Although the railways have secured possession of some 1700 miles of canals in Great Britain, they do not appear to have profited much thereby. The Great Western Railway Company owns no less than seven canals, on which they have expended a million sterling. In 1887 one of these canals earned 2700l. profit, while the other six lost 1300l., besides the whole of the interest upon their capital cost.
The experience of the other railway companies has been more or less similar to that of the Great Western. The railways have been nursed and developed; the canals have been neglected and allowed to perish. The railway companies have been accused of acquiring canal property in order that they might destroy it, and thereby get rid of a dangerous rival. This is probably not the case. The railway companies are fully aware of the fact that water transport under suitable conditions is more economical than railway transport. It would therefore have suited them, at the same rates, to carry by water heavy traffic, in the delivery of which time was not of much importance. But the canals, as they came into their possession, were really not adapted for such traffic without being more or less remodelled, and this the railway companies have not attempted.
When we consider the enormous disadvantages under which the majority of the canals of this country now labour, the great matter for wonder is, not that they do not secure the lion’s share of the traffic, but that they get any traffic at all. A railway is usually carried from point to point by the most direct route possible, and the cases in which there is any considerable diversion from the most direct route are comparatively rare. But in laying out the canals the designers and promoters appear to have endeavoured to take the longest instead of the shortest route available. Thus, for example, the distance between Liverpool and Wigan is thirty-four miles by canal while it is only nineteen miles by railway. Again, the railway route from Liverpool to Leeds is eighty miles, whereas by canal the distance is not less than 128 miles. If the canal rates were very much lower than the railway rates, these differences would still be very much against them. But there is not really much difference between them at present, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, which is a fairly representative one, charging a halfpenny to twopence per ton per mile, according to the nature of the traffic. Then again, the speed on British canals can seldom be carried above 2½ miles per hour, not to speak of the delay in getting through the locks, of which there are ninety-three between Leeds and Liverpool.
It would be the idlest of idle dreams to expect that the canal system of this or any other country, as originally constructed, can be resuscitated, or even temporarily galvanised into activity, in competition with railways. Canals as they were built a century ago have no longer any function to fulfil that is worthy of serious consideration. Their mission is ended; their use is an anachronism. They do not provide the means of cheaper transport, and they have no other advantage to offer to the trader that would be a sufficient equivalent for the tedium of their transport. The canals of the future must be adapted to the new conditions of commerce. What we now require is that our great centres of population and industry shall be made seaports—that Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and other places, shall not suffer hurt because they are inland towns. The existing canals may serve as a valuable nucleus for the new departure. Their importance as a means to this end has already been practically recognised. The Manchester Ship Canal Company has acquired the Bridgwater Navigation. For the purposes of the projected Sheffield and Goole Ship Canal it is proposed to acquire several of the old navigations, including the Dearne and Dove Canal, the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, and other waterways. Other improved canals have been suggested, and Mr. Samuel Lloyd has advocated the construction of a great national canal which would connect all the principal industrial centres of the kingdom with each other and with the sea. There appears to be no insuperable difficulty in the way of realising such a project. Capital alone is wanted. Whether that essential will be forthcoming is, however, very doubtful. Much is likely to depend on the extent to which the Manchester Ship Canal is successful. It would be a mistake to go too quickly. If ship canal transport is likely to be a means of salvation to British trade and commerce, we shall not be much the worse if we wait for it a little longer. It is not well to do anything that would tend to destroy or discount the value of the vast railway property of this country. The traders have long been trying to “agree with their adversary,” in so far as they have differences with the railway companies; and if the latter are duly reasonable, the future may still be theirs.
It has been objected that a canal could not provide large manufacturers, mine owners, or others who now enjoy the advantages of sidings, giving direct connection with the railway system upon which their works or mines are situated, with the same facilities as they are now possessed of. This, however, is a mistake. The fact is that a wharf may be provided almost as easily and as cheaply as a railway siding. On some canals, as for example on the Birmingham system, the different works along the route of the canal have been supplied in almost every case with wharves, until they are now counted by hundreds.
Broadly stated, the problem that now presses for solution amounts to this—In what way can we best take advantage of the well-ascertained fact that under ordinary conditions a ton of goods can be transported about 2000 miles by water for the same cost that it can be sent 100 miles on land? It is no unusual thing to find that a ton of goods can be transported 40 miles by steamer for one penny, making allowance for every charge.[1] It is not, of course, pretended that goods can be carried by inland navigation for anything like this rate. But it has been well established that even on canals, with all the disadvantages of slow speed, limited depth, small boats, frequent locks, and other drawbacks, the transport of heavy traffic can be effected for less than one-sixth of a penny per ton per mile, which is not one-half of the lowest rates at which the railways of Great Britain carry mineral traffic at the present time. It is necessary to add that canal companies do not, in Great Britain at least, carry for anything like the low rate stated, except perhaps on the Weaver Navigation, which is quite exceptional.
