capable of passing vessels with nearly 320 tons on board.

This continued until about seventeen years ago, when it was decided to replace these locks by some of very much larger dimensions, and also to greatly reduce the number. With this object, locks were built at Dutton and Saltersford near the site of existing locks, and of sufficient height of walls to enable the two ponds above to be thrown into one, thus doing away with the four smaller locks. The same has been done at Hunts, and, more recently, at Valeroyal, above Northwich. The locks at Dutton and Saltersford are entirely built of masonry, having limestone sills and rubbling courses, with the intermediate part sandstone. All the work on the river is of this description, with the exception of the Hunts and Valeroyal large locks, which are built of concrete.

When these improvements are completed there will be only four locks on the twenty miles of navigation, the larger of each pair of locks being 220 feet long, by 42 feet 6 inches wide, and having 15 feet of water on the sills. Most of the river is now dredged to 12 feet, there only being 10-feet bars at certain points. The ordinary width is about 95 to 100 feet at water level, and 45 feet at the bottom. More than a million tons of salt annually pass down the Weaver to the Mersey.

The Tyne.

This noble river, from Newcastle to the sea, is one of the greatest triumphs of modern engineering. Good old Camden quaintly remarks, that “where the wall (Roman) and the Tine almost met together Newcastle sheweth itself gloriously, the very eye of all the townes in these parts, ennobled by a notable haven, which Tine maketh, being of that depth that it beareth very tall ships, and also defendeth them, that they can neither easily be tossed with tempests nor driven upon shallows and shelves.”[36]

No better example of what has been done within recent years in the way of providing additional facilities for the wants of British shipping, could be quoted than the case of the Tyne. That river is the natural outlet of the great northern coalfield. It is also the outlet for a very great trade in chemicals, engineering, iron and steel, and other industrial products. But in order to adapt it for the purposes of its large and rapidly-growing commerce, it was necessary not only to provide several docks—the more important of which, the Northumberland and the Coble Dene, cost 352,000l. and 528,000l. respectively—but it was also requisite to expend over 1,300,000l. in dredging the bed of the river, so as to provide access for the largest size of vessels, to expend nearly three-quarters of a million on other river works, to construct North and South Piers at a cost of over 820,000l.; and to incur a total outlay considerably exceeding 4,000,000l. The effect of these improvements and structural works has been that the Tyne has been transformed from “a series of shoals, with a narrow and generally serpentine channel between and past them, through which vessels of about 15-ft. draught could get up at high-water spring tides, whilst at low-water it was a not uncommon occurrence for small river steamers, drawing from 3 to 4 ft. of water, to be aground on their passage between Shields and Newcastle for three or four hours,” to a magnificent navigable highway, that admits vessels of 3000 tons and upwards at all states of the tide with perfect safety. At the time that the great work was commenced, and for many years afterwards, the revenue from shipping dues was quite insufficient to enable any substantial progress to be made, and the trade grew so rapidly that it became imperative to either borrow money in order to carry out the required works, or allow the shipping to seek other ports, where better facilities were provided. The works to the end of 1882 had, therefore, to be chiefly carried out by the aid of borrowed money. As a matter of fact, only 426,000l. was expended out of income, while 3,673,000l. was borrowed. The results, however, appear to have justified the course. The annual income from dues and tolls has grown, within twenty years, from 91,000l. to over 251,000l.

The Tyne Improvement Commission, chiefly under the presidency of Sir Joseph Cowen, have deepened the river to a uniform depth of nearly 30 feet, built training walls, dredged the bar, built new channels, and otherwise revolutionised the old order of things. The results have been extremely striking. In 1888 14,668 vessels, having a total tonnage of 6,734,000 tons, cleared from the Tyne ports; while 6093 ships, having 1,662,000 tons register, entered the same ports. The people of Tyneside are proud of their river, as well they may be.

The Ribble.

Preston is a busy town and port in the county of Lancashire, situated on the river Ribble, about seventeen miles from the sea. The navigation of the port has hitherto been confined to coasting vessels drawing about 14 feet of water. The amount of shipping entering the port has been under 30,000 tons a year. The Ribble rises in the West Riding of Yorkshire, at the east foot of Whernside, and arrives at Preston after a course of fifty-seven miles. With its tributaries it drains about 800 square miles of land, a great part of which is moorland. The annual rainfall over this district averages about 37 inches. Below Preston, the channel of the river opens out into a broad sandy estuary, four or five miles in width, the whole of which is covered at high water of spring tides, and the greater part of which is dry at low water. The course of the river, after it leaves the trained portion, is along the northern shore of this estuary to Lytham, whence the main navigable channel, called “The Gut,” bends in a south-westerly direction between the Salt-house and the Horse-shoe banks to the Irish Sea. The width of the estuary between the two forelands on the coast, Stanner Point on the north, and Southport on the south, is five miles. The sands extend four miles seaward beyond this line, and are uncovered at low water. The depth at low water spring tides on the bar, or the portion of the navigable channel with deep water, is four feet. Beyond this the depth seawards rapidly increases, from 20 feet immediately beyond, till, at the Nelson buoy—which is two miles beyond the bar, and the first buoy belonging to the Ribble navigation—the depth is six fathoms. The depth above the bar along the Gut channel, which is rather tortuous and narrow, being shown on the Admiralty chart as less than a quarter of a mile wide, varies from 4 to 24 feet. This channel is buoyed out with eight buoys, which are shifted as the channel varies. There are three other channels between Lytham and the sea, called, respectively, the South Channel, the Penfold, and the North Channel. These are more or less navigable; but the Gut is the main sea-fairway. From Lytham a shallow channel runs near the shore for about a mile to “The Dock,” where ships can lie at anchor. Thence it winds towards the Wage through the sands. This channel is continually shifting its course, owing to gales and freshets. From this point the river has been trained by rubble-stone training walls, put in about thirty-four years ago, which continue for seven miles up to Preston. These walls rise seven feet above low water, and are 300 feet apart at the top. Spring-tides rise 24 feet at the bar, and neaps 17 feet, and at Preston the rise is 10 feet and 4 feet 6 inches. The project of constructing a dock at Preston has been agitated for some years, and has been strongly advocated by Mr. Garlick, M.I.C.E., who was the engineer to the Navigation Commissioners. It was considered that by providing deep-water accommodation to the town, its trade and prospects would be greatly increased, having regard to the large manufactories by which it is surrounded, the immense population in the immediate neighbourhood, and the nearness of the Wigan coalfield. This work is now in progress, including the division of the river; the estimated cost being about 440,000l.

