The initiation, in the middle of the eighteenth century, of the British
Canal Era was primarily due, not to any examples in canal construction
already offered by the ancients, by the Chinese and other Eastern nations,
or by Continental countries, but to a natural transition from certain forms
of river improvement already carried out in England.
I have shown, on page 131, that when, in 1661, Sir William Sandys obtained
his Act for making the Wye and the Lugg navigable, he secured powers, not
only for the usual deepening and embanking of the river itself, but for
cutting new channels where these might be of advantage, in order to avoid
windings of the stream or lengths thereof which offered exceptional
difficulties to navigation. In proportion as river improvement increased,
the adoption of these "side cuts," as they were called, with pound-locks to
guarantee their water supply, was more and more resorted to, and they
became one of the most important of the measures by which it was sought to
overcome the difficulties that river navigation so often presented.
In 1755 the Corporation of Liverpool and a number of merchants of that port
obtained Parliamentary powers to deepen three streams flowing from the St.
Helens coal fields and combining to form the Sankey Brook, which drains
into the Mersey at a point two miles below Warrington. The promoters
sought, by making the Sankey Brook navigable, to bring Liverpool into
direct communication with the twelve or fourteen rich beds of coal existing
in the St. Helens district of Lancashire, and thus to gain a great
advantage for their town.
For many generations the fuel consumed at Liverpool consisted mainly of
peat, or turf, of which there were great quantities in Lancashire. At one
time, says Baines, in his {166}"History of the Commerce and Town of
Liverpool," the turbaries around the town were considered of great value.
The Act passed in 1720 for the navigation of the Douglas had allowed of
coal from the pits at Wigan being taken down that river to the Ribble
estuary, and then along the coast to the Mersey estuary, and so on to
Liverpool; but the advantage which would be offered by a shorter and safer
route was obvious, and the Sankey Brook scheme was taken up with much
earnestness.
The original idea, that of making the brook itself capable of being
navigated, was found to be impracticable. Not only did the stream wind a
great deal, but after heavy rains on the surrounding hills the whole valley
through which the brook ran was liable to floods, and these would have
effectively stopped navigation so long as they continued. Happily the
powers obtained by the promoters included one which allowed of "a side
cut"; and the first plan was abandoned in favour of a canal separate from
the brook, though cut parallel with it somewhat higher on the hillsides,
where the floods would be less felt. The canal was to be provided with
locks, overcoming the fall of 90 feet in twelve miles to the Mersey,
together with a pound, fed by the brook, on the highest level, to ensure an
adequate water supply.
The immediate result of the construction of this pioneer canal was, not
only to provide a convenient coal supply for Liverpool, but, also, in
conjunction with the earlier rendering of the Weaver navigable, to put the
salt industry of Cheshire in direct water communication with the Lancashire
coal-fields. These advantages led (1) to a great expansion of the Cheshire
salt industry; (2) to a substantial increase in the export of salt from
Liverpool; and (3) to the ruin of the salt trade of Newcastle-on-Tyne,
since, when the makers on the Weaver could readily get an abundance of
coal, they, with their great natural stores of brine noted for its
superlative quality and strength had a great advantage over the makers on
the Tyne, who obtained their salt from the waters of the sea.
It is thus incontestable that the Sankey Brook Canal both started the Canal
Era and formed the connecting link between the river improvement schemes of
the preceding 100 {167}years and the canal schemes which, themselves a
great advance thereon, were to be substituted for them, only to be
supplanted in turn by the still further development in inland communication
brought about by the locomotive.
All the same, it was the canals of Francis, Duke of Bridgewater, as
constructed by James Brindley, a remarkable genius and a great engineer,
which gave the main incentive to the canal movement.
The chief purpose of the Bridgewater canals was to meet the deficiencies of
the Mersey and Irwell navigation by providing new waterways, cut through
the dry land, and carried across valleys and even over rivers without any
connection with streams already navigable or capable of being rendered
navigable,--an advance on the precedent established by the Sankey Canal.
The Duke's first artificial waterway was from his collieries at Worsley to
the suburbs of Manchester. His coal beds at Worsley were especially rich
and valuable; but, although they were only about seven miles from
Manchester, and although Manchester was greatly in need of a better coal
supply for industrial and domestic purposes, it was practically impossible
to get the coal carried thither from Worsley at reasonable cost. The
seven-mile journey by bad roads was not to be thought of. The alternative
was transport by the Mersey and Irwell navigation, which was, in fact,
within convenient reach of the collieries. But the company of proprietors
would not abate their full charge of 3s. 6d. per ton for every ton of coal
taken along the navigation even in the Duke's own boats, and in 1759 the
Duke obtained powers to construct an independent canal. Possessing no
technical skill himself (though he is said to have been greatly impressed
by what he had seen, in his travels, of the grand canal of Languedoc, in
the south of France), he called in James Brindley to undertake the carrying
out of his plans.
