Waterways and Water Transport in Different Countries / With a description of the Panama, Suez, Manchester, Nicaraguan, and other canals.

by J. Stephen Jeans

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.