The Severn.

This famous river is navigable up to Welshpool, a distance of 155 miles by water, from the mouth of the Bath Avon river. The extreme branch of this river may be traced for about 45 miles above Welshpool, to Plinlimmon Hill, and numerous other branches extend for great distances into the country on both sides. The whole of this great length of navigation was, till lately, unimproved by art, the river having no locks, weirs, or other erections throughout its whole length, for surmounting the numerous shallows and irregularities which the current over variable strata had formed in its bed. The first or lowest 42 miles of this river, extending to the city of Gloucester, are very wide for a great part of the way, and have a most rapid tide; but the last 28 miles are so crooked, that ships are said to be often several days in passing it; on which account, a ship canal, calculated for vessels of 300 tons burthen, was in the year 1793 projected and begun between Gloucester and Berkeley, of 18¼ miles in length, for avoiding these 28 miles of the river. From Gloucester to Worcester the distance is 30 miles by the course of the stream, the rise in this length being 10 feet, or at the rate of 4 inches a mile; from Worcester to Stourport the distance by water is 13 miles, and the rise 23 feet, or at the rate of 1 foot 9 inches per mile; from Stourport to Bridgnorth it is 18 miles, and the rise 41¾ feet, or 2 feet 4 inches per mile on the average; and from Bridgnorth to the new town at the junction of the Shropshire canal, called Coalport, the distance is about 7 miles, and the rise about 19 feet, being a rate of about 2 feet 8 inches per mile. William Reynolds, the founder of Coalport, caused an account to be daily registered of the depth of the stream in the bed of the Severn at that place, between the 7th of October, 1789, and the 23rd of December, 1800, of which Mr. Telford has given the particulars, except on twelve occasions when the river had overflown its bounds and covered the usual marks (on Sundays during some part of the time), the intervals of frost in which the river was frozen over, and for three short intervals, when, unfortunately, the experiment was by some accident suspended. During all the months of January, in the above period of eleven years, ending the 6th of October, 1800, the river does not appear to have exceeded the depth of 16 feet, that being the greatest depth at any time recorded; and several times, when no depths are inserted to the great floods, it is stated in the table that the water was above all the marks. Besides these, there were thirty-two smaller floods, or times when the water had risen, and was falling again for some days after; the highest of these had a depth of 13 feet (5th January, 1790), the lowest 4 feet, and the mean of the whole of these floods is 7½ feet. In the months of February there were two of these overflowings, one of which (11th February, 1795) followed a frost and continued for five successive days: nineteen floods, the two highest of which were equal (17th and 20th February, 1799) to 12 feet.

The Witham.

On the Witham, for a distance of thirty miles, between Boston and Lincoln, the river is practically a canal. The tide is stopped by a sluice at Boston, and a weir and locks had to be constructed at Bardney and Lincoln. The inland water is held up to a constant height on the sill of this sluice by penstocks, for the purposes of the navigation. The navigation having been taken over by the Great Northern Railway Company, the works are maintained in efficient condition; but the obligation imposed by the original Act of holding up the water seriously affects the drainage. The river Slea, from Sleaford to the Witham, was made into a canal in 1792. The navigation on this river having almost entirely ceased, the company was dissolved by an Act of Parliament. The Bane, another affluent of the Witham, was also canalised, forming a navigation from the Witham to the town of Horncastle; but the dues obtained are insufficient to maintain the works in proper order.

The Nene and Ouse.

On the Nene, which is canalised from Peterborough to Northampton, the navigation is reduced to a few barges. The constant floods on this river are ascribed in a great measure to the defective condition of the works. The proprietors of the navigation, on whom was cast the duty of maintaining the river, no longer have the funds, and there is nobody to take their place. The same thing has occurred on the Ouse between Earith and Bedford.

On some of the affluents of these rivers, which, under legislative powers granted last century, had been converted into “navigations,” the proprietors have obtained Acts of Parliament relieving them of their rights and liabilities, and there is now no jurisdiction over these rivers, or anybody responsible for removing shoals or cutting weeds. The beds of these streams have consequently become shallow, and they are no longer capable of acting as efficient arterial drains. Thus, on the Ivel, an affluent of the Ouse, the navigation trust, created in the reign of George II., was abolished in 1876. The river is said to have since diminished one-half in width, and one-half in depth, and the bottom is being gradually raised to the level of the land. In like manner, the Lark, another canalised affluent, has almost entirely silted up since the navigation of the river ceased. The Ouse itself, above Earith, is obstructed by numerous shoals, and an enormous growth of weeds. These were originally kept down by the constant passage of the vessels, and the shoals were removed by the trustees of the navigation.

The Tees.

The improvements that have been carried out for the purpose of opening up the navigation of the river Tees, although less considerable than those carried out for some of the larger rivers of Great Britain, are yet entitled to take rank as among the most notable river engineering achievements of the century. They are also among the most recent. It was not until 1852 that the Act was passed creating the Tees Navigation Commission. At that time there were three or four channels in the estuary, all of them very shallow. The shifting sandbanks caused great trouble and not a little danger to navigation, and the depth of water near to Middlesbro’ did not admit of the passage of vessels of large size. Since then, about twenty miles of low water training walls have been erected for the purpose of confining the navigable channel. The volume of water and its scour have thereby been much increased. The river has been continuously dredged in order to secure a depth of water that would allow of the passage of vessels of large tonnage into the Middlesbro’ Docks. About 23 million tons of material have been dredged from the bed of the river, and the channel has been generally straightened and widened. Breakwaters have been constructed on both sides, one of them, called the North Gare, being about two miles and a half long. A remarkable feature of the work is that these breakwaters have been constructed of slag, obtained from the blast-furnaces in the neighbourhood. Some millions of tons of slag have been employed in this way, the ironmasters having paid to the Conservancy Commissioners a small sum for removing the slag, the disposal of which had been a great source of difficulty previous to this application.

