Before leaving the waterways of Scotland, it may be interesting to remark that inland navigation occupied a good deal of attention from James Watt,[56] although the great mechanician did not accomplish so much in this direction as his contemporary, Brindley. Watt was employed in 1767 to make a survey for a canal of junction between the rivers Forth and Clyde, by what was called the Lomond passage, and attended Parliament on the part of the subscribers, where the Bill was lost. An offer was then made to him of undertaking the survey and estimate of an intended canal for the Monkland Collieries to Glasgow, and these proving satisfactory the superintendence of the execution was confided to him. This was quickly followed by his being employed by the Trustees for Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland to make a survey for a canal from Perth to Forfar, through Strathmore; and soon afterwards by the Commissioners of the Annexed Estates, to furnish a report and estimate of the relative advantages of opening a communication between the Forth of Clyde and the western ocean, by means of a navigable canal across the isthmus of Crinan,[57] or that of Tarbert. Business of this description crowded upon him; and surveys, plans, and estimates, were successively undertaken by him for the deepening of the river Clyde, the rendering navigable of the rivers Forth and Devon, and the water of Leven; the making of a canal from Machrihanish Bay to Campbeltown, and of another between the Grand Canal and the Harbour of Borrowstounness. But the last and greatest work of the kind upon which Watt was employed was the survey and estimate of the line of the canal between Fort William and Inverness, since executed, as we have seen, by Telford, upon a larger scale than was at that time proposed.
Estuaries hardly come within the scope of the present work, otherwise the Forth Bridge, recently opened by the Prince of Wales, would demand and deserve an extended notice. That remarkable engineering achievement, due to the genius of Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker, is likely for a long time to remain a unique tour de force as a means of communication between the opposite shores of an arm of the sea, and opens up a vista of possibilities in regard to transport that were undreamt of until recently.
FOOTNOTES
CHAPTER IV
[55] Paper read in 1888 before the Institution of Naval Architects.
[56] James Watt was born at Greenock on the 19th January, 1736, and died at Heathfield on the 25th August, 1819. His great invention was the steam engine; but he was an almost universal genius, having been almost equally at home in many branches of antiquity, metaphysics, medicine, and etymology, architecture, music, and law, the modern languages, and German logic and poetry.
[57] This canal has since been carried out, and now forms an important link in the chain of communication between the west of Scotland and Inverness, viâ the “Royal,” or West Coast route.
[CHAPTER V.]
THE WATERWAYS OF IRELAND.
“Such was the Boyne, a poor inglorious stream, That in Hibernian vales obscurely strayed, And, unobserved, in wild meanders played.” —Addison.