“That having attentively considered the plan proposed by the Worcester Severn Navigation Company, for effecting alterations in the channel of that river, it is of opinion that, whilst the execution of that plan affords no stable prospect of extensive advantage to the public at large, its effects upon a variety, of important local interests, and particularly upon the trading community of this neighbourhood, will be in the highest degree injurious. That the introduction of these works, even if Shropshire vessels were permitted to pass them free of any impost, would be injurious to the traders of this county, but that the exaction from that body of a toll or tonage for such passage would inflict on them a burden of the most unjust and oppressive character. That a petition or petitions in opposition be accordingly at the proper stage presented, and supported by evidence, according to the course of Parliamentary proceeding, and that every exertion be used to obtain the support of members of both houses to the prayer of such petitions.”
The following gentlemen were appointed a committee:—Mr. Botfield, Mr. Mountford, Mr. John Horton, Mr. Richard Darby, Mr. Abraham Darby, Mr. Alfred Darby, Mr. Anstice, Mr. Hombersley, Mr. Rose, Mr. William Pugh, Mr. William James, Mr. Dickinson, Mr. George Pritchard, Mr. John Owen, Mr. Samuel Roden, Mr. John Burton, Mr. John Anstice, Mr. Francis Yates, Mr. John Dyer Doughty, Mr. Edward Edwards, Mr. Samuel Smith, Mr. George Chune. The agitation proved so far successful that a clause was inserted in the bill exempting the Shropshire traders coming down with full cargoes from toll. This exemption was subject to the qualification that if in descending the river they took in, or in ascending it they took out any goods whatever within the improved portions of the river, their whole cargoes should be subject to toll. This concession cost the Shropshire interest a long and expensive opposition before a committee of the House of Commons. At subsequent periods the Shropshire iron and coal masters and Severn traders have had similar battles to fight in order to maintain the exemption clause. The commissioners appointed by the act of 1842, who, in 1847, sought powers to erect the weir at Tewkesbury, claimed the repeal of the qualified exemption from toll granted to the Shropshire trade, on the ground that the system of dredging below Worcester had been ineffectual in maintaining an uniform depth of six feet of water. This was complained of as an act of injustice and bad faith on their part towards the Shropshire interest. The slight assistance which, in certain states of the river, they derived from the diminished force of the stream in ascending, was more than neutralised by the loss of aid on their downward voyage and by the detention of the locks. Again the Shropshire traders, through the indefatigable exertions of W. R. Anstice, Esq., were successful in maintaining the free navigation of the river, so far as they were concerned, and subject to conditions above stated.
Traffic upon the Severn, it as been said, costs less than on any other river in the kingdom; and at the present time, notwithstanding the facilities railways afford, the river is preferred for some kind of goods, as for the fine castings of Coalbrookdale, such as grates, which are still carried cheaper and better by means of barges, than by any other.
THE SEVERN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD.
So much importance has been attached to the Severn as the means both of supplying food and innocent recreation, that many Acts of parliament have at various times been passed for its protection. One sets forth that:
“The King our Sovereign lord James, &c., &c. Having certain knowledge that in his stream and river of Severn and in other rivers, streams, creeks, brooks, waters and ditches thereinto running or descending, the spawn and brood of trout, salmon and salmon-effs and other fish is yearly greatly destroyed by the inordinate and unlawful taking of the same by the common fishers useing and occupying unsized and unlawful nets and other engines,” &c., &c.
We have already said in our “History of Broseley” that—
The earlier acts of parliament were designed with a view to discourage rod-and-line fishing, anglers, who, according to Holinshead ranked third among the rogues and vagabonds, being subject to a fine of £5; and although recent legislation has been intended to encourage this harmless amusement, and to increase the growth of fish, the best efforts of both legislators and conservators have been frustrated hitherto by the Navigation Company, whose locks and weirs turn back the most prolific breeding fish seeking their spawning grounds. The first of these were erected in 1842; and four more have since been added. By the 158th and 159th sections of the Severn Navigation Act the Company were to construct fish passes; and although attempts have been made at various times to do this, no efficient means have been adopted. Not only salmon decreased since their erection but shad, flounders, and lampreys, never now visit this portion of the river. Formerly Owners of barges and their men, when they were unemployed, could spend their time profitably in fishing, and could half keep their families with what they caught.
Of the one hundred and fifteen tons of salmon taken in the Severn in 1877, 16,000 fish were supposed to have been taken in the lower or tidal portion of the river, and 1.800 in the upper or non tidal portions; but the latter proportion was larger that year than usual. Salmon in the Severn have been still further reduced by the too common practice of taking samlets, on their downward course to the sea, and we are glad to find that more stringent measures are being taken by the conservators and the water-bailiffs to prevent this. Amateur fishermen, gentlemen of intelligence, have not only contributed to this by their own acts but by encouraging others to do likewise under the pretence or excuse that they were not the young of salmon. It is a well ascertained fact, however, not only that they are young salmon, but that when grown to a proper size they come up the river they go down. We heard the Duke of Sutherland say, in his grounds at Dunrobin, where he rears hundreds of thousands of young salmon to turn into the Brora and other rivers, that he had marked their fins and found that they invariably came up the same river they go down, and the author of “Book of the Salmon,” says:—
“Take a salmon bred in the Shin, (one of the duke’s salmon rivers) in Sutherland, and set it at liberty in the Tweed, at Berwick, and it will not ascend the Tweed, but will if not slain in transitu, return to its native river, the Shin, traversing hundreds of miles of ocean to do so. Is this wonderful! No more wonderful than,—
“The swallow twittering from its straw-built shed,”
migrating, on the first appearance of winter from these shores, to the warm atmosphere, yielding insect food, of Africa, and returning to its natal locality in the spring, to live and give life in the temperate summer of a temperate zone.”