Born in 1716, in the High Peak of Derbyshire, and apprenticed to a
wheelwright whose calling he adopted, Brindley had been brought up entirely
without school learning. Though in his apprenticeship days he taught
himself to write, his spelling was so primitive that even in his advanced
years he wrote--in a scarcely decipherable hand--"novicion" for navigation,
"draing" for drawing, "scrwos" for screws, {168}"ochilor servey" for ocular
survey, and so on. But he made up for his lack of education by being a
perfect genius in all matters calling for mechanical skill, combining
therewith a quickness of observation, a fertility of resource, and a power
of adaptability which led to no problem being too great for him to solve,
and no difficulty too great for him to overcome. Arthur Young, who had
opportunities of judging of his work and character, speaks of his "bold and
decisive strokes of genius," and tells of his "penetration, which sees into
futurity, and prevents obstructions unthought of by the vulgar mind merely
by foreseeing them."
Under Brindley's direction the canal from Worsley to Manchester was duly
constructed, and, though a professional engineer had derided, as "a castle
in the air," Brindley's design of carrying the canal on a viaduct over the
Irwell at Barton (in order to maintain the waterway at the same level, and
so avoid the use of locks down one side of the river valley and up the
other), the result showed that the new plan (sanctioned by a further Act
obtained in 1760) was perfectly feasible, and had been carried out with
complete success. To coal consumers in Manchester the new waterway meant
that they could obtain their fuel at half the price they had previously
paid, while to the Duke it meant that he now had a market for all the coal
his collieries could produce.
The canal from Worsley to Manchester was opened for traffic in July, 1761;
but before the financial results of the one scheme had been established the
Duke had projected another and still more ambitious scheme--that of a canal
between Manchester and Liverpool, on the surveys for which Brindley started
in September of the same year.
The need for a further improvement in the transport conditions between
Manchester and Liverpool was undeniable. The opening of the Mersey and
Irwell navigation, under the Act of 1720, had been of advantage when bad
roads were the only means of communication; but there were disadvantages in
river transport which were now felt all the more because in forty years
both Manchester and Liverpool had made much progress, and the necessity for
efficient and economical transport between the two places was greater than
ever.
The Mersey and Irwell navigation followed, in the first place, a very
winding course, the bends and turns being such {169}that the rivers took
from thirty to forty miles to pass a distance of, as the crow flies, not
more than twenty or twenty-five. Then the boats could not pass from
Liverpool up to the first lock, above Warrington Bridge, without the
assistance of a high tide, and they could only pass the numerous fords and
shallows higher up the stream in great freshes or, in dry seasons, by the
drawing of great quantities of water from the locks above. Alternatively,
there might be an excess of water due to winter floods, and then navigation
would be stopped altogether. Aikin, in referring to the navigation in the
book he published in 1795, says: "The want of water in droughts, and its
too great abundance in floods, are circumstances under which this, as well
as most other river navigations, has laboured." He adds: "It has been an
expensive concern, and has, at times, been more burthensome to its
proprietors than useful to the public." Even in the most favourable
conditions of tide or water supply, the boats had to be dragged up and down
the stream by men, who did the work of beasts of burden until the
construction of the rival waterway led to the navigation proprietors
employing horses or mules instead.
That there were great delays in the river transport, occasioning much loss
and inconvenience to Manchester traders, will be easily imagined. As it
happened, too, whether the navigation were burthensome to the proprietors
or not, they took the fullest advantage they could out of their monopoly,
at the expense of the traders. They maintained the highest rates in their
power, and when goods were damaged in transit, or when serious losses were
sustained through delays, they refused all redress.
It is no wonder that, in all these circumstances, the Manchester merchants
were often obliged to return even to the bad roads for their transport, and
this although road carriage between Manchester and Liverpool cost forty
shillings a ton, as against twelve shillings a ton by river. The traders of
each town welcomed the Duke of Bridgewater's proposal to construct a
competitive waterway which would be navigable at all times, independently
of tides, of droughts and of floods, would be nine miles shorter than the
rivers, and the tariff on which for the goods carried was not to exceed six
shillings per ton.
{170}Manchester residents were no less in need of improved communication
than were the Manchester and Liverpool traders. Smiles, in his "Life of
James Brindley," speaks of the difficulty experienced in supplying the
increasing population with food, and says: "In winter, when the roads were
closed, the place was in the condition of a beleaguered town, and even in
summer, the land about Manchester itself being comparatively sterile, the
place was badly supplied with fruit, vegetables and potatoes, which, being
brought from considerable distances, slung across horses' backs, were so
dear as to be beyond the reach of the mass of the population. The distress
caused by this frequent dearth of provisions was not effectually remedied
until the canal navigation became completely opened up."
