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.