EARLY DAYS
It seems to be customary with writers on the subject of canals and
waterways to begin with the Egyptians, to detail the achievements of
the Chinese, to record the doings of the Greeks, and then to pass on
to the Romans, before even beginning their account of what has been
done in Great Britain. Here, however, I propose to leave alone all this
ancient history, which, to my mind, has no more to do with existing
conditions in our own country than the system of inland navigation
adopted by Noah, or the character of the canals which are supposed to
exist in the planet of Mars.
For the purposes of the present work it will suffice if I go no further
back than what I would call the "pack-horse period" in the development
of transport in England. This was the period immediately preceding the
introduction of artificial canals, which had their rise in this country
about 1760-70. It preceded, also, the advent of John Loudon McAdam,
that great reformer of our roads, whose name has been immortalised in
the verb "to macadamise." Born in 1756, it was not until the early days
of the nineteenth century that McAdam really started on his beneficent
mission, and even then the high-roads of England--and especially of
Scotland--were, as a rule, deplorably bad, "being at once loose,
rough, and perishable, expensive, tedious and dangerous to travel on,
and very costly to repair." Pending those improvements which McAdam
brought about, adapting them to the better use of stage-coaches and
carriers' waggons, the few roads already existing were practically
available--as regards the transport of merchandise--for pack-horses
only. Even coal was then carried by pack-horse, the cost working out at
about 2s. 6d. per mile for as much as a horse could carry.
It was from these conditions that canals saved the country--long,
of course, before the locomotive came into vogue. As it happened,
too, it was this very question of coal transport that led to their
earliest development. There is quite an element of romance in the
story. Francis Egerton, third and last Duke of Bridgewater (born 1736),
had an unfortunate love affair in London when he reached the age of
twenty-three, and, apparently in disgust with the world, he retired to
his Lancashire property, where he found solace to his wounded feelings
by devoting himself to the development of the Worsley coal mines. As a
boy he had been so feeble-minded that the doubt arose whether he would
be capable of managing his own affairs. As a young man disappointed in
love, he applied himself to business in a manner so eminently practical
that he deservedly became famous as a pioneer of improved transport. He
saw that if only the cost of carriage could be reduced, a most valuable
market for coal from his Worsley mines could be opened up in Manchester.
It is true that, in this particular instance, the pack-horse had been
supplemented by the Mersey and Irwell Navigation, established as the
result of Parliamentary powers obtained in 1733. This navigation
was conducted almost entirely by natural waterways, but it had many
drawbacks and inconveniences, while the freight for general merchandise
between Liverpool and Manchester by this route came to 12s. per ton.
The Duke's new scheme was one for the construction of an artificial
waterway which could be carried over the Irwell at Barton by means of
an aqueduct. This idea he got from the aqueduct on the Languedoc Canal,
in the south of France.
But the Duke required a practical man to help him, and such a man he
found in James Brindley. Born in 1716, Brindley was the son of a small
farmer in Derbyshire--a dissolute sort of fellow, who neglected his
children, did little or no work, and devoted his chief energies to
the then popular sport of bull-baiting. In the circumstances James
Brindley's school-teaching was wholly neglected. He could no more have
passed an examination in the Sixth Standard than he could have flown
over the Irwell with some of his ducal patron's coals. "He remained to
the last illiterate, hardly able to write, and quite unable to spell.
He did most of his work in his head, without written calculations
or drawings, and when he had a puzzling bit of work he would go to
bed, and think it out." From the point of view of present day Board
School inspectors, and of the worthy magistrates who, with varied
moral reflections, remorselessly enforce the principles of compulsory
education, such an individual ought to have come to a bad end. But he
didn't. He became, instead, "the father of inland navigation."
James Brindley had served his apprenticeship to a millwright, or
engineer; he had started a little business as a repairer of old
machinery and a maker of new; and he had in various ways given proof of
his possession of mechanical skill. The Duke--evidently a reader of
men--saw in him the possibility of better things, took him over, and
appointed him his right-hand man in constructing the proposed canal.
