CANAL NAVIGATIONS.
Until the middle of the last century, our forefathers thought far more of foreign enterprise than of the internal communications of their own island. An Englishman of the time of Elizabeth might be acquainted with all the intricacies of the Arctic Ocean or of the West Indies; but it by no means followed that he was able to sketch a map of his own country. The sea was the great highway of trade and fame, and the commercial towns were all seaports.
Previous to the accession of George III., the communications throughout England were of the most wretched kind, the great highways being simply the worn-out tracks of the old Roman roads. The manufactures of our country, struggling into notice, were greatly hampered by this lack of communication, few facilities for carriage existing, and distant markets being beyond reach. The little carrying-trade was necessarily of the slowest and most expensive kind, and goods were conveyed to the nearest port or navigable river, generally by long strings of packhorses, less frequently by the slow clumsy stage-wagon. Packhorses conveyed from the Severn the clay used in the Potteries, bringing back in return coarse earthenware for export. The cloth-manufacturer of Yorkshire saddled his horse with his wares and travelled from fair to fair as his own salesman; and the little cotton used in the Manchester looms was transported from Liverpool in the same primitive fashion.
This was the state of the communications in England in 1757, when the Duke of Bridgewater, having been crossed in love by one of the beautiful Miss Gunnings, turned his attention to the more prosaic employment of canal construction. His idea was to construct a waterway, or ‘navigation,’ from his coal-pits to Manchester, a distance of ten miles. Short as this distance appears in our time, it offered so great a barrier in those days, that the supply of fuel was always limited and uncertain. The duke, who was desirous of engaging an engineer to put his idea into practical form, was advised to employ the famous millwright Brindley, who had already made himself a name in the district for his clever contrivances in the pottery-works and the silk-factories. Like many others who have risen to fame, Brindley was a self-made man. To his natural-born genius, there were united two characteristics which are necessary to all such pioneers—great perseverance, and a confidence in his own judgment which overbore all the adverse criticism of the multitude. His diary, which is extant, shows his school education to have been of the scantiest; the words, spelt in the broad Staffordshire dialect, and the painfully crabbed writing, excite alternately our amusement and our respect; whilst it shows throughout the dogged determination of the individual to overcome difficulty.
Brindley was no sooner installed as engineer of the works than he completely altered the duke’s plan. To construct the proposed canal—or ‘novogation,’ as Brindley has it—it was necessary to cross the river Irwell, and it was here that he first showed his marvellous courage and skill. The duke’s plan had been to drop the canal by a series of locks to the level of the river, and to raise it again on the farther side by the same means. But Brindley, who foresaw that locks would always prove a great hindrance to traffic, decided that the canal should not change its level, but should cross the river on a stone aqueduct. Nothing of the kind had ever before been attempted in this country, and, to ordinary minds, the idea of boats, laden with coals, sailing, as it were in mid-air, seemed preposterous. It must be allowed, to the everlasting credit of the duke, that, although somewhat uncertain in his own mind as to the result of the scheme, he nevertheless allowed Brindley to proceed. In spite of general ridicule, the works were commenced, the aqueduct was built; and derision was turned into amazement when the canal-boats passed over and the structure showed no sign of collapse. The packhorses were dispensed with, and the price of coal in Manchester fell to one-half. The success, both to the projector and the community, was so complete, that the duke at once sought further powers to extend the canal westward, and thus to open communication with the port of Liverpool. After much opposition from landowners and others, Brindley commenced this extension; but although no great engineering difficulties were encountered, the expenditure for some years had been so heavy that the want of money threatened to offer a serious obstacle to the completion of the scheme. The duke’s credit became so low that the greatest task of the week was the collecting of a sufficient amount to pay the wages of the labourers on the works; and it was only by much scheming and economy that the works were at length completed.
