CHAPTER I.

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[Illustration: _E & F N Spon London & New York_

“INK-PHOTO.” SPRAGUE & CO. LONDON.

NEWTON CUTTING ON THE BIRMINGHAM CANAL (TAME VALLEY).]

WATERWAYS

AND

WATER TRANSPORT

IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES:

WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE PANAMA, SUEZ,

MANCHESTER, NICARAGUAN, AND

OTHER CANALS.

BY

J. STEPHEN JEANS, M.R.I., F.S.S.,

AUTHOR OF ‘ENGLAND’S SUPREMACY’; ‘RAILWAY PROBLEMS,’ ETC.

[Illustration]

E. & F. N. SPON, 125, STRAND, LONDON.

NEW YORK: 12, CORTLANDT STREET.

1890.

INTRODUCTION AND OUTLINE.

It would probably be difficult to name any subject that is of more

importance to the material interests of a country than adequate means

of transport. Without such means, nations possessed of the most

abundant natural resources in many other respects would be likely to

decay. With ample facilities of transport, however, the most limited

natural resources may be made to go a long way, and nations that are

not possessed of great natural endowments may even rise to a high place

in the economy of human industry.

Transportation facilities naturally divide themselves into the two

categories of facilities by land and facilities by water. The former

category embraces highways and railroads; the latter includes the

navigation of seas, lakes, rivers, and canals.

It is the purpose of this volume to deal with water transport only,

and more particularly that part of water transport which is carried on

by means of artificial waterways. Railway transport, therefore, will

only be incidentally referred to. Nor do we propose to expatiate to any

extent upon the navigation of seas and lakes, which is a matter quite

apart from canal and river navigation, and is usually carried on under

very different conditions.

Canals are usually ranged under one or other of three great categories,

namely:—

1. For purposes of navigation.

2. For irrigation, and

3. For domestic water supply.

Under the first heading there are many different descriptions of

waterways, the more important being—

_a._ Canals intended for the purpose of connecting oceans

or seas, such as those of Suez, Panama, the North Sea, and

Nicaragua.

_b._ Canals for the purpose of bringing the sea to an

inland town, such as those of Manchester and St. Petersburg.

_c._ Canals designed to connect and complete communication

between different rivers or lakes, like the Grand Canal of

China, the Erie Canal, and the Welland Canal.

_d._ Canals constructed for the purpose of enabling the

obstructions caused by falls or cataracts on natural

waterways to be overcome by artificial means.

As water transport by the most efficient and most economical means

practicable is the _raison d’être_ of the present work, we shall speak

for the most part of navigation canals only.

The chapters that follow will show, that canal navigation has not only

an interesting, but a very ancient history. It is, indeed, so long

since canals were first projected and constructed that it is extremely

difficult to trace their beginnings.

The Bœotian Canal, which is said to have drained the Lake Mœris

by several channels carried in tunnels through high mountainous

barriers, is of such fabulous age as to have led fiction to usurp the

place of history, and even of tradition, when describing the work at

a period of time so far back as prior to the conquest of Greece by

Rome.

The celebrated canals of China have been assigned an unknown antiquity,

but trustworthy representations have led authorities to conclude that

they are scarcely older than the works in the Deccan. At all events,

they date from less than 900 years ago, a century subsequent to the

first irrigation of Valentia. In Spain, the Moors constructed canals

to connect inland places with rivers, particularly the Guadalquiver,

and connecting Granada with Cadiz. They also introduced, when they

conquered that country, their own system of irrigation, with the

customs and laws relating thereto, which are followed at the present

hour without material change.

Cresy has pointed out that Pliny’s correspondence with the Emperor

Trajan proves the importance attached to the subject of waterways.

“The consul in a letter points out such designs as were worthy the

glorious and immortal name of Trajan, ‘they being no less useful

than magnificent.’ He describes an extensive lake near the city of

Nicomedia, upon which the commodities of the country were easily and

cheaply transported to the high road, and thence were conveyed on

carriages to the sea coast at great charge and labour. To remedy this

inconvenience, he recommends that a canal should be, if possible, cut

from the lake to the sea, observing that one had already been attempted

by one of the kings of the country, but whether for the purpose of

draining the adjacent lands, or making a communication between the lake

and the river, was uncertain. These useful works, in common with all

others, fell into decay with the decline of the Roman empire. During

the disastrous period which succeeded, until the time of Charlemagne,

Europe is deficient in any examples of similar undertakings: this

sovereign commenced the projects of uniting the Rhine to the Danube,

and of opening a new communication between the German Ocean and the

Black Sea.”

The Romans were great canal-makers. They were, indeed, as their

extant works in Italy, Spain, and other countries show to this day,

very capable hydraulic engineers. But in Roman times, canals were

constructed for irrigation and water-supply purposes, rather than for

purposes of navigation. It was not until some centuries after the

decline of the Roman power that navigation canals began to attract

attention. Previous to the time when locks, sluices, and other works of

engineering art became general, canals could only be carried through

comparatively level territories. Hence we not unnaturally find that

some of the earliest canals for navigable purposes were constructed in

Holland, where the configuration of the ground is specially adapted to

their construction.

Mr. Vignoles, in his address to the Institution of Civil Engineers in

1870, remarked that, when the success of canals in the Low Countries

attracted the attention of Europe, a sort of mania arose in France

for inland navigation. Most of these were rendered abortive, and

became abandoned, “from uncertainty in the supply of water on account

of irregular rainfall, and from the pre-existing monopolies of the

millers, who appear at all times and places to have been, as they still

are, the natural enemies and thorns in the sides of the hydraulic

engineer.” Navigation on the upper branches of rivers rapidly ceased,

but concessions for canals in France were then given, the Canal de

Briare being the earliest, and next the Languedoc Canal, though neither

was finished until about forty years after their first imperfect

commencement. So early as the twelfth century, large canals had been

cut in Flanders, though the great canal from Brussels to the Scheldt

was not completed until 1560. This, however, was about a century before

Louis XIV. had finished the earliest canal in France.

