The Life of Thomas Telford, Civil Engineer / With an Introductory History of Roads and Travelling in Great Britain

by Samuel Smiles

In the following year we find our engineer consulted, at the instance of the King of Sweden, on the best mode of constructing the Gotha Canal, between Lake Wenern and the Baltic, to complete the communication with the North Sea. In 1808, at the invitation of Count Platen, Mr. Telford visited Sweden and made a careful survey of the district. The service occupied him and his assistants two months, after which he prepared and sent in a series of detailed plans and sections, together with an elaborate report on the subject. His plans having been adopted, he again visited Sweden in 1810, to inspect the excavations which had already been begun, when he supplied the drawings for the locks and bridges. With the sanction of the British Government, he at the same time furnished the Swedish contractors with patterns of the most improved tools used in canal making, and took with him a number of experienced lock-makers and navvies for the purpose of instructing the native workmen.

The construction of the Gotha Canal was an undertaking of great magnitude and difficulty, similar in many respects to the Caledonian Canal, though much more extensive. The length of artificial canal was 55 miles, and of the whole navigation, including the lakes, 120 miles. The locks are 120 feet long and 24 feet broad; the width of the canal at bottom being 42 feet, and the depth of water 10 feet. The results, so far as the engineer was concerned, were much more satisfactory than in the case of the Caledonian Canal. While in the one case he had much obloquy to suffer for the services he had given, in the other he was honoured and feted as a public benefactor, the King conferring upon him the Swedish order of knighthood, and presenting him with his portrait set in diamonds.

Among the various canals throughout England which Mr. Telford was employed to construct or improve, down to the commencement of the railway era, were the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal, in 1818; the Grand Trunk Canal, in 1822; the Harecastle Tunnel, which he constructed anew, in 1824-7; the Birmingham Canal, in 1824; and the Macclesfield, and Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canals, in 1825. The Gloucester and Berkeley Canal Company had been unable to finish their works, begun some thirty years before; but with the assistance of a loan of 160,000L. from the Exchequer Bill Loan Commissioners, they were enabled to proceed with the completion of their undertaking. A capacious canal was cut from Gloucester to Sharpness Point, about eight miles down the Severn, which had the effect of greatly improving the convenience of the port of Gloucester; and by means of this navigation, ships of large burden can now avoid the circuitous and difficult passage of the higher part of the river, very much to the advantage of the trade of the place.

The formation of a new tunnel through Harecastle Hill, for the better accommodation of the boats passing along the Grand Trunk Canal, was a formidable work. The original tunnel, it will be remembered,*[3] was laid out by Brindley, about fifty years before, and occupied eleven years in construction. But the engineering appliances of those early days were very limited; the pumping powers of the steam-engine had not been fairly developed, and workmen were as yet only half-educated in the expert use of tools. The tunnel, no doubt, answered the purpose for which it was originally intended, but it was very soon found too limited for the traffic passing along the navigation. It was little larger than a sewer, and admitted the passage of only one narrow boat, seven feet wide, at a time, involving very heavy labour on the part of the men who worked it through. This was performed by what was called legging. The Leggers lay upon the deck of the vessel, or upon a board slightly projecting from either side of it, and, by thrusting their feet against the slimy roof or sides of the tunnel-walking horizontally as it were — they contrived to push it through. But it was no better than horsework; and after "legging" Harecastle Tunnel, which is more than a mile and a half long, the men were usually completely exhausted, and as wet from perspiration as if they had been dragged through the canal itself. The process occupied about two hours, and by the time the passage of the tunnel was made, there was usually a collection of boats at the other end waiting their turn to pass. Thus much contention and confusion took place amongst the boatmen—a very rough class of labourers— and many furious battles were fought by the claimants for the first turn "through." Regulations were found of no avail to settle these disputes, still less to accommodate the large traffic which continued to keep flowing along the line of the Grand Trunk, and steadily increased with the advancing trade and manufactures of the country. Loud complaints were made by the public, but they were disregarded for many years; and it was not until the proprietors were threatened with rival canals and railroads that they determined on—what they could no longer avoid if they desired to retain the carrying trade of the district the enlargement of the Harecastle Tunnel.

