London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3

by Henry Mayhew

Inland Navigation.

The next part of my subject is the “water-carriage,” carried on by means of canals and rivers. The means of inland navigation in England and Wales are computed to comprise more than 4000 miles, of which 2200 miles are in navigable canals and 1800 in navigable rivers. In Ireland, such modes of communication extend about 500 miles, and in Scotland about 350. As railways have been the growth of the present half-century, so did canals owe their increase, if not their establishment, in England, to the half-century preceding—from 1750 to 1800; three-fourths of those now in existence having been established during that period. Previously to the works perfected by the Duke of Bridgewater and his famous and self-taught engineer, James Brindley, the efforts made to improve our means of water-transit were mainly confined to attempts to improve the navigation of rivers. These attempts were not attended with any great success. The current of the river was often too impetuous to be restrained in the artificial channels prepared for the desired improvements, and the forms and depths of the channels were gradually changed by the current, so that labour and expense were very heavily and continuously entailed. “Difficulties in the way of river navigation,” says Mr. M‘Culloch, “seem to have suggested the expediency of abandoning the channels of most rivers, and of digging parallel to them artificial channels, in which the water may be kept at the proper level by means of locks. The Act passed by the legislature in 1755 for improving the navigation of Sankey Brook on the Mersey, gave rise to a lateral canal of this description about 11¼ miles in length, which deserves to be mentioned as the earliest effort of the sort in England. But before this canal had been completed, the Duke of Bridgewater and James Brindley had conceived a plan of canalisation independent altogether of natural channels, and intended to afford the greatest facilities to commerce by carrying canals across rivers and through mountains, wherever it was practicable to construct them.”

The difficulties which Brindley overcame were considered insurmountable until he did overcome them. In the construction of a canal from Worsley to Manchester it was necessary to cross the river Irwell, where it is navigable at Barton. Brindley proposed to accomplish this by carrying an aqueduct 39 feet above the surface of the Irwell. This was considered so extravagant a proposition that there was a pause, and a gentleman eminent for engineering knowledge was consulted. He treated Brindley’s scheme as the scheme of a visionary, declaring that he had often heard of castles in the air, but never before heard where one was to be erected. The duke, however, had confidence in his engineer; and a successful, serviceable, and profitable aqueduct, instead of a castle in the air, was the speedy and successful result. The success of Brindley’s plans and the spirited munificence of the Duke of Bridgewater, who, that he might have ample means to complete his projects, at one time confined his mere personal expenses to 400l. a-year—laid the foundations of the large fortunes enjoyed by the Duke of Sutherland and his brother the late Earl of Ellesmere.

The canals which have been commenced and completed in the United Kingdom since the year 1800 are 30 in number, and extend 582¾ miles in length.

Mr. M‘Culloch gives a list of British canals, with the number of shareholders in the proprietary of each, the amount and cost of shares, and the price on the 27th June, 1843. The Erewash, with 231 shares, each 100l. returned a dividend of 40l., each share being then worth 675l. The Loughborough, with only 70 100l. shares, the average cost of each share having been 142l. 17s., had a dividend of 80l. and a selling price per share of 1400l. The Stroudwater, with 200 shares of 150l., returned a dividend of 24l., with a price in the market of 490l. On the other hand, the 50l. shares of the Crinau were then selling at 2l. The 50l. shares of the North Walsham and Dillon were of the same almost nominal value in the market; and the shares of the Thames and Medway, with an average cost of 30l. 4s. 3d., were worth but 1l. Of the cost expended in construction of the canals of England, I have no means of giving a precise account; but the following calculation seems sufficiently accurate for my present purpose. I find that, if in round numbers the 250,000 shares of the 40 principal canals averaged an expenditure of 100l. per share—the result would be 25,000,000l., and perhaps we may estimate the canals of the United Kingdom to have cost 35,000,000l., or one-tenth as much as the railways.

The foregoing inquiries present the following gigantic results:—There are employed in the yearly transit of Great Britain, abroad and along her own shores, 33,672 sailing-vessels and 1110 steam-vessels, employing 236,000 seamen. Calculating the value of each ship and cargo as the value has been estimated before Parliament, at 5000l., we have an aggregate value—sailing-vessels, steamers, and their cargoes included—of 173,910,000l. Further, supposing the yearly wages of the seamen, including officers, to be 20l. per head, the amount paid in wages would be 4,720,000l.

The railways now in operation in the United Kingdom extend 6000 miles, the cost of their construction (paid and to be paid) having been estimated at upwards of 350,000,000l. Last year they supplied the means of rapid travel to above 63,000,000 of passengers, who traversed above a billion of miles. Their receipts for the year approached 11,250,000l. of money, and nearly three-quarters of a million of persons are dependent upon them for subsistence.