As a result of the works that have been carried out for the improvement of the navigation of the Tees, the shipping trade of the river, and especially of the port of Middlesbro’, has greatly increased. The main element in this development has been the growth of the iron industry; but the second element has undoubtedly been the increased facilities for navigation. The popular impression about Middlesbro’ is that only a single house stood in 1830, where there is now a busy town of more than 70,000 inhabitants. This may or may not be a legend, but there is no doubt about the fact that in 1850 there were only from two to three feet of depth on the bar of the Tees, where it was possible to wade across at low water; whereas now there is about 20 feet of water, and a harbour of refuge has been provided in which ships can ride in safety whatever the condition of the usually stormy seas outside.

The Irwell.

This river has been partly canalised, in order to afford a means of communication between Warrington, Manchester, and other large towns, and Liverpool, but it was only adapted for light craft and has consequently fallen largely into disuse. The Mersey and Irwell Navigation was acquired by the Bridgwater Company, and has now, with the rest of the Bridgwater property, passed under the control of the Manchester Ship Canal Company.

The Wear.

This river, which has its rise in the district that unites Durham and Westmoreland, falls into the North Sea at Sunderland after a course of thirty miles. The river is under the jurisdiction of the Wear Commissioners from about nine miles from the bar to the sea. Over this distance very considerable improvements have been carried out during the last half century. These improvements have resulted in making the Wear one of the foremost shipbuilding rivers in the United Kingdom, and have given it the second place in the coal-shipping trade. The revenue of the Wear Trust, which only averaged about 14,000l. a year between 1840 and 1850, has within recent years amounted to about 130,000l. a year. One of the most extensive works undertaken on the river, besides graving docks, wharves, &c., and the deepening of the bed, was the construction of a lock at the sea outlet, designed to obviate the detention of screw-colliers when waiting for the tide. This lock is 481 feet in length by 90 feet in breadth, and has a depth of 29½ feet at ordinary spring tides. The present docks can accommodate 200 ships of large size, drawing up to 24 feet of water. The area of the docks is over 78 acres, and they are fitted with nineteen coal spouts, at which 15,000 tons of coal can be shipped daily.

In this chapter we have dealt with a few only of the more notable examples of river improvement in modern times. The list might be almost indefinitely extended. There is hardly a brawling mountain torrent between Land’s End and John o’ Groat’s that has not been reclaimed, deepened, widened, or otherwise improved upon by the art and the genius of the engineer. Nor has the work been confined to modern times. The Romans are known to have constructed embankments for the control of British rivers during the period of their occupation, although for something like 1000 years afterwards their example was not followed. The engineers and the local authorities of the nineteenth century have done much to redeem this reproach. The improvement and conservancy of rivers have now been reduced to a science, founded mainly upon the following general principles[37]:—

1. That the freer the admission of the tidal water, the better is the river adapted for all purposes, whether of navigation, drainage, or fisheries.

2. That its sectional area and inclination should be made to suit the required carrying power of the river throughout its entire length, both for the ordinary flow of the water and for floods.

3. That the downward flow of the upland water should be equalised as much as possible throughout the entire year; and

4. That all abnormal contaminations should be removed from the streams.

Our tidal rivers are undoubtedly one of the chief sources of our maritime supremacy. For this reason it is of the utmost importance that they should be kept in good repair, free from unnecessary obstructions, and well adapted to the purposes of navigation. As it is, however, this is not always the case. The chief reason for existing maladministration, where it exists, is the absence of a uniform system of control. The Thames, for example, has been hitherto controlled partly by the Thames Conservancy and partly by the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Great Sluice, at Boston, in Lincolnshire, was constructed in 1764 by Smeaton, for the purpose of stopping the flow of the tide in the river Witham, and converting the upper part of the river into a fresh-water canal as far as Lincoln. As, however, the control of the river is divided—one body dealing with the tidal part from the Grand Sluice to the sea, and the other with the canal and drainage of the land above—each opposes the schemes of the other, and the navigation has been ruined.[38]

There is one course whereby this condition of things, where it exists, may be prevented. It has been suggested that a new Government Department should be created, with entire charge of and control over all estuaries and navigable channels, and presided over by a member of the Cabinet. The interests at stake are sufficiently large to justify this.[39] They are as vital to our commerce and industry as any matter now dealt with by the State, affecting our material well-being, and they are every year increasing in extent and importance. As regards the principal rivers—the Mersey, the Tyne, the Tees, the Clyde, and the Wear especially—they are now controlled in accordance with the recommendation made by the Duke of Richmond’s Select Committee, that “each catchment area should be placed under a single body of conservators, who should be responsible for maintaining the river, from its source to its outfall, in an efficient state.” There are other rivers, however, that are administered rather in the interest of the landed proprietors than in that of navigation, and where these two come into conflict the State should have powers that would enable the public interest, which is both national and international, to be effectually protected.

The following table gives the area and length of some of the chief rivers of England:—

Many of the above rivers are not navigable for vessels of any size, and are therefore not of much value to the transportation resources of the country. In the majority of cases, also, the character of the waterways, as regards locality, water-supply, &c., would not justify any large expenditure in adapting them for purposes of transport.

FOOTNOTES
CHAPTER II

[29] a.d. 1661, Anno. 14 Car. Reg. ii.

[30] 7 and 8 Gul. III.

[31] Papers relating to the History and Navigation of the Rivers Wye and Lug. By John Lloyd, junr.

[32] Andrew Yarranton was born in the parish of Astley, Worcestershire, in the year 1616. He wrote a work which is well known to economists, entitled ‘England’s Improvement by Land and Sea, or How to beat the Dutch without Fighting,’ describing observations that he had made during his travels in Holland, Saxony, and other countries.

[33] Smiles states that Yarranton was offered 250l. and eight salt vats at Upwich, valued at 80l. per annum, with three quarters of a vat in Northwich for 21 years, in payment for the work. It is interesting to compare these terms with those on which some of our modern streams have been deepened and improved.

[34] Yarranton’s ‘Improvement by Land and Sea.’

[35] ‘Industrial Biography,’ by S. Smiles, p. 65.

[36] ‘Britannia,’ Holland’s Translation, 1637.

[37] Address of the President of Section G, British Association Meeting at Dublin, 1878.

[38] Paper on “River Control and Management,” by J. C. Hawkshaw, ‘British Association Report for 1878.’