Nevertheless, the opposition offered to the Duke of Bridgewater's new
scheme was vigorous in the extreme. His first project for taking the
Worsley coals to Manchester by canal had gone through unopposed; but the
second one, which seemed to threaten the very existence of the Mersey and
Irwell navigation, put the proprietors thereof on their most active
defence. Just as those having vested interests in the Idle and the Trent
had opposed the improvement of the Don, so now did the river interests rise
in arms against the canal interests, foreshadowing the time when these, in
turn, would fight against the railways. "Not even," says Clifford, in his
"History of Private Bill Legislation," "the battles of the gauges, or any
of the great territorial struggles between our most powerful railway
companies, were more hotly contested than the Duke of Bridgewater's attack
in 1761-2 upon the monopoly of the Mersey and Irwell navigation."
When the Duke applied for powers to construct his canal from Manchester to
Runcorn, where it would connect with the Mersey, the proprietors of the
Mersey and Irwell navigation petitioned against it on the ground that there
was no necessity for the canal as the Mersey and Irwell navigation, with
which it would run parallel, could convey more goods than the existing
conditions of trade required; that the canal could confer no real advantage
on the public; that the proprietors of the river navigation had spent over
£18,000 thereon; that "great part of their respective fortunes" was at
stake; that they had expended their money on the {171}navigation on the
faith of their being protected by Parliament; and that for Parliament now
to allow a canal to be established to compete with them would be a gross
interference with their vested rights. Active opposition was also offered
by landowners whose property was to be either taken for the canal or, as
they argued, would be deteriorated by it in value; and still more
opposition came from traders interested in the river navigation. The
controversy of the pro-canal and anti-canal parties even got mixed up with
politics, Brindley writing in his notebook that "the Toores mad had agane
ye Duk" ("the Tories made head against the Duke").
But, in the result, the Duke got his Bill, and Brindley proceeded to make
the canal. It proved to be a far more costly work than had been
anticipated. In a total length of about twenty-four miles from Longford
Bridge, Manchester (where it connected with the Worsley Canal), to Runcorn,
it passed through a bog with a quicksand bottom; it crossed two rivers; it
required numerous aqueducts, and it necessitated the provision of many road
bridges and culverts, together with a flight of locks at Runcorn to
overcome the difference between the canal level and the Mersey level, this
being the first occasion on which locks of this kind had been constructed
in England.
Even the Duke of Bridgewater's ample fortune did not suffice to meet the
expense of the costly work he had thus taken upon himself. There came a
time when his means were exhausted, and he found the greatest difficulty in
replenishing them. No one either in Liverpool or in Manchester would honour
for him a bill for £500 on a then doubtful enterprise. There were Saturday
nights when the Duke had not sufficient money to pay the men's wages, and
when he had to raise loans of £5 or £10 from among his tenants. He reduced
his personal expenditure to £400 a year, while the recompense that Brindley
received from him for carrying out schemes which were to be the wonder of
England and introduce a new era in locomotion never exceeded
three-and-sixpence a day, and was more often only half a crown a day.
The Duke eventually surmounted his financial difficulties by borrowing,
altogether, £25,000 from Messrs. Child, the {172}London bankers, and the
new canal was partly opened for traffic in 1767, although the Runcorn locks
were not completed till 1773. The total amount spent by the Duke on his two
canals was £220,000.
In 1772 the Duke added to the usefulness of his Manchester-to-Runcorn canal
by establishing passenger boats which could accommodate sixty passengers,
and on which they were carried twenty miles for a shilling. He afterwards
had larger boats, holding from 80 to 120 passengers, the fares on these
being 1s., 1s. 6d. and 2s. 6d. per twenty miles, according to class. Each
of these boats, says Macpherson, in his "Annals of Commerce," was "provided
with a coffee house kept by the master; wherein his wife serves the company
with wine and other refreshments."
The effect of the new canal on the trade and commerce of Manchester and
Liverpool was considerable. It diverted to Liverpool the stream of export
traffic which had previously gone from Manchester via Bridgnorth and the
Severn to Bristol; it enabled Manchester manufacturers to obtain raw
materials more readily from Liverpool, to supplement the cheaper supplies
of coal they were already obtaining from Worsley; and it opened up the port
of Liverpool to a wider stretch of country than could otherwise benefit
from the facilities thereof, to the advantage both of Liverpool itself and
of industrial Lancashire, though other canal schemes, leading to like
results, were to follow.
Even before the Manchester and Runcorn Canal was opened for traffic,
Brindley had started on a much bolder project. The new scheme was one for a
canal connecting the Mersey with the Trent, and, also, with the Severn,
thus opening up direct inland water communication between Liverpool, Hull
and Bristol, and affording an alternative to road transport not only for
the Potteries, but, by means of branch canals, for the industrial centres
of Staffordshire and Worcestershire, then, as it were, more or less
landlocked.