Probably the first canal constructed in England was the Exeter Canal, a

comparatively short waterway, completed in 1572. But the regulation and

canalisation of rivers had been attempted long before that time. The

improvement of the navigation of the Thames was undertaken in 1423; of

the Lea, in 1425; of the Ouse (Yorkshire), in 1462; of the Severn in

1503; of the Stour (Essex), 1504; of the Humber, in 1531; and of the

Welland, in 1571.

During the seventeenth century, again, many similar works were

undertaken. The Colne, the Itchin, the Wye, the Avon, the Medway, the

Wey, the Bure, the Foss Dyke, the Witham, the Fal and Vale, the Aire

and Calder, and the Trent were all more or less canalised during the

period between 1623 and 1699.

In the next century, projects for river improvement and canal

navigation proceeded apace. In 1700, the rivers Avon and Frome were

regulated. In the following twenty years improvements were carried out

on the Dee, the Lark, the Derwent, the Frant, the Stour, the Nene, the

Kennett, the Wear, the Weaver, the Mersey and the Irwell. The Leeds and

Liverpool Canal was commenced in 1720, the Stroudwater Canal in 1730,

and the Bridgwater Canal in 1737.

From this date, until 1794, canal navigation was extended rapidly,

while Acts of Parliament were obtained for the improvement of the Ley,

the Avon, the Cart, the Blyth, the Hebble, the Stort, and the Clyde.

Between 1763 and 1800 upwards of eighty different canal projects were

put forward, and most of them were completed. The Trent and Mersey,

the Staffordshire and Worcestershire, the Droitwich, the Coventry, the

Birmingham, the Forth and Clyde, the Oxford, the Monkland, the Leeds

and Liverpool, the Chesterfield, the Bradford, the Ellesmere, the

Market Weighton, the Bude, Sir John Ramsden’s, the Gresley, the Dudley,

the Stourbridge, the Basingstoke, the Bedford, the Thames and Severn,

the Shropshire Union, the Andover, and the Cromford Canals were all

undertaken between 1767 and 1790. The following ten years, however,

may be regarded as the heyday of canal-making in England. In 1791 the

Hereford and Gloucester, the Leicester, the Manchester, Bolton and

Bury, the Leominster, the Melton Mowbray, the Neath, and the Worcester

and Birmingham Canals were commenced. Eighteen more canals were

undertaken in 1793, and twelve others in 1794.

The same year that witnessed the opening of the Stockton and Darlington

Railway, saw also the construction of the English and Bristol Channels

Canal, otherwise the Liskeard and Looe; but the number of canals

constructed since 1825 has been very limited. Eight different canals

were opened between 1826 and 1830, including the Macclesfield, the

Birmingham and Liverpool, the Avon and Gloucestershire, and the Nene

and Wisbech; but since 1830 the only canals for which Parliamentary

sanction was obtained, until the Act was passed for the Manchester Ship

Canal in 1886, were the Ellesmere and Chester Canal, and the Droitwich

Junction Canal.

Since 1830 the canals of Great Britain have been under a great ban.

The superior speed and the greater punctuality provided by railway

transport have caused them to be neglected, and, with only a few

exceptions, more or less disused. The railway system has been extended

so rapidly, and has secured the carrying trade of the country so

completely, that canals have until lately been regarded as practically

obsolete and useless. Many miles of canal navigation have passed into

the hands of the railway companies, while a considerable mileage has

become derelict.

Although the railways have secured possession of some 1700 miles of

canals in Great Britain, they do not appear to have profited much

thereby. The Great Western Railway Company owns no less than seven

canals, on which they have expended a million sterling. In 1887 one of

these canals earned 2700_l._ profit, while the other six lost 1300_l._,

besides the whole of the interest upon their capital cost.

The experience of the other railway companies has been more or less

similar to that of the Great Western. The railways have been nursed

and developed; the canals have been neglected and allowed to perish.

The railway companies have been accused of acquiring canal property in

order that they might destroy it, and thereby get rid of a dangerous

rival. This is probably not the case. The railway companies are fully

aware of the fact that water transport under suitable conditions is

more economical than railway transport. It would therefore have suited

them, at the same rates, to carry by water heavy traffic, in the

delivery of which time was not of much importance. But the canals,

as they came into their possession, were really not adapted for such

traffic without being more or less remodelled, and this the railway

companies have not attempted.

When we consider the enormous disadvantages under which the majority

of the canals of this country now labour, the great matter for wonder

is, not that they do not secure the lion’s share of the traffic, but

that they get any traffic at all. A railway is usually carried from

point to point by the most direct route possible, and the cases in

which there is any considerable diversion from the most direct route

are comparatively rare. But in laying out the canals the designers and

promoters appear to have endeavoured to take the longest instead of

the shortest route available. Thus, for example, the distance between

Liverpool and Wigan is thirty-four miles by canal while it is only

nineteen miles by railway. Again, the railway route from Liverpool to

Leeds is eighty miles, whereas by canal the distance is not less than

128 miles. If the canal rates were very much lower than the railway

rates, these differences would still be very much against them. But

there is not really much difference between them at present, the Leeds

and Liverpool Canal, which is a fairly representative one, charging a

halfpenny to twopence per ton per mile, according to the nature of the

traffic. Then again, the speed on British canals can seldom be carried

above 2½ miles per hour, not to speak of the delay in getting through

the locks, of which there are ninety-three between Leeds and Liverpool.