[39] The following figures give the tonnage of the entrances and clearances in the foreign trade (including British possessions) of the principal rivers in 1888:—

[CHAPTER III.]
THE ENGLISH CANAL SYSTEM.

“Of famous cities we the founders know, But rivers, old as seas to which they go, Are nature’s bounty; ’tis of more renown, To make a river than to build a town.” —Waller.

The general circumstances under which artificial navigation came to be adopted in our own and other countries have already been set forth to a limited extent. We have now to consider the special circumstances that have led to the adoption of particular routes and particular means of transport, as well as to make some attempt to indicate the conditions under which canals may be used with advantage.

The routes that are provided by canal navigations are usually either local or national—local, when they only connect two inland centres; national, when they afford access from manufacturing or agricultural centres to the sea. In the earlier history of the canal system both of these ends were kept in view. It was just as important to bring raw materials from their place of production to the centres of consumption as to connect the centres of manufacture with the outer world.

About the middle of the last century, the cost of goods by road, between Manchester and Liverpool, was 40s. per ton; whilst, by the Mersey and Irwell route, the water rate was 12s. per ton. After the opening of the Bridgwater Canal the cost was reduced to 6s. per ton, and a better service was given than either of the previous routes had afforded.

Again, the cost of carriage on coal by pack-horse from Worsley to Manchester, which had been 6s. to 8s. per ton, was reduced to 2s. 6d. per ton on the same canal. In fact, the Duke bound himself not to exceed that freight, although the old Mersey and Irwell Company still held to their toll of 3s. 4d. for all the coal the Duke sent by their route.

The costs of transports throughout the country were on a similar scale, except where held in check by the river traders, who, whilst competing, had still an interest in high freights. From Manchester to Nottingham the charge was over 6l. per ton; to Leicester, over 8l., and so on. These rates were reduced to 2l. and 2l. 6s. 8d., respectively, after the opening of the Trent and Mersey Canal, which also reduced the cost of transport between Manchester and Hull to less than 2l., per ton, owing to the back-carriage secured from that port, together with the tide service of 80 miles up the Humber and the Trent.

The real commercial prosperity of England dates from this period of canal development and enterprise. Raw materials, manufactures, and produce, were easily transported at a reasonable cost between Liverpool, Manchester, Staffordshire, Nottingham, and places on the route to Hull and Northern Europe. These advantages were extended to the Severn route by the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal Act, which was obtained during the year 1766, and by the navigation of the Soar to Leicester.[40]

In 1761 it was estimated that the quantity of traffic carried between the two great cities of Lancashire—Manchester and Liverpool—was about 40 tons per week, or about 2000 tons a year. The cost of transport, as we have just seen, was upwards of 1s. per mile. It is calculated that the traffic now carried on between the two towns is not less than ten million tons, and the cost of transport is stated at from 3s. to 8s. per ton. But the present conditions of transport are nevertheless regarded as unsatisfactory, and hence the movement for the construction of the Ship Canal, which is expected to carry traffic for less than one-half of the amount charged by the railway companies.

When the public mind became fully alive to the importance of providing internal means of transport by water, there were not wanting those who were able to provide the ability and the experience necessary to execute the plans proposed. The history of the Bridgwater Navigation has been so fully related by Smiles,[41] that nothing which we could say here would materially enhance the interest of the story. For all practical purposes, this was the first great artificial waterway in England. It was, indeed, so remarkable a work for the time that we shall briefly recapitulate its history.

In 1758 the Duke of Bridgwater got his first Act of Parliament, which awakened a general ardour for similar improvements among the landowners, farmers, merchants, and manufacturers of the kingdom, and although there was not a Louis XIV. nor a Colbert to encourage them, engineers were found fully equal to Riquet, so that England, though late, began to make good use of the resources she possessed in her inland provinces.

The history of the Bridgwater canal may fairly be said to occupy, in relation to the annals of internal navigation, much the same place that the Liverpool and Manchester Railway does in relation to the development of the railway system. It is necessary to review some of the circumstances connected with this enterprise in order that the actual position of transport at that time may be understood.

Although an Act of Parliament had been obtained many years previously for the purpose of making the Mersey and the Irwell navigable from Liverpool to Manchester, the facilities thereby provided were defective and unsatisfactory in the extreme. The freight charged for water transport between the two towns was 12s. per ton, when the navigation was available, but this was not always at command. Boats could not pass between the lowest lock and Liverpool without the assistance of a spring tide. There were many fords or shallows in the Irwell, over which boats could not pass at all “except in great freshes, or by drawing extraordinary quantities of water from the locks above.” The consequence was that most of the traffic between the two towns was carried on by road, at a much higher cost for rather over thirty miles. The new navigation, although it promised to reduce this charge to 6s. per ton, to abridge the distance by nine miles, to provide wharfage that was not already available, and to give transportation facilities at all times, was strongly denounced and opposed. It was argued that the canal would cut through and separate the land in the possession of several gentlemen along the proposed line of route, that a great number of acres would be covered with water and for ever lost to the public, that the canal could confer no advantage not already secured by the Irwell and the Mersey, that the taking from those streams of the water required for the canal would greatly prejudice, if it did not totally obstruct, the old navigation in dry seasons, and that the property of the old navigation should not be prejudiced without full compensation being made to the proprietors.[42]

A letter written in 1767,[43] at Burslem, states that “gentlemen come to see our eighth wonder of the world—the subterraneous navigation, which is cutting by the great Mr. Brindley, who handles rocks as easily as you would plum-pies, and makes the four elements subservient to his will. He is as plain a looking man as one of the boors of the Peake, or one of his own carters, but when he speaks all ears listen, and every mind is filled with wonder at the things he pronounces to be practicable. He has cut a mile through bogs, which he binds up, embanking them with stones which he gets out of other parts of the navigation, besides about a quarter of a mile into the hill Yelden; on the side of which he has a pump, which is worked by water, and a stove, the fire of which sucks through a pipe the damps that would annoy the men who are cutting towards the centre of the hill.”

The Bridgwater Canal has had a very remarkable career. It was sold by Lord Ellesmere to the Bridgwater Navigation Company for 989,612l., including plant valued at 150,000l. In 1886, the Bridgwater Navigation Company sold the canal to the Manchester Ship Canal Company for 1,710,000l. The Bridgwater Canal was followed, after a few years, by a number of similar undertakings.