Mr. Telford was requested to advise the Company what course was most proper to be adopted in the matter, and after examining the place, he recommended that an entirely new tunnel should be constructed, nearly parallel with the old one, but of much larger dimensions. The work was begun in 1824, and completed in 1827, in less than three years. There were at that time throughout the country plenty of skilled labourers and contractors, many of them trained by their experience upon Telford's own works, where as Brindley had in a great measure to make his workmen out of the rawest material. Telford also had the advantage of greatly improved machinery and an abundant supply of money—the Grand Trunk Canal Company having become prosperous and rich, paying large dividends. It is therefore meet, while eulogising the despatch with which he was enabled to carry out the work, to point out that the much greater period occupied in the earlier undertaking is not to be set down to the disparagement of Brindley, who had difficulties to encounter which the later engineer knew nothing of.

The length of the new tunnel is 2926 yards; it is 16 feet high and 14 feet broad, 4 feet 9 inches of the breadth being occupied by the towing-path—for "legging" was now dispensed with, and horses hauled along the boats instead of their being thrust through by men. The tunnel is in so perfectly straight a line that its whole length can be seen through at one view; and though it was constructed by means of fifteen different pitshafts sunk to the same line along the length of the tunnel, the workmanship is so perfect that the joinings of the various lengths of brickwork are scarcely discernible. The convenience afforded by the new tunnel was very great, and Telford mentions that, on surveying it in 1829, he asked a boatman coming; out of it how he liked it? "I only wish," he replied, "that it reached all the way to Manchester!"

[Image] Cross Section of Harecastle Tunnel.

At the time that Mr. Telford was engaged upon the tunnel at Harecastle, he was employed to improve and widen the Birmingham Canal, another of Brindley's works. Though the accommodation provided by it had been sufficient for the traffic when originally constructed, the expansion of the trade of Birmingham and the neighbourhood, accelerated by the formation of the canal itself, had been such as completely to outgrow its limited convenience and capacity, and its enlargement and improvement now became absolutely necessary. Brindley's Canal, for the sake of cheapness of construction—money being much scarcer and more difficult to be raised in the early days of canals—was also winding and crooked; and it was considered desirable to shorten and straighten it by cutting off the bends at different places. At the point at which the canal entered Birmingham, it had become "little better than a crooked ditch, with scarcely the appearance of a towing-path, the horses frequently sliding and staggering in the water, the hauling-lines sweeping the gravel into the canal, and the entanglement at the meeting of boats being incessant; whilst at the locks at each end of the short summit at Smethwick crowds of boatmen were always quarrelling, or offering premiums for a preference of passage; and the mine-owners, injured by the delay, were loud in their just complaints."*[4]

Mr. Telford proposed an effective measure of improvement, which was taken in hand without loss of time, and carried out, greatly to the advantage of the trade of the district. The numerous bends in the canal were cut off, the water-way was greatly widened, the summit at Smethwick was cut down to the level on either side, and a straight canal, forty feet wide, without a lock, was thus formed as far as Bilston and Wolverhampton; while the length of the main line between Birmingham and Autherley, along the whole extent of the "Black country," was reduced from twenty-two to fourteen miles. At the same time the obsolete curvatures in Brindley's old canal were converted into separate branches or basins, for the accommodation of the numerous mines and manufactories on either side of the main line. In consequence of the alterations which had been made in the canal, it was found necessary to construct numerous large bridges. One of these—a cast iron bridge, at Galton, of 150 feet span—has been much admired for its elegance, lightness, and economy of material. Several others of cast iron were constructed at different points, and at one place the canal itself is carried along on an aqueduct of the same material as at Pont-Cysylltau. The whole of these extensive improvements were carried out in the short space of two years; and the result was highly satisfactory, "proving," as Mr. Telford himself observes, "that where business is extensive, liberal expenditure of this kind is true economy."

[Image] Galton Bridge, Birmingham Canal.