It would be the idlest of idle dreams to expect that the canal

system of this or any other country, as originally constructed, can

be resuscitated, or even temporarily galvanised into activity, in

competition with railways. Canals as they were built a century ago

have no longer any function to fulfil that is worthy of serious

consideration. Their mission is ended; their use is an anachronism.

They do not provide the means of cheaper transport, and they have no

other advantage to offer to the trader that would be a sufficient

equivalent for the tedium of their transport. The canals of the future

must be adapted to the new conditions of commerce. What we now require

is that our great centres of population and industry shall be made

seaports—that Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and other places, shall

not suffer hurt because they are inland towns. The existing canals may

serve as a valuable nucleus for the new departure. Their importance

as a means to this end has already been practically recognised. The

Manchester Ship Canal Company has acquired the Bridgwater Navigation.

For the purposes of the projected Sheffield and Goole Ship Canal it

is proposed to acquire several of the old navigations, including the

Dearne and Dove Canal, the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, and other

waterways. Other improved canals have been suggested, and Mr. Samuel

Lloyd has advocated the construction of a great national canal which

would connect all the principal industrial centres of the kingdom

with each other and with the sea. There appears to be no insuperable

difficulty in the way of realising such a project. Capital alone

is wanted. Whether that essential will be forthcoming is, however,

very doubtful. Much is likely to depend on the extent to which the

Manchester Ship Canal is successful. It would be a mistake to go too

quickly. If ship canal transport is likely to be a means of salvation

to British trade and commerce, we shall not be much the worse if we

wait for it a little longer. It is not well to do anything that would

tend to destroy or discount the value of the vast railway property

of this country. The traders have long been trying to “agree with

their adversary,” in so far as they have differences with the railway

companies; and if the latter are duly reasonable, the future may still

be theirs.

It has been objected that a canal could not provide large

manufacturers, mine owners, or others who now enjoy the advantages of

sidings, giving direct connection with the railway system upon which

their works or mines are situated, with the same facilities as they are

now possessed of. This, however, is a mistake. The fact is that a wharf

may be provided almost as easily and as cheaply as a railway siding.

On some canals, as for example on the Birmingham system, the different

works along the route of the canal have been supplied in almost every

case with wharves, until they are now counted by hundreds.

Broadly stated, the problem that now presses for solution amounts to

this—In what way can we best take advantage of the well-ascertained

fact that under ordinary conditions a ton of goods can be transported

about 2000 miles by water for the same cost that it can be sent 100

miles on land? It is no unusual thing to find that a ton of goods can

be transported 40 miles by steamer for one penny, making allowance for

every charge.[1] It is not, of course, pretended that goods can be

carried by inland navigation for anything like this rate. But it has

been well established that even on canals, with all the disadvantages

of slow speed, limited depth, small boats, frequent locks, and other

drawbacks, the transport of heavy traffic can be effected for less

than one-sixth of a penny per ton per mile, which is not one-half

of the lowest rates at which the railways of Great Britain carry

mineral traffic at the present time. It is necessary to add that canal

companies do not, in Great Britain at least, carry for anything like

the low rate stated, except perhaps on the Weaver Navigation, which is

quite exceptional.

An important question that naturally occurs to any one who has studied

the history of canal navigation in foreign countries is that of how far

it is the duty of the State to take such waterways under its control.

This is really a political problem, which scarcely belongs to that part

of the subject which we have undertaken to consider. It may, however,

be observed that in the United States, in France, and in one or two

other countries, canals have been acquired by the State, and made

as free of tolls as the rivers. This, of course, affords to canal

transport in those countries a striking advantage over the system in

Great Britain. It has been calculated by a high authority[2] that

an expenditure of 12,000_l._ per mile would be required to put the

inland navigations of England into good order, and to adapt them

generally for larger traffic, with steam-tugs and barges or boats of

sufficient size. This would mean for the 3000 miles of canal already

constructed an expenditure of 24,000,000_l._ It is calculated that

about 20,000,000_l._ have already been expended upon our waterways,[3]

so that the total outlay, after the expenditure suggested by Sir John

Hawkshaw, would be about 44,000,000_l._ If the State were to borrow

this sum, it could procure it, no doubt, at 3 per cent., which would

mean that the total annual burden entailed upon the country by the

freeing of the canals would be 920,000_l._, or only a 1/125 part of

our total national expenditure. This is certainly a small price to pay

for so desirable an object. But upon the proposal as just stated there

are two important remarks to be made—the first, that the suggested

expenditure of 12,000_l._ per mile would only give us canals adapted

for the navigation of large barges or vessels of not more than 150

to 200 tons, whereas what is chiefly required is internal water

communication that would enable an ordinary merchant steamer to sail

right up to Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford, and other large towns; the

second, that no such maritime ship canal has hitherto been constructed

for less than 120,000_l._ per mile, including all contingencies.[4]

The raising of this sum is a very different item from the raising of

12,000_l._ per mile. The most serious objection, however, would be the

outcry on the part of the railway interest that the Government was

entering into competition with private enterprise. This, of course,

would be no new thing. The New York State canals compete with the

railways, which are private property, and so do the canals of France.