We cannot pretend in this chapter to write the history of the canal movement; but we may, nevertheless, rapidly pass in review some of the prominent features of that movement, the better to illustrate the development of canal navigation, and to show how it came to be such as it is.

About the year 1769 we find that the counties of Lancashire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, Leicestershire, and Warwickshire, were greatly exercised concerning the proposal to cut a canal between the Mersey and the Humber by way of Harecastle, Stoke, Burton, and Wilden, near which latter place it was intended to effect a junction with the Trent. Branches were proposed to Birmingham, Lichfield, Tamworth, and Newcastle-under-Lyme. The canal, it was expected, would develop the trade in white flint ware, “which is as strong and sweet as Indian porcelain;” in the noted quarries of Swithland slate, in Leicestershire, “a beautiful and durable covering for houses;” in limestone, “on which the village of Breden, in Leicestershire, is situated;” and “in that sort of iron ore, commonly called ironstone, proper for making cold-short iron, and which, when mixed with the red ore from Cumberland, makes the best kind of tough or merchant iron.”[44] It is somewhat curious, at this time of day, to find that the facilities which it would offer for the exportation of corn were put forward as one of the principal arguments in favour of the new navigation.[45]

The Hull and Liverpool Canal.

In the year 1755, the Liverpool Corporation authorised a survey to be made with a view to the construction of a line of navigation between Liverpool and Hull. Brindley made a survey of the same route three years later, and he, in turn, was followed by Smeaton. Brindley’s plans were ultimately adopted. He proposed to complete the canal “as far north as Harecastle, purchase the land, erect locks, make towing paths, build bridges, and defray every expense, except that of obtaining the Act of Parliament, for 700l. per mile,” but beyond Harecastle it was estimated that the works would cost 1000l. a mile.[46] Brindley proposed to make the canal 12 feet wide at the bottom, and three feet deep on an average, with a depth of 30 inches at the fords. The boats designed to be worked on the canal were 70 feet long, 6 feet wide, drawing 30 inches of water, and carrying 20 tons. Their cost was stated at 30l. each.[47]

It is interesting to record that when the proposal to construct a canal from Liverpool to Hull was under consideration, about the middle of the last century, one of the arguments used in its favour was that it would enable American iron to be brought cheaper to the manufacturing towns from the ports of Liverpool and Hull, and so contribute to lessen the consumption of foreign European iron, “to the great profit of this nation in general, and our own ironworks in particular”; while it was even suggested that, in order to develop this branch of business between our then American colonies and the mother country, a bounty should be offered on the import of American pig-iron, thereby contributing to “clear the lands in America,” and “to preserve the woods in England.”

The project to construct a new waterway through the manufacturing districts between Liverpool and Hull was strenuously opposed by a number of Cheshire gentlemen, who were the owners of the Weaver or Northwich Navigation, and who proposed to carry that waterway to Macclesfield, Stockport, and Manchester. In 1765, a plan was submitted for extending the navigation of the Weaver from Winsford Bridge, in Cheshire, to the river Trent, in the county of Stafford, there joining the Trent and the Severn by canals, and thereby “opening an inland communication between the great ports of Liverpool, Bristol, and Hull.”

In view of the attention that has recently been given to the salt industry, it may be stated that the transport of that commodity was one of the principal reasons offered for the construction, in 1769, of a canal between Liverpool and Hull, viâ Cheshire. At that time manufactured salt was carried on horseback “to almost all parts of Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire,” and it was stated that “so great is the home consumption of this article, that from the saltworks of Northwich alone, a duty of 67,000l. was last year paid into the Exchequer. At Northwich and Wisford are annually made about 24,000 tons.”[48]

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal.

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal, which was commenced in 1770 and completed in 1816, is one of the most important lines of navigation in the United Kingdom, connecting, as it does, the Irish Sea at Liverpool with the German Ocean at Hull. The works were extended over a period of about forty-one years, and cost altogether 1,200,000l. The course of the canal from Leeds is viâ the Abbey of Kirkstall, Calverley, Woodhouse, Apperley Bridge, Shipley, Bingley, Skipton, Burnley, Blackburn, Wigan, and so on to Liverpool. It is the longest canal in Great Britain, and in some respects, the most remarkable. It has many important works of art on its course, the summit level of which is reached at an elevation of 411 feet above the Aire at Leeds, 41 miles from that town. At Foulridge there is a tunnel 1640 yards in length, 18 feet high, and 17 feet wide. Near to this tunnel are two reservoirs for the supply of the canal. They cover an area of 104 acres, and store up 12,000 cubic yards of water. The canal is carried on aqueducts across the Aire, the Colne Water, the Brown, the Calder, the Henbarn, the Derwent Water, and the Roddlesworth Water. The total length of the navigation is 127 miles, and the total lockage 844 feet 7½ inches, while the canal basin at Liverpool is 56 feet above low-water mark on the river Mersey. The canal has several important feeders or branches.[49]

Kennet and Avon Canal.

The Kennet and Avon Canal starts from the port of Bristol and runs to Bath, Dundas (for the Somersetshire Coal Canal), Bradford-on-Avon, Semington (for the Wilts and Berks Canal), Devizes, Honeystreet, Pewsey, Burbage, Hungerford, Newbury, Reading, where it joins the Thames for Henley, Marlow, Maidenhead, Windsor, Staines, and London. The distance from Bristol to Bath is 15 miles, from Bath to Newbury 57 miles, from Newbury to Reading 18½ miles, and from Reading to London 74 miles.

The river Avon, from Bristol to Bath, will admit of barges being worked carrying 90 tons when the water is high, but in low water this weight would be reduced to 50 or 60 tons, in consequence of the want of cleansing and dredging. This part of the navigation is under an Act of Parliament, 10 Queen Anne, 1711, and is to be free and open for ever upon payment of toll.