The turnpike and other roads of Great Britain alone (independently of Ireland) present a surface 120,000 miles in length, for the various purposes of interchange, commerce, and recreation. They are maintained by the yearly expenditure of a million and a half.

For similar purposes the navigable canals and rivers of Great Britain and Ireland furnish an extent of 4850 miles, formed at a cost of probably 35,000,000l. Adding all these together, we have of turnpike-roads, railways, and canals, no less than 130,000 and odd miles, formed at an aggregate cost of upwards of 386,000,000l. If we add to this the 54,250,000l. capital expended in the mercantile marine, we have the gross total of more than 440,000,000 of money sunk in the transit of the country. If the number of miles traversed by the natives of this country in the course of the year by sea, road, rail, river, and canal, were summed up, it would reach to a distance greater than to the remotest planet yet discovered.

LONDON WATERMEN, LIGHTERMEN, AND STEAMBOAT-MEN.

Of all the great capitals, London has least the appearance of antiquity, and the Thames has a peculiarly modern aspect. It is no longer the “silent highway,” for its silence is continually broken by the clatter of steamboats. This change has materially affected the position and diminished the number of the London watermen, into whose condition and earnings I am now about to examine.

The character of the transit on the river has, moreover, undergone a great change, apart from the alteration produced by the use of steam-power. Until the more general use of coaches, in the reign of Charles II., the Thames supplied the only mode of conveyance, except horseback, by which men could avoid the fatigue of walking; and that it was made largely available, all our older London chroniclers show. From the termination of the wars of the Roses, until the end of the 17th century, for about 200 years, all the magnates of the metropolis, the king, the members of the royal family, the great officers of state, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the noblemen whose mansions had sprung up amidst trees and gardens on the north bank of the Thames, the Lord Mayor, the City authorities, the City Companies, and the Inns of Court, all kept their own or their state barges, rowed by their own servants, attired in their respective liveries. In addition to the river conveyances of these functionaries, private boats or barges were maintained by all whose wealth permitted, or whose convenience required their use, in the same way as carriages and horses are kept by them in our day. The Thames, too, was then the principal arena for the display of pageants. These pageants, however, are now reduced to one—the Lord Mayor’s show. The remaining state barges are but a few, viz. the Queen’s, the Lord Mayor’s, and such as are maintained by the City Companies, and even some of these are rotting to decay.

Mr. Charles Knight says in his “London:”—“In the time of Elizabeth and the first James, and onward to very recent days, the north bank of the Thames was studded with the palaces of the nobles; and each palace had its landing-place, and its private retinue of barges and wherries; and many a freight of the brave and beautiful has been borne, amidst song and merriment, from house to house, to join the masque and the dance; and many a wily statesman, muffled in his cloak, has glided along unseen in his boat, to some dark conference with his ambitious neighbour. Upon the river itself, busy as it was, fleets of swans were ever sailing; and they ventured unmolested into that channel which is now narrowed by vessels from every region. Paulus Jovius, who died in 1552, describing the Thames, says: ‘This river abounds in swans, swimming in flocks, the sight of whom, and their noise, are vastly agreeable to the fleets that meet them in their course.’ The only relics of the palatial ‘landing-places’ above alluded to, which is now to be seen, is the fine arch, or water-gate, the work of Inigo Jones, at the foot of Buckingham-street. This was an adornment of the landing-place from York House, once the town abode of the arch-bishops of that see, but afterwards the property of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. In front of this gate, or nearly so, the Hungerford steam-boat piers are now stationed; and in place of stately barges, directed by half-a-dozen robust oarsmen, in gorgeous liveries, approaching the palace, or lying silently in wait there, we have halfpenny, penny, twopenny, and other steam-boats, hissing, spluttering, panting, and smoking.”

Moreover, in addition to the state and private barges of the olden times, there were multitudes of boats and watermen always on hire. Stow, who was born in 1525, and died at eighty years of age, says that in his time 40,000 watermen were employed on the Thames. This, however, is a manifest exaggeration, when we consider the population of London at that time; still it is an over-estimate common to old chroniclers, by whom precise statistical knowledge was unattainable. That Stow represents the number of these men at 40,000, shows plainly that they were very numerous; and one proof of their great number, down to the middle of the last century, is, that until one hundred years ago, the cities of London and Westminster had but one bridge—the old London-bridge—which was commenced in 1176, completed in thirty-one years, and after standing 625 years, was pulled down in 1832. The want of bridges to keep pace with the increase of the population caused the establishment of numerous ferries. It has been computed, that in 1760 the ferries across the Thames, taking in its course from Richmond to Greenwich, were twenty-five times as numerous as they are at present. Westminster-bridge was not finished until 1750; Blackfriars was built in 1769; Battersea in 1771; Vauxhall in 1816; Waterloo in 1817; Southwark in 1819; the present London-bridge in 1831; and Hungerford in 1844.