The duty of the State stops at providing the waterway. It does not,

of course, undertake transportation. That business is left, like the

same business on the railways, to private enterprise. The canals

might, therefore, if acquired by the State, be regarded as so many

additional miles of navigable rivers possessed by the country, or so

many more miles of seaboard provided for the benefit of towns that have

hitherto been shut out from direct maritime advantages. Canals are,

indeed, entitled to be regarded in the same light as a common turnpike

road. The State would hardly be likely to permit private ownership in

turnpikes. The community at large are taxed for their maintenance,

and there has never been any serious contention that it should be

otherwise. The time has come when it behoves us to consider whether

canals should not be similarly controlled and administered, since they

are, without doubt, as necessary for the transport of goods as turnpike

roads are for the passage of vehicles and pedestrians.

As to the reasons that have led the author to undertake the publication

of the present volume, a remark or two may be permitted. In 1875 he

undertook the preparation of a work[5] on the growth of the railway

system up to that time for the Directors of the North-Eastern Railway,

on the occasion of their celebration at Darlington of the Jubilee

of the Stockton and Darlington line—the first passenger railway

constructed in this country on which locomotives were employed. In

inquiring into the history of that railway, he was struck with the

importance that was attached half a century before to the possession

of canal navigation, and with the great facilities that it afforded

to the districts through which it was carried. Since then he has from

time to time had occasion to look into the same subject, and especially

so in 1882, when he was required to give evidence before the Select

Committee on Railway Rates and Fares,[6] as to the differences that

exist on English and Continental railways in the charges made for the

transport of heavy traffic. He found also that, notwithstanding the

lower rates of transport on Continental railways, very great importance

was attached to the maintenance, in a high state of efficiency, of the

waterways of all other countries in Europe except our own, and that in

most other countries the State specially charged itself with the duty

of seeing that this was effectually done. It was but a short step from

the acquisition of this knowledge to the natural endeavour to ascertain

why English canals were not deemed equally important to the trade and

commerce of the greatest of commercial nations. The results of that

inquiry are set forth in the following pages; but the author has not

been content to examine the economic side of the case alone. Finding

not only that the canals of the world had a most interesting history,

which has never hitherto been set forth in the form of a continuous

narrative, but that one of the most remarkable movements of the

present time was a demand for artificial waterways, in order to reduce

both the time and the distance now required for the intercourse of

different important centres of our planet, and give inland towns a more

direct connection with the sea, he has devoted much research to the

investigation of the origin and growth of these enterprises, and has

set down the results in as interesting and useful a form as he could.

A good deal of attention has been given in this work to the subject

of isthmian canals. It has been suggested that a “ship and barge”

railway would be an improvement upon both railways and canals in

the joint advantages of economy and speed of transport This is an

“American notion,” which has not yet, so far as we are aware, been put

in practice, although it was put forward by the late Captain Eads,

in the form of a project for a ship railway across the isthmus of

Techuantepec, as the true solution of isthmian transit. It has been

claimed that such a railway “can be operated and maintained at less

cost than the canal, employ a rate of speed five times as great as is

possible in the canal, can be operated for the whole twelve months of

the year instead of six—or during the lake navigation, like the ship

canal—will require no breaking bulk, and through freight can be hauled

over it at 2½ cents per bushel of wheat,” i.e. for a distance of about

340 miles.[7] On the other hand, however, no one appears to have

seriously prosecuted this enterprise since the decease of its gifted

author, while two ship canals have been promoted across the American

isthmus.

In the appendix will be found a large mass of information as to

the extent of the British canal system, and the dates at which the

principal canal and river navigations were executed. Some data as to

the extent and character of the principal river systems have also been

introduced in tabular form. It is not pretended that this latter

information is by any means complete. The merest epitome of the rivers

and river systems of all the countries of the world would itself fill a

volume; but it is hoped that the most essential data have been supplied

with sufficient fullness and accuracy.

In the best interests of British commerce and industry, we cannot do

better than attempt to follow the excellent counsel given by Ald.

Bailey, of Manchester, when he urged[8] that we should “make England

to the world what London is to England: make every part of the verge,

fringe, shore, creek, bay, river, and inlet of our map as equal as

possible in relation to distance from the shores of foreign countries;

increase the value of the silver streak, double the coast line,

resuscitate the ancient ports, extend some more inland, make Britain

narrower, shorten the distance from coast to coast, from sea to sea,

and increase the setting of Shakespeare’s

‘Fortress built by nature for herself,

This little world—

This precious stone set in a silver sea.’”

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mr. Bailey, in his interesting address to the Manchester

Association of Foremen Engineers, in 1886, stated that he had

found this to be the cost of transport with a vessel of 2360 tons,

including interest, depreciation, and insurance.

[2] Sir John Hawkshaw, in his evidence before the Select Committee on

Canals, 1883.

[3] The total expenditure has been variously stated. Smiles, in his

‘Lives of the Engineers,’ puts it at one figure, while it was stated

before the Select Committee on Canals at another.

[4] The actual cost of construction of the Suez Canal was about this

amount, but the additional expenses incurred, and in the majority

of cases necessary to such an enterprise, brought the cost up to

200,000_l._, which was also the average cost of the Amsterdam

Ship Canal. The Manchester Ship Canal is estimated to cost some

250,000_l._ a mile.

[5] ‘Jubilee Memorial of the Railway System,’ Longmans.

[6] Report of Select Committee.

[7] ‘Transactions of the American Institute of Civil Engineers,’ vol.

xiv. p. 48.

[8] Address to the Manchester Association of Engineers.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION AND OUTLINE iii

SECTION I.

THE WATERWAYS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.

CHAPTER I.

THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM 1

CHAPTER II.

ENGLISH RIVERS 23

CHAPTER III.