After much active opposition from the proprietors of the Mersey and
Irwell Navigation, and also from various landowners and others, the
Duke got his first Act, to which the Royal assent was given in 1762,
and the work was begun. It presented many difficulties, for the canal
had to be carried over streams and bogs, and through tunnels costly
to make, and the time came when the Duke's financial resources were
almost exhausted. Brindley's wages were not extravagant. They amounted,
in fact, to £1 a week--substantially less than the minimum wage that
would be paid to-day to a municipal road-sweeper. But the costs of
construction were heavy, and the landowners had unduly big ideas of the
value of the land compulsorily acquired from them, so that the Duke's
steward sometimes had to ride about among the tenantry and borrow a
few pounds from one and another in order to pay the week's wages. When
the Worsley section had been completed, and had become remunerative,
the Duke pledged it to Messrs Child, the London bankers, for £25,000,
and with the money thus raised he pushed on with the remainder of the
canal, seeing it finally extended to Liverpool in 1772. Altogether
he expended on his own canals no less than £220,000; but he lived to
derive from them a revenue of £80,000 a year.
The Duke of Bridgewater's schemes gave a great impetus to canal
construction in Great Britain, though it was only natural that a good
deal of opposition should be raised, as well. About the year 1765
numerous pamphlets were published to show the danger and impolicy of
canals. Turnpike trustees were afraid the canals would divert traffic
from the roads. Owners of pack-horses fancied that ruin stared them in
the face. Thereupon the turnpike trustees and the pack-horse owners
sought the further support of the agricultural interests, representing
that, when the demand for pack-horses fell off, there would be less
need for hay and oats, and the welfare of British agriculture would be
prejudiced. So the farmers joined in, and the three parties combined
in an effort to arouse the country. Canals, it was said, would involve
a great waste of land; they would destroy the breed of draught horses;
they would produce noxious or humid vapours; they would encourage
pilfering; they would injure old mines and works by allowing of new
ones being opened; and they would destroy the coasting trade, and,
consequently, "the nursery for seamen."
By arguments such as these the opposition actually checked for some
years the carrying out of several important undertakings, including
the Trent and Mersey Navigation. But, when once the movement had
fairly started, it made rapid progress. James Brindley's energy, down
to the time of his death in 1772, was especially indomitable. Having
ensured the success of the Bridgewater Canal, he turned his attention
to a scheme for linking up the four ports of Liverpool, Hull, Bristol,
and London by a system of main waterways, connected by branch canals
with leading industrial centres off the chief lines of route. Other
projects followed, as it was seen that the earlier ventures were
yielding substantial profits, and in 1790 a canal mania began. In 1792
no fewer than eighteen new canals were promoted. In 1793 and 1794 the
number of canal and navigation Acts passed was forty-five, increasing
to eighty-one the total number which had been obtained since 1790. So
great was the public anxiety to invest in canals that new ones were
projected on all hands, and, though many of them were of a useful
type, others were purely speculative, were doomed to failure from the
start, and occasioned serious losses to thousands of investors. In
certain instances existing canals were granted the right to levy tolls
upon new-comers, as compensation for prospective loss of traffic--even
when the new canals were to be 4 or 5 miles away--fresh schemes being
actually undertaken on this basis.
The canals that paid at all paid well, and the good they conferred on
the country in the days of their prosperity is undeniable. Failing,
at that time, more efficient means of transport, they played a most
important rôle in developing the trade, industries, and commerce of
our country at a period especially favourable to national advancement.
For half a century, in fact, the canals had everything their own way.
They had a monopoly of the transport business--except as regards road
traffic--and in various instances they helped their proprietors to make
huge profits. But great changes were impending, and these were brought
about, at last, with the advent of the locomotive.
The general situation at this period is well shown by the following
extracts from an article on "Canals and Rail-roads," published in the
_Quarterly Review_ of March 1825:--
"It is true that we, who, in this age, are accustomed to roll along
our hard and even roads at the rate of 8 or 9 miles an hour, can
hardly imagine the inconveniences which beset our great-grandfathers
when they had to undertake a journey--forcing their way through deep
miry lanes; fording swollen rivers; obliged to halt for days together
when 'the waters were out'; and then crawling along at a pace of 2
or 3 miles an hour, in constant fear of being set down fast in some
deep quagmire, of being overturned, breaking down, or swept away by a
sudden inundation.