Meanwhile, the Staffordshire Potteries had begun to clamour for a waterway, and Brindley had undertaken the survey of a canal which was to connect them with the Trent and Mersey. Wedgwood, the great potter, gave all his influence to a scheme for uniting his factories with the sea, and even removed his works to a site on the proposed canal, known henceforth by the ancient name of Etruria. The great undertaking in the construction of this canal was the tunnel, a mile and a half in length, under that part of the Pennine chain which separates Staffordshire from Cheshire. This tunnel was to constitute the highest point or ‘summit-level’ of the canal; and the supply of water was to be obtained from a system of reservoirs situated at a still higher elevation and fed by the surrounding hills. But tunnelling was a new experiment in engineering; many unforeseen difficulties arose to hinder the work, and it was only after eleven years of heavy anxiety and stubborn perseverance that this last link in the communication was completed. The carriage of a ton of goods from Liverpool to Etruria, which had cost under the old system fifty shillings, was reduced to one-fourth. This tunnel, the pioneer of many miles of tunnelling since constructed, still exists. It is simply a long culvert, just large enough to allow of the passage of a single barge. There is no accommodation for hauling the traffic through, and the barges are consequently propelled from end to end by the exertions of the boatmen alone. Fifty years after its construction, the traffic on the canal had increased to such an extent that the mouths of the tunnel were perpetually blocked by a crowd of boats waiting to pass through, and the fights and quarrels among the boatmen for first place were a disgrace to the Canal Company. After much pressure, the authorities called in the Scotch engineer Telford, and to him was intrusted the construction of a second tunnel. The want of suitable machinery, of skilled labour and of money, were obstacles comparatively unknown to Telford, and the new tunnel, large enough to allow of a towing-path, was constructed in three years. The two works, side by side, represent fifty years’ progress in the science of engineering.
But to return to Brindley and his triumphs. In North Warwickshire, a colony of iron-workers had sprung up in the midst of a plain, worn into narrow ‘hollow-ways’ by the tread of the ubiquitous packhorse. The few letters sent to this large village of blacksmiths were addressed ‘Birmingham, near Coleshill,’ this latter place being the nearest point on the high road. Through this district, Brindley succeeded in cutting a canal from the Trent to the Severn; and thus Birmingham, the Potteries, and Manchester were each connected with the Irish and North Seas.
Brindley’s last great work was the projection of a canal from Leeds to Liverpool; but owing partly to the difficulties of the country passed through, and partly to the scarcity of labourers through the continental wars, the canal was not completed throughout until 1816, long after Brindley’s death. The summit of this canal is in the wild and stony district of Pendle Forest, where are situated the great reservoirs—one being over a hundred acres in extent—which feed the higher levels of the canal with water. These reservoirs are maintained in repair and efficiency at the present day by the owners of the numerous stone quarries of the district, to whom the canal offers great facilities for transit.
Under Rennie and Telford, canal construction was continued, and old methods were improved upon. The Barton aqueduct of Brindley sank into insignificance before the works of these later engineers, whose canals, instead of winding round the hillsides to avoid cuttings, were led through hills and over valleys regardless of obstacles. Besides the completion of English canals, we owe to these two men the construction of the canal from the Forth to the Clyde and the Caledonian Canal, in Scotland; and the two parallel canals in Ireland which connect Dublin with the Atlantic. Thus, in half a century was the country covered with a network of waterways, giving an impulse to manufactures which had hitherto been shut out from foreign markets.
About the end of last century, a great impulse was given to the traffic on the canals by a Mr Baxendale, the agent of Pickford, the well-known carrier. By his efforts, a thorough system of canal communication was established and maintained, and greater punctuality was observed in the arrival and departure of the boats. Express or fly boats also came into use for the more important merchandise and for passenger traffic. On the Bridgewater Canal, they plied with passengers between Manchester and Liverpool; and in the neighbourhood of the larger towns they conveyed the market-women home to the surrounding villages. In 1798, many of the troops for the Irish campaign were conveyed by canal from London to Liverpool. When the railway systems were projected, some of their greatest opponents were the canal Companies, who fancied they saw in the new mode of transit, utter ruin to their own traffic. It was said that the canals would soon become useless and overgrown with weeds, and it was even proposed to buy up the canal Companies, fill in the water-channels, and lay down the line of rails in their stead. But in spite of all these dark forebodings, and notwithstanding the utility of the new method as compared with the old, the canals still maintain their ground. Their traffic since the advent of the railways has steadily increased; canal shares are usually considered safe stock, and therefore seldom change hands. Both systems of communication have their advantages; and whilst the locomotive is the great economiser of time, there are many articles of commerce, in the shape of building materials and fragile goods, in the carrying of which the canals are more suitable. They remain at the present day a lasting and still useful monument to the English enterprise and perseverance of the last century.