[212] ‘Engineering and Mining Journal’ (New York), Map 4, 1889.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
THE MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL.
“Rivers diverted from their native course, And bound with chains of artificial force, From large cascades in pleasing tumult rolled, Or rose through figured stone or breathing gold.” —Prior.
Whether we regard the magnitude of the enterprise, the importance of the district it is intended to serve, the difficulties and opposition that have had to be surmounted, or the many and varied influences that it is likely to exercise upon the future of transport in the United Kingdom, the Manchester Ship Canal is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable undertakings of modern times.
It is not that the canal is unique in point of the expenditure involved, or in so far as the engineering problems to be dealt with are concerned. The Suez Canal is at once a much more costly and a much more extensive work, its actual cost having been about 20,000,000l. sterling, as against less than half that sum for the Manchester enterprise; and its length having been about 100 miles, as against 35. The Panama Canal, again, although approximately about the same length as the ship canal between Manchester and the sea, has cost, up to the present time, about 60,000,000l. sterling, including the expenditure on financing. The Nicaraguan Canal, again, which is now about to be undertaken in real earnest, is estimated to cost from 13,000,000l. to 20,000,000l., and will involve the cutting of some 28 miles of canal, in addition to the almost equally serious work of canalising the St. Juan River. But these are all works of a different character, and having a different object in view. The Suez, Panama, Nicaraguan, and Corinth Canals are isthmian waterways, intended, or constructed with the view of connecting together seas or oceans that Nature had divorced, and thereby carried out with the primary, if not with the sole, object of abridging distance. The Welland and the St. Mary’s Falls Canals, in Canada and the United States, are of much the same character, their object being that of uniting waters that were originally kept apart by natural barriers. But the Manchester Ship Canal has but few antetypes. The canals already in existence that most nearly correspond to it in character are the Erie Canal, which connects Buffalo with New York, and thereby secures an unbroken line of water communication between Chicago and New York, a distance of over 1000 miles; and the Poutiloff Canal, 38 miles in length, which connects Cronstadt with St. Petersburg, and has converted the latter city into a seaport. The design of the Manchester Ship Canal is to transform that large centre of population and industry from a landlocked city into a seaport, and to confer the same facilities on a number of other towns in the neighbourhood.
There is no district and probably no community that appears to offer better facilities for making the experiment of providing a great inland waterway of this description. Manchester and Liverpool, with their immediate suburbs contain at least a million and a half of souls. But the trade and industry of the two towns are even more important than their population, relatively to other districts. The cotton trade of the world is carried on in this part of Lancashire. Manchester and Liverpool together have obtained and maintained a great repute as the centre of large industrial operations of almost every kind: engineering works, shipbuilding works, alkali works, tobacco factories, chemical and copper works, and many others. Liverpool has to-day a larger export shipping trade than any other port in the world, and is only eclipsed by the Thames in the matter of imports. But this great business of imports and exports is not originated in Liverpool herself. She is only the distributing centre for a very large and a very populous district, and a centre moreover that did not appear to offer to that district the economical facilities and advantages to which it was entitled. The port and harbour dues at Liverpool were heavy and onerous, and the rates charged by the railway companies for the transportation of traffic between the Mersey and the interior of the country were deemed to be much higher than they should have been, having regard to the importance of the traffic.
The proposal to construct a canal is by no means a new one. Manchester, as every one knows, has for more than a century and a quarter been the foremost in all plans and operations designed to secure economy and facility of transport. Many years ago it was proposed to convert the Irwell into a navigable river, and this, of course, would have connected Manchester with the Mersey and so with the sea. But the Irwell—a tortuous, narrow, and in many respects unsatisfactory stream—did not readily lend itself to a grand proposal of this kind, and the little that was done to make it a maritime highway was never attended with any real advantage to trade and commerce. The Bridgwater Canal was a larger and more ambitious venture. It also connected Manchester with the sea by the Mersey, as well as with many inland towns by auxiliary canals—Bolton, by the Manchester, Bolton, and Bury Canal; Rochdale, by the Rochdale Canal; Blackburn and Accrington, by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal; Ashton and Huddersfield, by the Manchester and Huddersfield Canal; and so with some other large towns. The truth is that Manchester is, and has been for more than a century, the centre of a vast network of canals, whereby water communication was made possible with nearly every other important town and district in the country. But this possibility was one that could only be taken advantage of to a very limited extent. The canals surrounding Manchester have been of small size and depth, admitting of the passage of small boats and barges only, so that they could not be utilised for sea-going craft. For most practical purposes, such waterways were therefore of little use. What was felt to be necessary was a canal sufficiently broad and deep to admit of the passage of large ocean-going steamers right up to the warehouses and mills of Manchester and the neighbouring towns. This necessity was all the more keenly felt, and all the more readily acted upon, that the railway rates between Manchester and Liverpool were generally onerous and oppressive.