THE ENGLISH CANAL SYSTEM 40

CHAPTER IV.

THE WATERWAYS OF SCOTLAND 63

CHAPTER V.

THE WATERWAYS OF IRELAND 74

CHAPTER VI.

PROJECTED CANALS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 82

CHAPTER VII.

THE WATERWAYS OF FRANCE 93

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WATERWAYS OF GERMANY 116

CHAPTER IX.

THE WATERWAYS OF BELGIUM 134

CHAPTER X.

THE WATERWAYS OF HOLLAND 145

CHAPTER XI.

THE WATERWAYS OF ITALY 153

CHAPTER XII.

THE WATERWAYS OF SWEDEN 164

CHAPTER XIII.

THE WATERWAYS OF RUSSIA 172

CHAPTER XIV.

THE WATERWAYS OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 185

CHAPTER XV.

THE WATERWAYS OF THE UNITED STATES 191

CHAPTER XVI.

THE WATERWAYS OF CANADA 216

CHAPTER XVII.

THE WATERWAYS OF SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA 229

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHINESE WATERWAYS 232

CHAPTER XIX.

THE WATERWAYS OF BRITISH INDIA 237

SECTION II.

SHIP CANALS.

CHAPTER XX.

THE SUEZ CANAL 245

CHAPTER XXI.

THE PANAMA CANAL 274

CHAPTER XXII.

THE NICARAGUAN CANAL 314

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL 329

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE ISTHMUS OF CORINTH CANAL 346

CHAPTER XXV.

THE RIVER THAMES 353

SECTION III.

TRANSPORT AND WORKING.

CHAPTER XXVI.

RAILWAYS AND CANALS 364

CHAPTER XXVII.

COMPARATIVE COST OF WATER AND LAND TRANSPORT 375

CHAPTER XXVIII.

SYSTEMS OF TRANSPORT AND HAULAGE 391

CHAPTER XXIX.

LOCKS, PLANES, SLUICE-GATES, AND LIFTS 408

CHAPTER XXX.

TUNNELS, VIADUCTS, EMBANKMENTS AND WEIRS 424

CHAPTER XXXI.

SPEED OF TRANSPORT 435

CHAPTER XXXII.

CANAL TRAFFIC: ITS CHARACTER AND ITS DENSITY 441

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE MAKING OF ARTIFICIAL WATERWAYS 447

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CANAL BOATS 460

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE STATE ACQUISITION AND CONTROL OF WATERWAYS 469

APPENDICES.

I.—CHRONOLOGY OF RIVER IMPROVEMENT AND CANAL

NAVIGATION IN ENGLAND UP TO 1852 475

II.—CANALS AND INLAND RIVER NAVIGATION IN ENGLAND,

WALES, AND SCOTLAND, DISTINGUISHING MILEAGE UNDER,

AND MILEAGE NOT UNDER, THE CONTROL OF RAILWAY

COMPANIES 478

III.—THROUGH ROUTES OF CANAL AND INLAND NAVIGATION

IN ENGLAND AND WALES 485

IV.—STATEMENT OF THE CANALS, &c., IN THE UNITED

KINGDOM, OWNED OR CONTROLLED BY RAILWAY COMPANIES

ON 31ST DECEMBER, 1882, ARRANGED UNDER THE DATES OF

THE SPECIAL ACTS AUTHORISING THE ARRANGEMENTS 490

V.—THE PRINCIPAL RIVER SYSTEMS OF EUROPE AND

AMERICA 490

INDEX 495

WATERWAYS AND WATER TRANSPORT.

SECTION I.

THE WATERWAYS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.

CHAPTER I.

THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM.

“Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing

press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge

distance have done most for civilisation.”

—_Macaulay._

The history of transportation is largely, and of necessity, the

history of material progress. It is hardly possible to conceive of

the prosperity of a people to whom the most precious possessions that

the arts and sciences have bestowed upon mankind for the purposes

of commerce were unknown. Such a people could, no doubt, exist, and

perhaps maintain a considerable amount of rude health. But, like

the aborigines of an unsettled and uncultivated territory, they

would find themselves shut out from participation in the advantages

which civilisation confers upon mankind. They would be exclusive,

uncultivated, ignorant, incapable of great effort, limited in their

capacity for enjoyment, subject to the constant danger of famine, and

without the command of those amenities which have created such a gulf

between the “rude forefathers of the hamlet” and the happy possessors

of all that civilisation can bestow.

Only a very perfunctory acquaintance with the physical configuration of

our planet is required, in order to show that the natural arrangement

of land and water is not the most convenient that could be devised for

the purposes of commerce and travel. The oceans and seas do not afford

in all cases the most direct and desirable routes between one part of

the world and another. Rivers of otherwise gigantic dimensions are now

and again found to be possessed of rocky and shallow beds that are

unsuited to navigation except by the tiniest craft. Promontories are

projected into “the waste of waters,” compelling the navigator to sail

for hundreds or thousands of miles further than “the crow flies” in

order to reach his destination. Every here and there an isthmus is

found to divide waters that appear as if they were intended by Nature

to be joined together.

The same remarkable absence of facilities for promoting the

requirements of commerce is apparent on land as on water. The surface

of the earth, and the divisions of land and water, appear to have

been left by Nature in such a condition as to tax the highest powers

and capacities of man. The knowledge of roads, of bridges, of canals,

has been laboriously acquired and slowly applied. The aboriginal

inhabitants of a country usually care for none of these things.

Beasts of burden are seldom used in the most primitive conditions of

existence, and, without these, roads are not so much of a necessity.