An important question that naturally occurs to any one who has studied the history of canal navigation in foreign countries is that of how far it is the duty of the State to take such waterways under its control. This is really a political problem, which scarcely belongs to that part of the subject which we have undertaken to consider. It may, however, be observed that in the United States, in France, and in one or two other countries, canals have been acquired by the State, and made as free of tolls as the rivers. This, of course, affords to canal transport in those countries a striking advantage over the system in Great Britain. It has been calculated by a high authority[2] that an expenditure of 12,000l. per mile would be required to put the inland navigations of England into good order, and to adapt them generally for larger traffic, with steam-tugs and barges or boats of sufficient size. This would mean for the 3000 miles of canal already constructed an expenditure of 24,000,000l. It is calculated that about 20,000,000l. have already been expended upon our waterways,[3] so that the total outlay, after the expenditure suggested by Sir John Hawkshaw, would be about 44,000,000l. If the State were to borrow this sum, it could procure it, no doubt, at 3 per cent., which would mean that the total annual burden entailed upon the country by the freeing of the canals would be 920,000l., or only a 1⁄125 part of our total national expenditure. This is certainly a small price to pay for so desirable an object. But upon the proposal as just stated there are two important remarks to be made—the first, that the suggested expenditure of 12,000l. per mile would only give us canals adapted for the navigation of large barges or vessels of not more than 150 to 200 tons, whereas what is chiefly required is internal water communication that would enable an ordinary merchant steamer to sail right up to Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford, and other large towns; the second, that no such maritime ship canal has hitherto been constructed for less than 120,000l. per mile, including all contingencies.[4] The raising of this sum is a very different item from the raising of 12,000l. per mile. The most serious objection, however, would be the outcry on the part of the railway interest that the Government was entering into competition with private enterprise. This, of course, would be no new thing. The New York State canals compete with the railways, which are private property, and so do the canals of France. The duty of the State stops at providing the waterway. It does not, of course, undertake transportation. That business is left, like the same business on the railways, to private enterprise. The canals might, therefore, if acquired by the State, be regarded as so many additional miles of navigable rivers possessed by the country, or so many more miles of seaboard provided for the benefit of towns that have hitherto been shut out from direct maritime advantages. Canals are, indeed, entitled to be regarded in the same light as a common turnpike road. The State would hardly be likely to permit private ownership in turnpikes. The community at large are taxed for their maintenance, and there has never been any serious contention that it should be otherwise. The time has come when it behoves us to consider whether canals should not be similarly controlled and administered, since they are, without doubt, as necessary for the transport of goods as turnpike roads are for the passage of vehicles and pedestrians.
As to the reasons that have led the author to undertake the publication of the present volume, a remark or two may be permitted. In 1875 he undertook the preparation of a work[5] on the growth of the railway system up to that time for the Directors of the North-Eastern Railway, on the occasion of their celebration at Darlington of the Jubilee of the Stockton and Darlington line—the first passenger railway constructed in this country on which locomotives were employed. In inquiring into the history of that railway, he was struck with the importance that was attached half a century before to the possession of canal navigation, and with the great facilities that it afforded to the districts through which it was carried. Since then he has from time to time had occasion to look into the same subject, and especially so in 1882, when he was required to give evidence before the Select Committee on Railway Rates and Fares,[6] as to the differences that exist on English and Continental railways in the charges made for the transport of heavy traffic. He found also that, notwithstanding the lower rates of transport on Continental railways, very great importance was attached to the maintenance, in a high state of efficiency, of the waterways of all other countries in Europe except our own, and that in most other countries the State specially charged itself with the duty of seeing that this was effectually done. It was but a short step from the acquisition of this knowledge to the natural endeavour to ascertain why English canals were not deemed equally important to the trade and commerce of the greatest of commercial nations. The results of that inquiry are set forth in the following pages; but the author has not been content to examine the economic side of the case alone. Finding not only that the canals of the world had a most interesting history, which has never hitherto been set forth in the form of a continuous narrative, but that one of the most remarkable movements of the present time was a demand for artificial waterways, in order to reduce both the time and the distance now required for the intercourse of different important centres of our planet, and give inland towns a more direct connection with the sea, he has devoted much research to the investigation of the origin and growth of these enterprises, and has set down the results in as interesting and useful a form as he could.
A good deal of attention has been given in this work to the subject of isthmian canals. It has been suggested that a “ship and barge” railway would be an improvement upon both railways and canals in the joint advantages of economy and speed of transport This is an “American notion,” which has not yet, so far as we are aware, been put in practice, although it was put forward by the late Captain Eads, in the form of a project for a ship railway across the isthmus of Techuantepec, as the true solution of isthmian transit. It has been claimed that such a railway “can be operated and maintained at less cost than the canal, employ a rate of speed five times as great as is possible in the canal, can be operated for the whole twelve months of the year instead of six—or during the lake navigation, like the ship canal—will require no breaking bulk, and through freight can be hauled over it at 2½ cents per bushel of wheat,” i.e. for a distance of about 340 miles.[7] On the other hand, however, no one appears to have seriously prosecuted this enterprise since the decease of its gifted author, while two ship canals have been promoted across the American isthmus.
In the appendix will be found a large mass of information as to the extent of the British canal system, and the dates at which the principal canal and river navigations were executed. Some data as to the extent and character of the principal river systems have also been introduced in tabular form. It is not pretended that this latter information is by any means complete. The merest epitome of the rivers and river systems of all the countries of the world would itself fill a volume; but it is hoped that the most essential data have been supplied with sufficient fullness and accuracy.