"Such was the travelling condition of our ancestors, until the several
turnpike Acts effected a gradual and most favourable change, not only
in the state of the roads, but the whole appearance of the country;
by increasing the facility of communication, and the transport of
many weighty and bulky articles which, before that period, no effort
could move from one part of the country to another. The pack-horse was
now yoked to the waggon, and stage coaches and post-chaises usurped
the place of saddle-horses. Imperfectly as most of these turnpike
roads were constructed, and greatly as their repairs were neglected,
they were still a prodigious improvement; yet, for the conveyance
of heavy merchandise the progress of waggons was slow and their
capacity limited. This defect was at length remedied by the opening
of canals, an improvement which became, with regard to turnpike roads
and waggons, what these had been to deep lanes and pack-horses.[1]
But we may apply to projectors the observation of Sheridan, 'Give
these fellows a good thing and they never know when to have done with
it,' for so vehement became the rage for canal-making that, in a few
years, the whole surface of the country was intersected by these
inland navigations, and frequently in parts of the island where there
was little or no traffic to be conveyed. The consequence was, that a
large proportion of them scarcely paid an interest of one per cent.,
and many nothing at all; while others, judiciously conducted over
populous, commercial, and manufacturing districts, have not only amply
remunerated the parties concerned, but have contributed in no small
degree to the wealth and prosperity of the nation.
"Yet these expensive establishments for facilitating the conveyance
of the commercial, manufacturing and agricultural products of the
country to their several destinations, excellent and useful as all
must acknowledge them to be, are now likely, in their turn, to give
way to the old invention of Rail-roads. Nothing now is heard of but
rail-roads; the daily papers teem with notices of new lines of them
in every direction, and pamphlets and paragraphs are thrown before
the public eye, recommending nothing short of making them general
throughout the kingdom. Yet, till within these few months past,
this old invention, in use a full century before canals, has been
suffered, with few exceptions, to act the part only of an auxiliary
to canals, in the conveyance of goods to and from the wharfs, and of
iron, coals, limestone, and other products of the mines to the nearest
place of shipment....
"The powers of the steam-engine, and a growing conviction that our
present modes of conveyance, excellent as they are, both require and
admit of great improvements, are, no doubt, among the chief reasons
that have set the current of speculation in this particular direction."
Dealing with the question of "vested rights," the article warns
"the projectors of the intended railroads ... of the necessity of
being prepared to meet the most strenuous opposition from the canal
proprietors," and proceeds:--
"But, we are free to confess, it does not appear to us that the canal
proprietors have the least ground for complaining of a grievance.
They embarked their property in what they conceived to be a good
speculation, which in some cases was realised far beyond their most
sanguine hopes; in others, failed beyond their most desponding
calculations. If those that have succeeded should be able to maintain
a competition with rail-ways by lowering their charges; what they
thus lose will be a fair and unimpeachable gain to the public, and a
moderate and just profit will still remain to them; while the others
would do well to transfer their interests from a bad concern into one
whose superiority must be thus established. Indeed, we understand that
this has already been proposed to a very considerable extent, and that
the level beds of certain unproductive canals have been offered for
the reception of rail-ways.
"There is, however, another ground upon which, in many instances, we
have no doubt, the opposition of the canal proprietors may be properly
met--we mean, and we state it distinctly, the unquestionable fact,
that our trade and manufactures have suffered considerably by the
disproportionate rates of charge upon canal conveyance. The immense
tonnage of coal, iron, and earthenware, Mr Cumming tells us,[2] 'have
enabled one of the canals, passing through these districts (near
Birmingham), to pay an annual dividend to the proprietary of £140 upon
an original share of £140, and as such has enhanced the value of each
share from £140 to £3,200; and another canal in the same district, to
pay an annual dividend of £160 upon the original share of £200, and
the shares themselves have reached the value of £4,600 each.'
"Nor are these solitary instances. Mr Sandars informs us[3] that,
of the only two canals which unite Liverpool with Manchester, the
thirty-nine original proprietors of one of them, the Old Quay,[4]
have been paid for every other year, for nearly half a century, the
_total amount of their investment_; and that a share in this canal,
which cost only £70, has recently been sold for £1,250; and that, with
regard to the other, the late Duke of Bridgewater's, there is good
reason to believe that the net income has, for the last twenty years,
averaged nearly £100,000 per annum!"
In regard, however, to the supersession of canals in general by
railways, the writer of the article says:--
"We are not the advocates for visionary projects that interfere with
useful establishments; we scout the idea of a _general_ rail-road as
altogether impracticable....
"As to those persons who speculate on making rail-ways general
throughout the kingdom, and superseding all the canals, all the
waggons, mail and stage-coaches, post-chaises, and, in short, every
other mode of conveyance by land and water, we deem them and their
visionary schemes unworthy of notice."