Engraved by J. T. Wedgwood.
BRINDLEY.
From a Print by R. Dunkarton 1773, after a Picture by F. Parsons.
Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight & Co. Ludgate Street.
BRINDLEY.
Our memoir of the man who originated that system of canal navigation, which contributed in no secondary degree to the wonderful increase of our national wealth in the last century, is taken entirely, and in many parts verbatim, from Dr. Kippis’s Biographia Britannica. The article Brindley in that work, communicated by Brindley’s brother-in-law, Mr. Henshall, and his friend Mr. Bentley, appears to be the only original account of him extant, and the source from which all later accounts have been taken.
James Brindley was born in the parish of Wormhill in Derbyshire, in 1716. He was the son of a small freeholder, who squandered his property in rustic dissipation, and could scarcely afford to give him even the rudiments of education. His boyhood, therefore, was spent in rural labour: but at the age of seventeen he left his home, to be apprenticed to a millwright at Macclesfield. He soon exhibited an uncommon share of mechanical ingenuity, which enabled him to excel his master in planning and executing orders for machinery more complicated than usual, and caused his services to be eagerly sought and highly prized by those who had once occasion to employ him.
At a later period he went into business on his own account, and, by many useful inventions and contrivances, established his reputation throughout the neighbourhood as a skilful mechanic. He gradually obtained a wider range for the exercise of his powers. In 1752 he erected a remarkable engine to drain some coal mines at Clifton, in Lancashire, of which the moving power was a wheel fixed thirty feet below the surface of the earth, and driven by water drawn from the river Irwell, by a tunnel cut for near 600 yards through the rock. In 1755 he was employed to construct portions of the works for a silk mill at Congleton, under the superintendence of an engineer, who proved incompetent to the task which he had in hand. Brindley does not appear ever to have executed machinery of the sort required, and he had not even been permitted to see the general model of the mill: but on the incompetency of his superior being discovered, he came forward and told the proprietors, that if they would let him know what was the effect they wished to have produced, and would permit him to perform the business in his own way, he would finish the mill to their satisfaction. The knowledge which they had of his ability and integrity induced them to repose confidence in this assurance; he accomplished that very curious and complex piece of machinery, in a manner far superior to the expectations of his employers, and with the addition of several new and useful contrivances. He also invented machines for making tooth and pinion wheels, which hitherto had been cut by hand, and with great labour.
Many other improvements Brindley introduced into the mechanical arts. But about this time his thoughts were drawn towards a larger sphere of action by the resolution of Francis Duke of Bridgewater to cut a canal from his coal mines at Worsley to the town of Manchester, distant about seven miles. This scheme is said to have been before conceived by one of that nobleman’s predecessors: but that circumstance does not detract from the honour due to the great perseverance and resolution displayed in the execution of his plan. Divesting himself of the splendour which usually belongs to his rank, he devoted his large revenue almost entirely to his favourite undertaking: resisting the temptation to borrow money, lest he should involve himself and his successors in irremediable difficulties, in case of the failure of an undertaking which, from its novelty, no man living could assert to be certain of success. At the same time having selected Brindley as his engineer, on good experience of his skill and talent, he placed a noble confidence in him; and, without fear or distrust, devoted his energy and fortune to work out the magnificent design which the genius of his coadjutor had planned. As the difficulties to be overcome were very great, so there was little experience to guide the projectors. Navigable rivers indeed had been improved, and those which were not navigable by nature had been made so by pounding up their waters with locks and dams: but of canals, properly so called, this was the first constructed in England. That it might be perfect in its kind, it was resolved to preserve a level, and avoid locks altogether: but to effect this obstacles were to be overcome, such as never had been surmounted in England,—obstacles which had always been considered insurmountable. Navigable tunnels were to be cut, long and large mounds to be carried across valleys, and in the line which finally was adopted, an aqueduct bridge of three arches, nearly fifty feet in height, and including the embankments on each side, five hundred yards in length, was to be carried over the river Irwell. This part of the scheme being generally considered wild and extravagant, Brindley, to justify himself to his employer, desired that the opinion of another engineer might be taken. This was accordingly done: but the second, on being conducted to the spot where it was intended that the aqueduct should be made, exclaimed, “I have often heard of castles in the air, but never before was shown the place where any of them were to be erected.” But the Duke of Bridgewater’s confidence in Brindley was not to be shaken, and the bridge was undertaken and finished within less than a year.
It is needless now to give the details of works which, though they excited the wonder of contemporaries, have been far surpassed in magnitude by more recent undertakings. One feature in the Duke of Bridgewater’s canal, however, is too remarkable to be passed over: it is continued on the same level more than three quarters of a mile into the heart of the hill in which the collieries are situated, so that after a short transit in low waggons along the galleries of the mine, the coal is deposited at once in the barges which convey it to Manchester. For a fuller account, we may refer to Phillips’s History of Inland Navigation. In 1762, the Duke of Bridgewater obtained an Act of Parliament, enabling him to continue his canal from Worsley in an opposite direction to Runcorn, in the tideway of the Mersey, so as to establish a perfect water-way between Liverpool and Manchester, unembarrassed by the constant current, and inequalities of flood and drought, which impeded the navigation of the Irwell. In this part of the line several deep valleys, especially those of the rivers Mersey and Bollin, were to be crossed, and this was done without the assistance of a single lock. Brindley’s method of constructing the long embankments, which occurred in some places, was remarkable: he built caissons along the line of its intended course, into which boats laden with excavated soil were conducted by the canal itself, and discharged their contents upon the very spot where the ground was to be raised. Thus the canal, as it were, pushed itself forward; and the labour and expense of transporting these immense masses of earth was greatly diminished. To guard against the total loss of water, and ruin to the surrounding country, which might occur from a breach of these embankments, Brindley contrived stops, which were gates so hung as to lie horizontally near the bottom when the water was at rest, but to rise and close when any current should be produced by the banks giving way, and thus prevent the escape of any water, except that portion near the breach which should be comprised between them. It is hardly necessary to add that the result of this, the greatest undertaking perhaps ever performed by any private person out of his own fortune, has been the realization of an enormous income to the peer who undertook it, and to his heirs.
This success encouraged others to proceed in the same course; and in 1765 a subscription was raised, and an Act of Parliament procured, for uniting the rivers Mersey and Trent, and consequently the ports of Liverpool and Hull, by what is commonly called the Grand Trunk Canal. Brindley bestowed this name upon it, in the expectation that, traversing a large and important portion of our manufacturing district, it would be the main trunk, from which a number of minor branches would spring. The scheme had been projected so early as 1755, and the ground surveyed, which for the most part offered little difficulty. But there was one line of high ground, called Harecastle Hill, which could neither be turned nor surmounted by any expedient that former engineers could devise. Brindley overcame the obstacle by driving a tunnel through it, upwards of a mile and five furlongs in length, and in some parts seventy yards below the surface of the ground. This canal, which is ninety-three miles long, was begun in 1766, and finished in May, 1777, less than eleven years after its commencement. In connexion with it, Brindley planned and executed a branch which joined the Severn, and thus gave Bristol an inland navigation to Hull, Liverpool, and Manchester.