A Letter to the Kensington Canal Company on the Substitution of the Pneumatic Railway for the Common Railway by Which They Contemplate Extending Their Line of Conveyance

by John Vallance

In continuation of this list of “nobodies,” to whom we owe so much of our national greatness, I ask, to whom are we indebted for the very inventions which the engineers of the present day claim as their own, with justice equal to that wherewith the organ-blower considered the tones of the instrument his?

Railways have been in use among us for a century and a half; and, notwithstanding that those of this remote date, were no more comparable with those of the present day, than the matchlocks of the same period are with a modern gun, the principle was equally developed in the one case as in the other. Yet is there no engineer who can claim the credit of having said “As this principle admits of most important benefits being conferred on society, provided it be worked out, and carried to the perfection it admits of, I will devote myself to such working out and perfecting.”

Locomotive engines have been seen among us for these thirty years. Yet did the engineers of the day no more perceive and seize their advantages than they did those of railways. But, after the perception and talent of various persons, who were in business had, for the purpose of adapting them to the necessities of their different trades, so improved railways and locomotive engines, as to have rendered the latter capable of running regularly upon the former, at rates of from five to eleven miles an hour, forth came our engineers, and, claiming both inventions as their own, set themselves up as having enlarged the boundaries of science, enabled man to outstrip the fleetest animals, and almost to vie with the winds!

And, last of all, I ask, to whom are we indebted for the latest important discovery, by which unprofessional perception has shewn, that what every engineer of the present day had pronounced to be, not only a mathematically-demonstrated, but also a practically-proved “impossibility,” is as perfectly, and as easily practicable, as it was for Columbus to make the egg stand on its end.

We have nearly 3000 miles of canals in the island; the draught on which being twenty times easier than on common roads, and the “wear and tear” equally less, it has, ever since they were first cut, been an important object to render the rate of conveyance along them rapid enough to induce persons to travel from place to place on them, as well as to send their goods by them.

This became more particularly important, when, in consequence of the rapidity attained on railways, it was found that they could combine the conveyance of passengers with that of goods; and I do not hesitate to say, that any engineer, who had, in 1825, informed the Canal interest that he had discovered a method by which conveyance could be effected on canals at the same rate as by mail-coaches, or post-chaises on turn pike-roads, and for one-tenth of their expense of draught, might have made terms with them for the adoption of this method, which should have brought him in above 100,000l. sterling.

But, so far from the engineers of the day informing the canal interest that they could do any thing for them in this case, they universally preached despair with respect to it; satisfying them, by mathematical demonstration, that, owing to the resistance of fluids to bodies moving through them, increasing according to the square of the velocity, rapidity of transmission along canals was no more possible than for a coal-barge to beat to windward like a cutter.

It is true they admitted that the steam-engine gave them power enough to more vessels on canals as rapidly as steamers move on rivers. But, they said, owing to the surge which it was unavoidable such rapid motion must create, the banks of the canals would be so soon washed down, that it was impossible to avoid ruining the canals, if rapid conveyance were attempted on them. Therefore, though steam has been in use as a moving power on our rivers for above these twenty years, it has never yet been employed for a similar purpose on our canals, except in the way of experiment.

In consequence of these things, they could do nothing to meet the wishes of the canal interest: and, in the evidence on the Birmingham Railway, before the Lords’ Committees, on the 29th June, 1832, it is stated, in answer to an inquiry as to what was the quickest kind of canal communication between London and Birmingham, that “The fly boats go by the shortest route, and they are three days and three nights on the road.” Now as this “shortest route” is 152½ miles, it appears that the quickest rate of canal conveyance by “fly boats” was less than 2⅛th miles an hour; while in answer to the question, “What time is occupied by the slow boats?” it is replied, “About six or seven days: they seldom travel at night.”

In this state of despair on the part of the canal interest, and amid this chorus of “impossible,” on the part of the whole of the engineers of the present day, a private gentleman (William Houston, Esq. of Johnstone Castle) became impressed with the opinion that, equally as we can, by giving it rapid motion, cause a flat stone to skim over the surface of the water (as boys do, when playing at what they call “making ducks and drakes”) so might we, by giving rapid motion to a properly constructed boat an a canal, cause it, not only to skim over the water, so as to avoid raising the wave which the engineers had pronounced equally unavoidable as it would be fatal to the banks of canals, but also much more easily than boats can be drawn through the water.