Man, however, found out, in course of time, that it suited his

interests and his convenience to establish a system of interchange

of commodities. The simple and self-contained habits of the trapper

and the hunter gave place to a more composite order of being. Then it

was that the primeval forest, the jungle, the morass, and the prairie

became rectangulated with roadways over which traffic could be rudely

transported on the backs of mules, horses, or other beasts of burden.

As exchange and barter extended, the pack-horse was found inefficient.

He could only perform a very limited day’s work, whether measured by

quantity or by distance. For transport over great distances he was

virtually useless. In the absence of any other system of transport,

districts near the sea, or placed on navigable rivers with easy access

to the ocean, became developed at the expense of other districts that

had equal, and perhaps greater, facilities otherwise except those of

transport. A notable case in point is that of the coal trade. For

many years the export coal trade of this country was limited to an

area within 12 miles of convenient ports, because coal could not be

transported beyond that distance except at a virtually prohibitory cost.

A hundred and thirty years ago, England was in a very different

position to that which she occupies to-day. So, also, was the rest

of the world. The woollen trade was the greatest of our national

industries. The cotton industry was just beginning to take a firm root

The quantity of coal produced in Great Britain was estimated at five

or six millions of tons per annum. The quantity of iron produced was

believed to be about 100,000 tons. The only coalfield that had been

developed to any extent was that of Durham and Northumberland. The

working of coal far from the seaboard was impossible on a large scale,

because there were no means of transportation that would allow of

anything being carried more than a few miles, unless it were of the

highest value. The cotton, woollen, silk, and other textiles were made

by hand-looms, and for the most part in the private dwellings of the

workers. The modern factory system had not come into being.

The condition of the roads, even so late as the middle of the

eighteenth century, was in a very large number of cases a matter for

just and serious complaint. Lord Hervey wrote from Kensington in 1736

that the road between that village (at that time) and London had become

so bad that “we live here in the same solitude as we would do if cast

on a rock in the middle of the ocean, and all the Londoners tell us

that there is between them and us an impassable gulf of mud.” In London

itself the pedestrians who made use of the public thoroughfares had to

walk on the ordinary round paving-stones which are still employed in

some towns for the centre of the road, pavements being unknown. The

streets were lit with oil-lamps sufficiently to make darkness visible,

gas not having been introduced. The common highway was also the common

sewer. The ruts in the thoroughfares, even in the streets of London,

made it dangerous to employ vehicles, which, indeed, except in the form

of sedan-chairs, had not yet come to be largely employed.

But these dangers and troubles, manifest and inconvenient though they

were, by no means exhausted the list. In the absence of a proper

system of police, and with streets enveloped in darkness, there was

serious danger incurred in stirring abroad after nightfall. The public

thoroughfares were infested by bands of footpads and robbers. The main

streets of London were the worst off, and so serious was the danger

of going out at night that it was the rarest thing to find any one

stirring after dark. So far was this system carried that robberies

took place in broad daylight. Even such public places as Piccadilly

and Oxford Street were not exempted from the common danger. Horace

Walpole relates that he was robbed in this way, with Lord Eglinton,

Lady Albemarle, and others. Those who had to travel to the adjacent

villages of Paddington and Kensington were afraid to proceed alone. It

was therefore customary to wait until a sufficiently numerous band had

been collected to enable the pedestrians to resist any possible attack

of footpads. The Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens, then the chief places

of amusement in the vicinage of the metropolis, had to employ patrols

to keep the way clear to London.

As in the metropolis, so in the provinces. The roads, both in the towns

and outside them, were in many cases as bad as bad could be. Their not

unusual condition was that of “a narrow hollow way, little wider than

a ditch, barely allowing of the passage of a vehicle drawn by horses

in a single line.” This deep, narrow road was flanked by an elevated

causeway, covered with flags or boulder stones, along which the traffic

of the locality was carried on the backs of single horses, so that “it

is difficult to imagine the delay, the toil, and the perils by which

the conduct of the traffic was attended.” Under these circumstances,

“there were towns, even in the same county, more widely separated for

all practical purposes than London and Glasgow in the present day.”[9]

Business was done slowly, and involved so great an expenditure of

time and trouble that prices were necessarily high. News travelled

more slowly still, and it was sometimes months before the people who

lived at the extremities of the island knew what had happened in the

metropolis.

The reader who desires to obtain a graphic and eloquent account of

the circumstances of England previous to the canal era could not do

better than consult Macaulay, who, in the famous third chapter of

his ‘History,’ has devoted a considerable amount of space to the

consideration of the social and economic changes that had come over

the country since 1685. The description given of the condition of

the people in that year might almost be literally applied to their

condition in the middle of the eighteenth century. The population had

increased, it is true, and commerce had been developed in the interval.

But the facilities for rapid and economical transportation had not been

materially altered for the better. The great mass of the people were as

ignorant, as superstitious, as shiftless as in the seventeenth century.

Their sanitary surroundings were as unwholesome, their industrial

pursuits as improvident, their habits as deplorable, their hardships

as irksome, their discomforts and inconveniences as tiresome. From

this remarkable record of the days of our forefathers we quote the

following passages as being specially germane to the subject under

consideration:—

“It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally

passed from place to place; and those highways appear to have been

far worse than might have been expected from the degree of wealth and

civilisation which the nation had even then attained. On the best lines

of communication the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and

the way often such as it was hardly possible to distinguish, in the

dusk, from the unenclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph

Thoresby, the antiquary, was in danger of losing his way on the great

North Road between Barnsley Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way

between Doncaster and York. Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own

coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the course of the

same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger of

having to pass the night on the Plain. It was only in fine weather that

the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles. Often

the mud lay deep on the right and the left, and only a narrow track

of firm ground rose above the quagmire. At such times obstructions

and quarrels were frequent, and the path was sometimes blocked up

during a long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way.

It happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a team

of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm to tug them

out of the slough. But in bad seasons the traveller had to encounter

inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in the habit of

travelling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded in his Diary

such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to

the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert of Sahara.[10]

“The markets were often inaccessible during several months. It is said

that the fruits of the earth were allowed to rot in one place, while

in another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far short

of the demand. The wheeled carriages were in this district generally

pulled by oxen. When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately

mansion of Petworth, in wet weather, he was six hours in going nine

miles, and it was necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on

each side of his coach in order to prop it. Of the carriages which

contained his retinue several were upset and injured. A letter from

one of the party has been preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier

complains that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except

when his coach was overturned and stuck fast in the mud.”

A story is told of an old stage-coach driver who, finding that his

occupation had been seriously interfered with by the modern innovation

of railways, thought he would strike a blow for the old system by

attacking the railway in a vulnerable part. “Consider,” he argued,

“what happens in case of a collision. If two stage coaches come into

collision, and there is an upset, why, there you are. But in a railway

collision, where are you?” In those days stage coaches did not enjoy

the immunity from disaster that they do in these, when macadamised

roads enable them to roll along almost as if they were on a billiard

table.[11] When the canal system was being fairly started in England,

only one stage coach ran between London and Edinburgh, starting once a

month from each city, and taking ten days for the journey in summer,

and twelve days in winter. It took fourteen days to travel between

London and Glasgow. In 1760 it took three days to travel from Sheffield

to London, and in 1774 Burke travelled from London to Bath with what

was described as “incredible speed” in twenty-four hours.

Much of the discomfort, the high range of prices, the general existence

of poverty, the limited extent of commercial operations, in the early

part of the eighteenth century was no doubt due to the imperfect

development of the modern processes of manufacture and distribution—to

the production of textiles by the old hand-loom, of iron by the

old-fashioned type of blast-furnace, of steel by the costly cementation

process, of clothing without the aid of the sewing-machine, and of

agricultural crops without any of the mechanical aids to husbandry that

are now so general and so conducive to economical working. But the

high cost of transport had also much to answer for. Before the period

of Macadam, it cost 2_s._ 6_d._ per mile to transport coal by the old

pack-horse on an ordinary road. At this rate, it would have cost from

10_l._ to 15_l._ to transport a ton of coals from the Midland coalfield

to London, a service which is now performed for 6_s._ to 7_s._ per ton.

With only the old pack-horse facilities it would have cost an almost

incredible sum to have performed the same service which the railways

now render to the people of the United Kingdom in the transport of

minerals and merchandise.

While the knowledge of the arts, and especially of the arts that relate

to transportation, were in so backward a state, it was inevitable

that the prices of commodities should be high, and their interchange

limited. Having to pay so much for the articles that they did not grow

or produce themselves, the people of England, in the middle of the

eighteenth century, were extremely poor, as a rule, and had very little

chance to increase their wealth. The wages of the working classes

were very low. A shilling a day was deemed to be excellent earnings.

In Scotland the wages of a day labourer were only 5_d._ per day in

summer and 6_d._ in winter. The price of bread was ordinarily much

higher than it is at the present time.[12] The prices of clothing and

of the usual requisites for domestic comfort and convenience were very

much more than at the present day. The rates of wages were hardly

enough to enable the great mass of the people to keep body and soul

together. Butchers’ meat was all but unknown, even among those who were

tolerably well off.[13] Plain homespun was almost the only description

of clothing that was worn. Shops were hardly known in the smaller

towns or villages, and the country people were mainly supplied with

such requirements as they were able to indulge in, outside of their

own productions, by hawkers, who carried packs everywhere, as they

sometimes do in remote country places in our own day. In localities

where coal was not produced, it was not to be purchased for love or

money, unless at seaport towns, and the fuel ordinarily used was either

turf or wood.

From this condition of things England was largely rescued in the latter

part of the eighteenth century by the introduction and development

of internal waterways. This movement gave a remarkable stimulus to

commercial and industrial progress. It enabled raw materials to be

transported at about one-tenth of what they had formerly cost, and

facilitated the interchange of commodities between the different parts

of the kingdom to an extent previously undreamt of.

It is remarkable what a large crop of important discoveries and

inventions were made about the time that canals began to be generally

used as waterways. Robinson’s project for working steam locomotives

on common roads was put forward the year after Brindley commenced

the Bridgwater Canal. In the same year the manufacture of thread and

gauze was commenced at Paisley, and Jedediah Strutt made his first

improvement on the stocking loom. Two years later Arkwright obtained

his first patent for the spinning-frame, and Watt made his first

experiments on the power of steam with Papin’s digester. It was in 1762

that the production of Wedgwood ware was first begun, and the same year

witnessed a notable development of the linen manufacture of Ireland,

while in 1763 Hargreaves the weaver produced his spinning-jenny in his

house adjoining the print works of the first Sir Robert Peel. These are

but a few of the concurrent and collateral movements of the period. Of

the measure in which they were aided by internal transport we shall

have more to say by and by.

An examination of the geography of European countries will disclose

the fact that the United Kingdom is almost unique in regard to its

possession of a magnificent coast-line, studded with harbours and

docks, and approached by a large number of navigable rivers, which

afford easy communication with the sea. If we compare our facilities

with those of Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Italy, or indeed

any other European country, we cannot fail to be struck with their

enormous superiority. Scarcely any part of the United Kingdom is more

than a hundred miles distant from a good harbour. In many European

countries there are important towns that are very much further, while

some countries, like Switzerland, have no seaboard at all, and others,

like Austria, besides having very few ports worthy of the name, are

landlocked on more sides than one.