In the same year (1755) in which the Bill for the construction of the
Sankey Canal was obtained, the Corporation of Liverpool already had under
consideration a scheme for a canal from the Mersey to the Trent; but no
definite action was then taken, and it was left for private enterprise to
carry {173}out the idea. The chief promoters were Earl Gower (ancestor of
the Duke of Sutherland), the Duke of Bridgewater, the Earl of Stamford,
Josiah Wedgwood, and various other landowners and manufacturers.
Parliamentary powers were obtained in 1766, and the work of construction,
as planned by Brindley, was begun at once. The name of "Grand Trunk" was
given to the undertaking, the idea being that the waterway would form the
main line of a system of canals radiating from it in various directions,
and linking up the greater part of the country south of the Trent with the
three ports mentioned.
We have here the first suggestion of any approach to a real system of
inland communication, as applying to the country in general, which had been
attempted since the Romans made the last of their great roads in Britain.
Apart from the natural limitations of navigable rivers, the turnpike roads
so far constructed had been chiefly designed to serve local interests, and
successive rulers or Governments had either failed to realise the
importance of carrying out a well-planned scheme of inland communication,
embracing a great part even if not the whole of the country, or had been
lacking in the energy, or the means, to supply what had become one of the
greatest of national wants.
There was thus all the more credit due to the little group of far-sighted,
enterprising and patriotic individuals whose names I have mentioned that
they should themselves have undertaken work which was to have an important
influence on the industrial and social conditions of the country. Yet the
nature of the conditions under which the Trent and the Mersey section of
the Grand Trunk system was made afforded an early example of the physical
difficulties attendant on canal construction in England which were to be a
leading cause of the decline of canals as soon as the greater advantages of
the railway and the locomotive had been established.
Canals were superior to rivers in so far as they could be taken where
rivers did not go, and could be kept under control in regard to water
supply without the drawbacks of floods or droughts, of high tides, or of
being silted up by sand or mud. It is, indeed, reported that when, after he
had made a strong pronouncement in favour of canals, James Brindley was
asked by a Parliamentary Committee, {174}"Then what do you think rivers are
for?" he replied, "To supply canals with water."
On the other hand, water would not flow up-hill in canals any more than in
rivers, and in the making and operation of canals there was, literally as
well as figuratively, a great deal of up-hill work to do.
Between the Mersey and the Trent there were considerable elevations which
formed very difficult country for water transport. These elevations had to
be overcome by the gradual rising of the canal, by means of locks, to a
certain height, by the construction, at that point, of a tunnel through the
hills, and by a fresh series of locks on the other side, to allow of a
lower level being reached again. The rise of the Trent and Mersey Canal
from the Mersey to the summit at Harecastle, near the Staffordshire
Potteries, was 395 ft., a final climb of 316 ft. being made by means of a
flight of thirty-five locks. Through Harecastle Hill there was driven a
tunnel a mile and two-thirds in length, with a height of 12 ft. and a
breadth of 9 ft. 4 in.[25] South of this tunnel the canal descended to the
level of the Trent, a fall of 288 ft., by means of forty locks. In addition
to this the canal, in its course of 90 miles, had to pass through four
other tunnels and be carried across the river Dove by an aqueduct of
twenty-three arches and at four points over windings of the Trent, which it
followed to its junction therewith at Wilden Ferry.
These engineering difficulties were successfully overcome by Brindley, and
the canal was opened for traffic in 1777. The benefits it conferred on
industry and commerce, having in view the unsatisfactory alternative means
of transport, were beyond all question. English traders saw established
across the island, from the Mersey to the Humber, a line of inland
navigation which, apart from the long and tedious voyage round the coast,
and, also, from the scarcely passable roads, was the first connecting link
in our national history between the ports of Liverpool and Hull. But of
even greater importance were the facilities for making use of either or
both of these ports--the one on the west coast, and the other on the east
coast--which were opened up to {175}manufacturers and traders in the
midland districts, and especially when the Trent and Mersey Canal was
supplemented by the Wolverhampton (now the Staffordshire and
Worcestershire) Canal, connecting the Trent with the Severn; the Birmingham
Canal; the Coventry Canal (which gave through navigation from the Trent via
Lichfield and Oxford, to the Thames); and others.
Of the many districts benefitted it was, perhaps, the Potteries that
received the maximum of advantage. Fourteen years before the Trent and
Mersey Canal was opened for traffic--that is to say, in 1763--Josiah
Wedgwood perfected a series of improvements in the pottery industry which
foreshadowed the probability of the manufacture of coarse pottery--already
carried on in North Staffordshire for many years--developing into the
production of wares of the highest excellence, for which a great market
would assuredly be found not only throughout England but throughout the
world. The one drawback to an otherwise very promising outlook lay in the
defective communications. The roads were hopelessly bad and the navigable
rivers were far distant. It was almost impossible to get sufficient clay
for the purposes of raw material, and the cost and the risk of damage
involved in long land journeys before the goods could be put on the water,
for carriage to London or the Continent, almost closed those markets for
the Staffordshire manufacturer.