The canal from Bath to Newbury (under an Act of Parliament of George III.) has been constructed for vessels drawing five feet of water, measuring 14 feet wide, and according to the present soundings on the lock-sills, vessels of that draught ought now to navigate the canal, but they are not able to do so from the great accumulation of mud, which is seldom less than one foot in thickness, and generally two feet or more. This not only prevents the barges from using the canal for carrying full cargoes, but necessitates the employment of extra towing power. One horse would tow a barge 2 to 2½ miles an hour, if the canal were kept in proper working order. At the present time two or more horses are required to do what ought to be only the work of one. Many of the lay byes throughout the canal were originally made to enable vessels to turn; nearly all of these are now of no use, owing to their being full of mud and weeds, consequently barges have often to go long distances beyond their proper destination in order to turn. Owing to the accumulation of mud on the sides of the canal, barges can only pass one another with great difficulty, causing much loss of time. The gearing of the paddles of most of the locks is very insufficient and out of repair. On all properly managed navigations, dredgers are kept almost constantly at work cleansing out the mud, which rapidly accumulates, but on this canal there are none. The only men employed on the canal are a few labourers to clean out the weeds with rakes, which are deposited on the towing-paths, and allowed to remain for months, thus obstructing the use of the paths. The pounds between the locks at Devizes are nearly all full of mud and weeds.

The construction of the new port of Sharpness, opened in 1874, is due to the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal Company, which constructed at the small promontory of that name, about midway between Avonmouth and Gloucester, a large tidal basin, 350 feet by 300 feet, a lock 320 feet long, with three pairs of gates of large size, and a discharging dock 2200 feet long, and occupying an area of 13½ acres. The entrance to the docks from the Severn is 60 feet wide, and the depth at high water averages 26 feet.

The canal company, by this provision, has been able to retain for Gloucester a great deal of the shipping which formerly, although chartered for that city, has, owing to the old canal entrance being too small, been obliged to discharge at one of the South Wales ports. Almost simultaneously with this step, the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal Company purchased the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, thereby enabling water communication to be opened up with the heart of the Midlands.

The Ellesmere Canal.

The Ellesmere Canal, in North Wales, consists of a series of navigations proceeding from the river Dee in the vale of Llangollen. One branch passes northward, near the towns of Ellesmere, Whitchurch, Nantwich, and the city of Chester, to Ellesmere Port on the Mersey; another in a south-easterly direction, through the middle of Shropshire towards Shrewsbury on the Severn, and a third in a south-westerly direction, by the town of Oswestry, to the Montgomeryshire Canal, near Llanymynech; its whole extent, including the Chester Canal, incorporated with it, being about 112 miles. The heaviest and most important part of the works occurred in carrying the canal through the rugged hill country, between the rivers Dee and Ceriog, in the vale of Llangollen. From Nantwich to Whitchurch the distance is 16 miles, and the rise 132 feet, involving nineteen locks; and thence to Ellesmere, Chirk, Pont Cysylltan, and the river Dee, 1¾ mile above Llangollen, the distance is 38¼ miles, and the rise 13 feet, involving only two locks. The latter part of the undertaking presented the greatest difficulties, as, in order to avoid the expense of constructing numerous locks, which would involve serious delay and heavy expense in working the navigation, it became necessary to contrive means for carrying the canal on the same level from one side of the respective valleys of the Dee and the Ceriog to the other, and hence the magnificent aqueducts of Chirk and Pont Cysylltan, characterised by Phillips as “among the boldest efforts of human invention in modern times.”

The Chirk Aqueduct carries the canal across the valley of the Ceriog, between Chirk Castle and the village of that name. At this point the valley is above 700 feet wide; the banks are steep, with a flat alluvial meadow between them, through which the river flows. The country is finely wooded. Chirk Castle stands on an eminence on its western side, with the Welsh mountains and Glen Ceriog as a background; the whole composing a landscape of great beauty, in the centre of which Telford’s aqueduct forms a highly picturesque object.

The aqueduct consists of ten arches of 4 feet span each. The level of the water in the canal is 65 feet above the meadow, and 70 feet above the level of the river Ceriog.

The proportions of this work far exceeded anything of the kind that had up to that time been attempted in England. It was a very costly structure; but Telford, like Brindley, thought it better to incur a considerable capital outlay in maintaining the uniform level of the canal than to raise and lower it up and down the sides of the valley by locks at a heavy expense in works, and a still greater cost in time and water. The aqueduct is an admirable specimen of the finest class of masonry, and Telford showed himself a master of his profession by the manner in which he carried out the whole details of the undertaking. The piers were carried up solid to a certain height, above which they were built hollow with cross walls. The spandrels also, above the springing of the arches, were constructed with longitudinal walls, and left hollow. The first stone was laid on the 17th of June, 1796, and the work was completed in the year 1801.

Aire and Calder Canal.

The Aire and Calder Canal, in Yorkshire, which is connected with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Leeds Bridge, and thence communicates with the Mersey at Liverpool, was originally constructed with locks 60 feet long by 15 feet wide, and with a depth of 3 feet 6 inches. It has been subsequently twice reconstructed in all its main features. In 1820, the diversion between Knottingley and Goole was constructed, with locks 72 feet long, 18 feet wide, and with 7 feet depth of water; but this being found inefficient, the whole of the works between Goole and Leeds, on the Aire branch of the navigation, and Wakefield on the Calder, have been again reconstructed, with locks of 215 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 9 feet on the sills. In addition to this, the undertakers have purchased and improved the Barnsley Canal, and also, to some extent, as lessees, they have extended their improvements to the Calder and Hebble Navigation. From time to time, the port of Goole, which forms a part of the Aire and Calder Navigation, has been improved, and its capacity enlarged, new docks and entrance-locks have been built, and the channel has been generally improved.

The accompanying diagrams show the lines of canal communication between the Severn at Bristol and the Thames, and between the ports of Liverpool, Goole, and Hull. They give the length and profile of each canal, and require but little explanation.

The Aire and Calder Canal has been in many respects one of the most remarkable in England. Its original capital was 150,000l., but it is now stated to amount to 1,697,000l. The difference has mainly resulted from accumulations of profit. After deducting the cost of maintenance, the sum available for distribution in 1888 was 85,000l. The gross yearly income is now as large as the original capital.

Midland Canals.