In 1760--three years before Josiah Wedgwood started his new era in pottery
manufacture--the number of workers engaged in the industry did not exceed
7000 persons; and not only were they badly paid and irregularly employed
but in their position of almost complete isolation from the rest of
humanity they were, as Smiles puts it in his "Life of James Brindley,"
"almost as rough as their roads." They were ill-clad, ill-fed and wholly
uneducated; they lived in dwellings that were little better than mud huts;
they had to dispense with coal for fuel, since the state of the roads made
its transport too costly for their scanty means; they had no shops, and for
such drapery and household wares as they could afford to buy they were
dependent on the packmen or the hucksters from Newcastle-under-Lyme. Their
favourite amusements were bull-baiting and cock-fighting. {176}Any stranger
who ventured to appear among such a people, devoid as they were of most of
the attributes of civilisation, might consider himself fortunate if he
escaped rough usage simply because he was a stranger.
Of conditions such as those to be found in the Potteries at the period in
question one gets some glimpses in William Hutton's "History of Birmingham"
(1781). He tells of a place called Lie Waste, otherwise Mud City, situate
between Halesowen and Stourbridge. The houses consisted of mud, dried in
the sun, though often destroyed by frost. Their occupants, judging from the
account he gives of them, could have been little better than scarcely-clad
barbarians. Of a visit he paid to Bosworth Field in 1770 the same writer
says:--
"I accompanied a gentleman with no other intent than to view the field
celebrated for the fall of Richard the Third. The inhabitants enjoyed the
cruel satisfaction of setting their dogs at us in the street, merely
because we were strangers. Human figures, not their own, are seldom seen in
those inhospitable regions. Surrounded with impassable roads, having no
intercourse with man to humanize the mind, no commerce to smooth their
rugged manners, they continue the boors of nature."
How industry and improved communications may tend to civilise a people, as
well as ensure economic advancement, was now to be shown in the case of the
Potteries. Wedgwood's enterprise led to the employment of far more people;
the better means of communication allowed both of the industry being
greatly developed and of the introduction of refining influences into a
district no longer isolated; and the combination of these causes had a
striking effect on the material and the moral conditions of the workers.
In giving evidence before a House of Commons Committee in 1785, eight years
after the Mersey and Trent Canal was opened, Wedgwood was able to say that
there were being employed in the Potteries at that time from 15,000 to
20,000 persons on earthenware manufacture alone--an increase of from 8000
to 13,000 in twenty-five years, independently of the opening of new
branches of industry. Work was abundant, and the general conditions were
those of a greatly enhanced comfort and prosperity.
{177}Then, also, when John Wesley visited Burslem in 1760 he wrote that the
potters assembled to laugh and jeer at him. "One of them," he says, "threw
a clod of earth which struck me on the side of the head; but it neither
disturbed me nor the congregation." In 1781 he went to Burslem again. On
this occasion he wrote: "I returned to Burslem; how is the whole face of
the country changed in about 20 years! Since which, inhabitants have
continually flowed in from every side. Hence the wilderness is literally
become a fruitful field. Houses, villages, towns, have sprung up, and the
country is not more improved than the people."
This actual experience of John Wesley's would seem to confirm the view
expressed by Sir Richard Whitworth in the observations he offered to the
public in 1766 on "The Advantages of Inland Navigation." It was, he argued,
trade and commerce, and not the military force of the Kingdom, which could
alone enrich us and enable us to maintain our independence; but there were
millions of people "buried alive" in parts of the country where there were
no facilities for transport, and where they had hitherto been "bred up for
no other use than to feed themselves." What advantage would not accrue to
the nation when these millions were brought into the world of active and
productive workers! "Hitherto," he continued, "the world has been unequally
dealt, and, though all the inhabitants of this island should have an equal
right to the gifts of nature in the advantages of commerce, yet it has only
happened to those who live upon the coasts to enrich themselves by it,
while as many millions lie starving for want of opportunity to forward
themselves into the world. Though the city, village, or country in which
they live is at the lowest ebb of poverty it will, in a short time, by
trade passing through it, alter its very nature and the inhabitants become,
from nothing, as it were, to a very rich and substantial people; their very
natural idea of mankind, and their rude and unpolished behaviour, will be
altered and soothed into the most social civility and good breeding by the
alluring temptations of the beneficial advantage of trade and commerce."
The opening of the Grand Trunk and other canals connecting with it led to
such reductions in the cost of carriage as are shown in the following
figures, from Baines's "History {178}of Liverpool," where they are quoted
as from "Williamson's Liverpool Advertiser" of August 8, 1777:--
COST OF GOODS TRANSPORT PER TON.
BETWEEN BY ROAD. BY WATER.
£ s. d. £ s. d.