A glance at the canal map of England and Wales ([p. 57]) will show that in the Midlands there are many existing canals, some of which are still utilised to a large extent. The more important of these are the Worcester and Birmingham, the Birmingham, and the Dudley Canals. The first of these was constructed under an Act obtained in 1791, which authorised the raising of a capital of 180,000l. for the purpose. The length of the canal is 29 miles, and it has 6 feet depth of water and 42 feet of top width. The canal is exceptional in passing through no less than five tunnels in its course—the first at West Heath, the second at Tardebigg, the third at Shortwood, the fourth at Oddingley, and the fifth at Edgbaston. There is also a fall of 428 feet in 15 miles by 71 locks, which are 15 feet wide and 18 feet long, to the level of the Severn. Priestley wrote of the canal that it was “the channel for supplying Worcester and the borders of the Severn down to Tewkesbury and Gloucester with coal, and, in return, conveys the hops and cider of that part of the country northwards, and more particularly affords a ready means for the export of the Birmingham manufactures, through the port of Bristol, to any part of the world.”

SECTION OF THE LINE OF NAVIGATION FROM THE RIVER
SEVERN AT BRISTOL BY WAY OF DEVIZES TO
THE RIVER THAMES AT LONDON BRIDGE.

SECTION OF THE INLAND NAVIGATION BETWEEN
THE PORTS OF LIVERPOOL, GOOLE, AND HULL.

The general direction of the Dudley Canal is nearly north-west by a crooked course of 30 miles in Worcestershire, a detached part of Shropshire, and Staffordshire; it is situate very high; its two ends are on the eastern side of the grand ridge, while its middle, by means of two very long tunnels, is on the western side of the same. The communication of this canal with the Stourbridge Canal, by the Black Delph branch, and the terminating canals, occasions a considerable carrying trade thereon. This canal commences in the Worcester and Birmingham Canal at Selly Oak, and terminates in the old Birmingham at Tipton Green. From near Dudley there is a branch of two miles to the Stourbridge Canal at Black Delph in Kingswinford; there is another branch of 1¼ mile to near Dudley town, and a branch from this last of three-quarters of a mile to the Dudley collieries. From the Worcester and Birmingham Canal to the Black Delph branch 10½ miles are level, thence to near the entrance of the Dudley Tunnel, about three-quarters of a mile, there is a rise of 31 feet by five locks, thence through the tunnel it is level, and thence again in the last one-eighth of a mile a fall of 13 feet is overcome by two locks to the old Birmingham Canal. The Black Delph branch has a fall of 85 feet by nine locks to the Stourbridge Canal; the Dudley branch has a rise of 64 feet in the first three-quarters of a mile, the remainder being level. The depth of water in this canal is 5 to 6 feet; the width of the locks on the Black Delph branch is 7 feet. To near Lapal, or Laplat, the canal passes through a tunnel 3776 yards long; at Gorsty Hill it passes through another of 623 yards, under a collateral branch of the Grand Ridge; and at Dudley there is another tunnel of 2926 yards in length, near the summit-level of the canal. The arch of this last tunnel has a height of 13½ feet. At Cradley Pool a large reservoir exists for supplying the lockage of the Black Delph branch. It is provided, that level cuts may be made from this canal towards any coal-mine to the extent of 2000 yards. A stop-lock is erected at the junction with the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, by which either company has a power of preventing the other from drawing off their head of water. The Black Delph branch was first executed, and this was then united with the Dudley part of the canal, which had been constructed by Lord Dudley and Ward; these were completed and in use before the extension or main length to Selly Oak was designed. The company was authorised to raise a capital of 229,100l., the amount of the shares being originally 100l. each. Owing to the different Acts under which the parts of the canal were progressively undertaken, the rates of tonnage differ considerably.

Canals in Wales.

The principal artificial waterways in Wales are the Swansea Canal, about 19 miles in length, which was opened in 1798, and which connects the harbour of Swansea with the various copper and other works between that point and Pen Tawe; the Neath Canal, which is about 14 miles in length, and which, commencing near Abernant, and terminating at Neath river harbour, with a branch to a short canal called the Briton Canal, near Giant’s Grave, Pill; the Aberdare Canal, which, about 6½ miles in length, connects the Glamorganshire Canal with Aberdare, and runs through a district of great mineral and manufacturing resources; and the Glamorganshire Canal, which in a total length of 25 miles has a rise of about 611 feet, and which, commencing on the east side of the Taff river, and near its entrance into Penarth harbour, terminates in the town of Merthyr Tydfil. The canal was opened between Merthyr and Cardiff in 1794, and at the end of the canal, which terminates in the Taff river, there is a sea-lock, with a floating dock, capable of admitting vessels of considerable tonnage.

In May 1885 the Glamorganshire and Aberdare Canals, in South Wales, were transferred to the Bute Dock Company, who formally commenced working them in September 1887. The old system of conducting the traffic on these canals was to charge toll rates, but the Marquis of Bute has adopted the system of charging through rates from any place on the Bristol Channel to Cardiff.

There are many continuous lines of water communication between different commercial points of importance in England, as, for example, between London and Liverpool, Liverpool and Hull, Birmingham and London, Leeds and Liverpool, &c.; but it often happens upon such through routes that there are great differences in the sizes of the locks, which are shorter or narrower at one point than at another. Thus, for example, between the Derbyshire district and London, the canal communication is in the hands of seven different companies, with four different gauges at least, the effect of which is to limit the carrying capacity of the boats to the very low maximum of 24 tons. A considerable number of canal boats continue to navigate these through routes in spite of all these drawbacks, but they have very little encouragement to do so, inasmuch as the different canal companies impose different rates of toll, the aggregate of which comes to almost, if not quite, as much as would be paid to the railway companies for the service. It is hopeless to expect to see this condition of affairs quite remedied until all these through routes pass into the hands of the same companies. It has been computed by capable engineers that an average expenditure of 10,000l. or 12,000l. would enable the canal system of England to become efficient, and it is probable that before long this expenditure will be found worth while.

According to the most recent returns available, the canal mileage owned by the principal railway companies in England and Wales, and the number of employés thereon, were as under:—

The total number of employés on the canals of England and Wales in 1884 was 1479 for 1333 miles owned, being an average of little more than one employé to the mile. On the railways of England and Wales for the same year the number of employés was 310,568 for 18,000 miles worked, being an average of 17·2 employés per mile. As, however, there are no returns of canal traffic available, we cannot say how the two sets of figures compare in the matter of results.

While several new canal projects are in process of incubation the existing canal property of the United Kingdom, which has cost not less than sixty millions sterling, has been allowed to go to rack and ruin by reason of defects and neglect that are quite inexcusable, and which seriously prejudice not only the canals themselves, but the trade and commerce of the country as a whole.