Liverpool and Etruria 2 10 0 0 13 4
" " Wolverhampton 5 0 0 1 5 0
" " Birmingham 5 0 0 1 5 0
Manchester and Wolverhampton 4 13 4 1 5 0
" " Birmingham 4 0 0 1 10 0
" " Lichfield 4 0 0 1 0 0
" " Derby 3 0 0 1 10 0
" " Nottingham 4 0 0 2 0 0
" " Leicester 6 0 0 1 10 0
" " Gainsborough 3 10 0 1 10 0
" " Newark 5 6 8 2 0 0
Thus the cost of transport by canal was in some instances reduced to about
one-fourth of the previous cost by packhorse or road waggon.
Under the new conditions the numerous manufactures in the Birmingham and
Black Country districts obtained their raw materials much cheaper than they
had done before, and secured much better facilities for distribution, the
difference in cost in sending guns, nails, hardware, and other heavy
manufactures from Birmingham to Hull by water instead of by road being in
itself a considerable saving, and one likely to give a great stimulus to
the industries concerned. Ores from the north were brought at less expense
to mix with those of Staffordshire, and the iron-masters there were enabled
to compete better with foreign producers. The manufacturers of Nottingham,
Leicester and Derby were afforded a cheap conveyance to Liverpool for their
wares. The fine ale for which Burton was famous had been sent to London by
way of the Trent, the Humber and the Thames since, at least, the early part
of the seventeenth century, and, exported from Hull, it had won fame for
the Burton breweries in all the leading Baltic ports and elsewhere. It was
now to be conveyed by water to the port of Liverpool, and find fresh or
expanded markets opened out for it from the west coast, as well as the
east. Cheshire salt obtained a better {179}distribution; the merchants both
of Hull and of Liverpool could now send groceries and other domestic
supplies throughout the midland counties with greater ease, and with much
benefit to the people; while among still other advantages was one mentioned
by Baines: "Wheat which formerly could not be conveyed a hundred miles,
from corn-growing districts to the large towns and manufacturing districts,
for less than 20s. a quarter, could be conveyed for about 5s. a quarter."
The towns which had least cause for satisfaction were Bridgnorth, Bewdley
and Bristol, the traffic that had previously gone by the long land route
from the Potteries to the Severn, and so on to Bristol, being now diverted
to Liverpool by the Grand Trunk Canal, just as the salt of Cheshire had
been taken there on the opening of the Weaver navigation, and the textiles
of Manchester on the completion of the Duke of Bridgewater's canal.
These developments had, consequently, a further influence on the growth of
the once backward port of Liverpool, and such growth was to be stimulated
by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.
Sanctioned by Parliament in 1769, six years before the Grand Trunk Canal
was opened, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was mainly designed to overcome
the natural barrier, in the form of a chain of lofty hills, which separated
Lancashire from Yorkshire, serving to isolate Liverpool and to keep back
from her the flow of trade and commerce from industrial centres on the
other side of the hills which should otherwise have regarded Liverpool as
their natural port. The canal was further intended to open up more fully
than had been done before the great coal-fields of Lancashire, ensuring a
better distribution of their mineral wealth both to Liverpool and to the
manufacturing towns of Lancashire; while, by connecting with the Aire at
Leeds, the capital of the Yorkshire woollen industry, the canal was to
provide another cross-country connection, by inland navigation, between
Liverpool and Hull.
The work of constructing the Leeds and Liverpool Canal included (1) the
piercing of the Foulridge Hills by a tunnel, 1640 yards long, which alone
took five years of constant labour; (2) an aqueduct bridge of seven arches
over the {180}Aire; and (3) an aqueduct carrying the canal over the Shipley
valley. The total length of navigation was 127 miles, with a fall from the
central level of 525 ft. on the Lancashire side, and of 446 ft. on the
Yorkshire side. The entire work of construction extended over 41 years, and
the total cost was £1,200,000.
The effect of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal on the industrial districts of
Lancashire and Yorkshire was no less remarkable than the effect of the
Grand Trunk Canal on the industries west or south of the Trent. When the
Leeds and Liverpool Canal was formed there was, as Baines observes in his
"Lancashire and Cheshire," not one town containing 10,000 inhabitants along
the whole of its course from Liverpool to Leeds. With the improved
facilities afforded for the conveyance of raw materials and manufactured
goods from or to the port of Liverpool came a new era for the textile
trades all along the route of the canal--and the now busy and
well-populated towns of Wigan, Blackburn, Nelson, Keighley, Bradford and
Leeds are indebted in no small degree for their industrial expansion to the
better means of communication which the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, in the
days when railways were still far off, opened up to them.
Still another canal that was made in order to establish a line of
communication west and east, and to serve important intermediate districts,
was the Rochdale Canal, which starts from Manchester, rises by a succession
of locks to a height 438 ft. above the Manchester level, and, fed on the
hill summit by some great reservoirs, descends to the river Calder at
Sowerby Bridge, the point from which that river is navigable to the Humber.
Connection with the Calder, and thus with the cross-country navigation of
which it formed a part, was also obtained by means of the Huddersfield
Canal, a waterway twenty miles in length which, starting from Ashton, rises
334 ft., to the Saddleworth manufacturing district (situate in the wildest
part of the Yorkshire hills), passes through a tunnel three miles long, and
descends 436 ft. on the Huddersfield side in reaching the level of the
Calder.
The reader will have concluded from these references to other canals that,
although the Duke of Bridgewater had {181}found a difficulty in raising the
means with which to complete his canal to Runcorn, public confidence in
canals must have been reassured, and ample money must have been
forthcoming, to allow of these further costly and important schemes being
undertaken. This conclusion is abundantly warranted. The position following
the construction of the Bridgewater canals was thus described, in 1796, in
"A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation," by R. Fulton:--
"So unacquainted were the people with the use of canals, and so prejudiced
in favour of the old custom of river navigations, that the undertaking was
deemed chimerical, and ruin was predicted as the inevitable result of his
Grace's labour.... Yet it was not long finished when the eyes of the people
began to open; the Duke could work on his canal when floods, or dry
seasons, interrupted the navigation of the Mersey; this gave a certainty
and punctuality, in the carriage of merchandize, and ensured a preference
to the canal; the emoluments arising to the Duke were too evident to be
mistaken; and perseverance having vanquished prejudice, the fire of
speculation was lighted, and canals became the subject of general
conversation."
The farming community, more especially, had looked with suspicion upon this
new-fangled idea of sending boats across fields and up and down the
hill-sides. The author of "A Cursory View of the Advantages of an Intended
Canal from Chesterfield to Gainsborough" (1769) finds, however, a
sufficient excuse for them in the conditions of locomotion and transport
with which alone they had hitherto been familiar. He says:--
"Though this useful set of Men, the Farmers, will undoubtedly reap a
Proportion of Advantages from the Execution of this beneficial Scheme, they
are far from being satisfied, and seem to reflect upon it with many Doubts
and Fears. Custom, indeed, and Occupation in Life, cast a wonderful
Influence on the Opinions of all Mankind; it is therefore by no means
surprizing that men, whose Forefathers, for Ages, have been inured to
rugged and deep Roads, to wade after their Beasts of Burden up to the Knees
in Mire, to see their loaded Waggons stick fast in Dirt; Men, who from
their interior, inland Situation, are almost totally unacquainted with all
Objects of Navigation; it is by no means strange, {182}that People, so
unaccustomed, should consider an Attempt, to introduce a navigable Canal up
to the Town of Chesterfield, and within the Air of the Peak-Mountains, with
alarming Ideas, with Suspicion and Amazement."
Another set of scruples was thus dealt with by Richard Whitworth--himself a
canal enthusiast--in his "Advantages of Inland Navigation" (1766):--
"It has been a common objection against navigable canals in this Kingdom
that numbers of people are supported by land carriage, and that navigable
canals will be their ruin.... I must advance an alternative which would
free the carrier from any fear of losing his employment on selling off his
stock of horses, viz.:--That no main trunk of a navigable canal ought
reasonably to be carried nearer than within four miles of any great
manufacturing town, ... which distance from the canal is sufficient to
maintain the same number of carriers, and employ almost the same number of
horses, as usual, to convey the goods down to the canal in order to go to
the seaports for exportation.... If a manufacturer can have a certain
conveniency of sending his goods by water carriage within four miles of his
own home, surely that is sufficient, and profit enough, considering that
other people must thrive as well as himself, and a proportion of profit to
each trade should be the biassing and leading policy of this nation."
In some instances certain towns did succeed in maintaining a distance of
several miles between themselves and the canals they regarded with
prejudice and disfavour. They anticipated, in this respect, the action that
other towns were to take up later on in regard to railways; and in the one
case as in the other there was abundant cause for regret when the places
concerned found they had been left aside, much to their detriment, by a
main route of trade and transport.
Other alarmists predicted the ruin of the innkeepers; protested against the
drivers of packhorses being deprived of their sustenance; prophesied a
diminution in the breed of draught horses; declaimed against covering with
waterways land that might be better used for raising corn; and foreshadowed
a detriment to the coasting trade that, in turn, would weaken the Navy,
"the natural and constitutional bulwark of Great Britain"--this being a
phrase which, {183}no doubt, was rolled out with great effect in the
discussions that took place.
The discovery, however, that canals were likely to be not only exceedingly
useful but a profitable form of investment was quite sufficient to overcome
all scruples, and even to give rise, in 1791-4, to a "canal mania" which
was a prelude to the still greater "railway mania" of 1845-6. In the four
years in question no fewer than eighty-one canal and navigation Acts were
passed.