The unsatisfactory condition of the waterways of the United Kingdom is sufficiently proved by a few returns that were presented to the Select Committee on canals[50] (1883). At that date there were fifty-seven canals in England and Wales belonging to independent companies, twenty-seven canals and navigations under public trusts, forty-five owned or controlled by railway companies, and fourteen that were either derelict, or had been converted into railways.

Of the canals under the control of independent companies, a considerable number were in anything but a flourishing condition, and most of them, apparently, because they entirely failed to meet the requirements of commerce.

So far as mere mileage is concerned, the waterways of England, including canals and canalised rivers, are really of very considerable, if not sufficient extent, as the following figures show:—

Besides these, there have been about 120 miles of canals converted into railways. But these canals are of very limited use, because of the haphazard and unsystematic way in which they have been laid out. Scarcely any two canals have a common gauge, and upon the same canal several gauges of locks may often be found.

The four great industrial rivers of England, and the four most important maritime outlets, are connected with each other by 650 miles of inland waterway. The Thames and the Humber, the Severn and the Mersey, and the Severn, Mersey and the Humber, ought to be placed in communication with each other by as perfect a system of waterways as it is possible to provide. But this desirable end has been frustrated by railway action. In the first group, 175 miles of canal have been acquired by railway companies; in the second group, 490 miles; and in the third group, 360 miles. It has been computed that the average cost of the canals in the first group was 5000l., and in the second group 9000l. per mile. The railways that connect the same four maritime points have a total mileage of about 9500 miles, and an aggregate capital of about 360 millions.

The history of British canals, with all the most interesting information bearing upon their extent, capacity, and traffic, has been written by Priestley in a work that is to this day the standard authority on the subject. The same subject has been dealt with very extensively in Rees’s ‘Cyclopædia,’ under the heading of “Canals.” With these sources of information open to all the world, it would be quite supererogatory to go into much detail relative to these waterways of Great Britain, except in so far as they are of cardinal importance, or are likely to exercise an influence in the future development of canal navigations. It will be understood, therefore, that in these notes no attempt is made to afford minute details of the different canals dealt with; while many of the canals that have either been abandoned, or have become the property of railway companies, or have otherwise ceased to be of public importance, have been entirely disregarded.

It is an axiom in water transport that the larger the vessel employed, within certain limits, the more inexpensive is the cost of the service performed. It has been calculated[51] that at the present time, the cost of transporting fifty tons of material between London and Liverpool, a distance of 180 miles, is 25l., or 10s. per ton exclusive of tolls. But then the boats employed are only 25-ton craft, which take eight days on the journey, with one day to load, and one day to unload, making, with two spare days, twelve days in all. If, however, large craft were substituted, capable of carrying 120 tons each, and towed by a steam barge carrying 90 tons—making a total load of 450 tons—the cost would be reduced to about 2s. 6⅕d. per ton, or about one-fourth of the existing cost, and the time occupied by the journey would be lessened by two days. In both cases profit is included, at the rate of 25 per cent.

In order, however, to have this substitution generally effected, a large number of the existing canals would require to be deepened and widened. The size of the craft suggested for the more economical trip would be 84 feet by 12 feet by 6 feet 3 inches draft. A smaller vessel would not answer the purpose. Now, there are comparatively few canals that would at the present time admit of the passage of such craft, and in some cases waterways that are nominally adapted for even larger boats, are in such an imperfect condition of repair that they are not suited for use. The canals of the independent companies that profess to be adapted for vessels of this size, and the size of craft which they severally admit, are—

Here then we have only 306¾ miles of canal suited to the passage of craft 84 feet by 12 feet, including the river Trent, which, of itself, contributes 72 miles to the total. In other words, only about twenty per cent. of the total independent waterways of the country can admit craft that would enable them to realise the full value of economical transport. Of the remainder, a great part of the navigations vary from 60 to 75 feet in width, so that presumably they could be adapted for the larger sizes of craft without very material expense.

Map showing the Canals and Navigations in England and Wales.

The canals and navigations managed by public trusts are in a decidedly better position. Commencing with the noble Severn, which, for a great part of its canalised course of forty-four miles, admits craft 270 feet by 35 feet, there are the Thames (from London Bridge), the Lea, the Weaver, and the Wye, which are suited to craft of considerable dimensions, but these for the most part can hardly be described as canals proper.

The canals that have passed into the possession of the railway companies are not, as a rule, so well adapted for navigation as those controlled by independent companies. On the face of it, indeed, there is a presumption that the railways could not have acquired the property if it had been as it should have been. The only railway canals that are capable of admitting craft exceeding 84 feet in length are the Kennet and Avon, 85 miles long; the Grantham Canal, 33½ miles long; and the Nottingham Canal, 15 miles in length—about 133 miles in all. Out of a total of 1333 miles of the derelict and converted canals, only the Melton Mowbray, 14¾ miles in length, was adapted for the larger size of vessels.

The preceding map shows the canals in England and Wales that are in the hands of independent owners or public trusts, and in the possession of railway companies, respectively.

Under the circumstances stated, it is perfectly evident that the canals of England and Wales have not had a fair chance. Out of a total of over 4000 miles of canal and river navigations, the proportion that is suited to craft of 200 tons burden is almost fractional. With such a size of vessel, cheap transport is difficult.

Between London and Birmingham the following canals form a system of communication:—

The diagram on the next page shows the section of the line of canal navigation between the Mersey and the Thames by way of Birmingham, the total distance being 260 miles. It will be observed that the system is an extensive one, embracing no fewer than twelve different waterways, the more important of which are the Trent and Mersey, and the Grand Junction canals.

SECTION OF THE LINE OF NAVIGATION FROM THE RIVER MERSEY
AT LIVERPOOL BY WAY OF BIRMINGHAM TO THE RIVER THAMES
AT LIMEHOUSE, LONDON.

The principal advantages afforded by canals are thus concisely stated by General Rundall:—

1. They admit of any class of goods being carried in the manner and at the speed which proves to be most economical and suitable for it, without the slightest interference with any other class.

2. The landing or shipment of cargo is not necessarily confined to certain fixed stations, as is obligatory on railways, but boats can stop at any point on their journey to load and unload, and discharge their cargoes direct over the ship’s side.