So great had the eagerness of the public to invest in canal shares become
that when, in 1790, the promoters of the Ellesmere Canal held their first
meeting, the shares for which application was made were four times greater
than the number to be issued. In 1792, when a meeting was held at Rochdale
to consider the proposed construction of the Rochdale Canal, £60,000 was
subscribed in an hour. In August, 1792, Leicester Canal shares were selling
at £155, Coventry Canal shares at £350, Grand Trunks at the same figure,
and Birmingham and Fazley shares at £1170. At a sale of canal shares in
October, 1792, the prices realised included--Trent navigation, 175 guineas
per share; Soar Canal (Leicestershire) 765 gs.; Erewash Canal, 642 gs.;
Oxford Canal, 156 gs.; Cromford Canal, 130 gs.; Leicester Canal, 175 gs.,
and ten shares in the Grand Junction Canal (of which not a single sod had
then been cut) at 355 gs. premium for the ten.
The spirit of speculation thus developed led to the making of a number of
canals which had no real prospect of remunerative business, were commercial
failures from the start, and involved the ruin of many investors. Canals of
this type are still to be found in the country to-day--picturesque
derelicts which some persons think the State should acquire and put in
order again because it is "such a pity" they are not made use of.
Dealing with the general position as it was in 1803, Phillips wrote in his
"General History of Inland Navigation" (4th edition):--"Since the year 1758
no less than 165 Acts of Parliament have received the royal assent for
cutting, altering, amending, etc., canals in Great Britain, at the expense
of £13,008,199, the whole subscribed by private individuals; the length of
ground which they employ is 2896½ miles.... Of these Acts 90 are on account
of collieries opened in their {184}vicinity, and 47 on account of mines of
lead, ore, and copper which have been discovered, and for the convenience
of the furnaces and forges working thereon."
Among the more typical of the canals, in addition to those already
mentioned, were--the Grand Junction Canal, connecting the Thames with the
Trent, and thus with both the Mersey and the Humber; the Thames and Severn
Canal; the Ellesmere, connecting the Severn with the Dee and the Mersey;
the Barnsley Canal (of which Phillips says: "The beneficial effects of this
canal, in a rich mineral country, hitherto landlocked, cannot fail to be
immediately felt by miners, farmers, manufacturers and the country at
large"); the Kennet and Avon (opening, according to the same authority, "a
line of navigation, sixteen miles in length, over a country before very
remote from any navigable river"); the Glamorganshire Canal ("has opened a
ready conveyance to the vast manufactory of iron established in the
mountains of that country"); the extensive network of the Birmingham Canal
system; the Shropshire Union, which connects the Birmingham Canal with
Ellesmere port, on the Mersey, and has branches to Shrewsbury, Llangollen,
Welshpool and Newtown; and the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal. To the
last-mentioned, constructed under an Act of Parliament passed in 1791,
Baines alludes as follows in his "Lancashire and Cheshire":--
"The River Irwell flows directly down from Bury to Manchester, and the
river Croal, which flows through Bolton, joins the Irwell between Bury and
Manchester; but neither of these streams was considered available, by any
amount of improvement that could be given to it, for the purposes of
navigation. They are both of them very impetuous streams, occasionally
sending down immense torrents of water, but at other times so shallow as
not to furnish sufficient depth of water for the smallest vessels. Instead,
therefore, of wasting time and money upon them, a canal was cut at a
considerably higher level, but following the general direction of the river
Irwell."
The Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal was thus a further example of the
resort to artificial canals, with water channels capable of regulation, in
preference to further schemes for rendering rivers navigable.
{185}How the situation brought about by the creation of the network of
navigable waterways thus spread, or being spread, throughout the country
was regarded by an impartial observer in the "Canal Mania" period is shown
by the following comments thereon by Dr Aikin:--
"The prodigious additions made within a few years to the system of inland
navigation, now extended to almost every corner of the Kingdom, cannot but
impress the mind with magnificent ideas of the opulence, the spirit and the
enlarged views which characterise the commercial interest of this country.
Nothing seems too bold for it to undertake, too difficult for it to
achieve; and should no external changes produce a durable check to the
national prosperity, its future progress is beyond the reach of
calculation. Yet experience may teach us, that the spirit of project and
speculation is not always the source of solid advantage, and possibly the
unbounded extension of canal navigation may in part have its source in the
passion for bold and precarious adventure, which scorns to be limited by
reasonable calculations of profit. Nothing but highly flourishing
manufactures can repay the vast expense of these designs. The town of
Manchester, when the plans now under execution are finished, will probably
enjoy more various water-communication than the most commercial town of the
Low Countries has ever done. At the beginning of this century it was
thought a most arduous task to make a _high road_ practicable for carriages
over the hills and moors which separate Yorkshire from Lancashire; and now
they are pierced through by _three navigable canals_! Long may it remain
the centre of a trade capable of maintaining these mighty works!"
The day was to come, however, when it would be a question, not of the
additions made to inland navigation justifying the expense incurred, but of
the inherent defects of the said "mighty works," the increasing
manufactures, and the introduction of still better methods of transport and
communication giving to canals a set-back akin to that which they
themselves had already given to navigable rivers.
{186}CHAPTER XVII