Again, let us look at the recent history of European politics. Do we

not find that a more extensive seaboard is the ruling passion of such

nations as Germany and Russia, whose outlets are few and inconvenient?

The half-suspected designs of Germany upon Holland, and of Russia

upon Turkish and Chinese territory, have been mainly ascribed to

this ambition. To obtain such an outlet for the Asiatic part of her

dominions, Russia is at the present moment laying down a railway across

Siberia, which will give her a closer connection with China than the

Chinese seem to care for, and is likely, in the opinion of some shrewd

politicians, to eventuate in her obtaining possession of a large slice

of the Celestial Empire. The neutralisation of certain prominent

waterways is, moreover, regarded as a matter of so much importance,

that costly and protracted wars have been undertaken with a view to

that end, nor would it be difficult to trace a connection between the

passion for more ports and the costly armaments which have now for many

years threatened the peace and impoverished the resources of Europe.

Nevertheless, with a command of the sea that makes us at once the

envy and the despair of rival nations, and has placed our shipping

supremacy on such a pinnacle of power and prosperity as the world has

never before been acquainted with,[14] we still require to pay more

for reaching our ports, relatively to the distance traversed, than

any other nation in Europe, and very much more than either the United

States of North America, or our own possessions of India and Canada.

It is not too much to say that if we possessed the same transportation

rates as some of these countries, our trade with the rest of the world

would be much greater than it is; while if we had the same distances to

traverse as in these countries, at the existing railway rates of our

own, competition in neutral markets with the low-rate countries of the

Continent would be impossible.

In making these statements we impute no blame and make no reflections.

We are only concerned to state the simple truth. It may be that the

railway companies in this country cannot afford to carry goods at

cheaper rates. That is their look-out. They have undoubtedly incurred

vast expense in providing the most ample and the most admirable

facilities of transport, short of the all-important item of its cost.

In no other country do we find such a splendid service. No other

country has better roads nor more capable administration, nor quicker

and more reliable dispatch, nor greater conveniences for traffic of

all kinds. Unfortunately, also, in no other country have the railways

been so costly; so that for the same volume of traffic English railways

require to have higher rates, in order that the charges on capital may

be met.[15] But why should trade suffer, and freighters find themselves

_in extremis_, because British railways have made cheap rates all but

impossible? There is sure to arrive, sooner or later, a point—which in

England is seldom far distant—when railway rates become prohibitive.

That point has almost been reached when traffic can be delivered in

England from the heart of Belgium at 5_s._ per ton, as compared with

10_s._ and 12_s._ per ton for railway transport between the Midlands

and the metropolis. The real question now is—Can nothing be done

to remedy this state of things, not in a spirit of hostility to the

railways, which may have done their best, but with a view to the

preservation and increased development of British trade and industry?

The nation is either hopelessly at the mercy of railway boards, or it

is not. Our trade and manufactures are either compelled to pay every

year an undue proportion of their hard earned receipts to railway

shareholders, or they are not. If they are not—if there is a way of

escape from this bondage—it is well that the nation should know what

it is, and how best to take advantage of it. This is mainly the purpose

of some of the chapters which follow.

Up to the period of the first Canal Acts, English waterways were

under the control of the State, or of authorities appointed by the

State for the conservancy of navigation; and that such an arrangement

was, on the whole, not without its advantages, is proved by the

fact already referred to, viz.: that in the middle of the eighteenth

century the advantages with regard to water carriage enjoyed by

England enabled her to outstrip other countries in the development

of her manufactures. With the construction of the first canal began

the era of private enterprise in respect of inland navigation, which

owes its existence, as it is hardly necessary to remark here, to the

genius of Brindley, and to the unflagging determination of the Duke of

Bridgwater—whose efforts in the cause of progress were, like those

of Stephenson, and the pioneers of railway enterprise after them, at

first strenuously opposed by the public, and almost entirely neglected

by the State.

The turning point of public opinion, as regards both canals and

railways, was the discovery that money might be made out of them.

Brindley’s grand project of uniting the four great ports of Liverpool,

Hull, Bristol, and London by a system of main waterways from which

subsidiary branches might be carried to the contiguous towns, had been,

to a large extent, successfully accomplished at the end of the first

quarter of the present century, and when canals began to pay dividends,

the nation began to admit their public utility. In a very few years

after Brindley’s death in 1772, an immense number of navigation Acts

received the sanction of Parliament, canals began to be freely quoted

“on ’Change,” and, in 1790, “the canal mania” began.[16] The _Gazette_

of August, 1792, contained notices of eighteen new canals, and the

premiums of single shares in companies had reached such figures as

155_l._ (Leicester), 350_l._ (Grand Trunk and Coventry), and 1170_l._

(Birmingham). Canals began to be used for passenger traffic; and we

read in the _Times_ of 19th December, 1806, of troops being despatched

from London to Liverpool by the Paddington Canal, _en route_ for

Ireland, a mode of transport which the writer pointed out would enable

them to reach Liverpool “in only seven days!” In the four years ending

1794, some 81 canal and navigation Acts were obtained, of which 45

were passed in the latter two years, authorising an expenditure of

over 5,000,000_l._ No less than 1,200,000_l._ was spent upon the

construction of the 130 miles of waterway connecting Liverpool, by way

of Skipton, with the Aire and Calder at Leeds (a work begun in 1770,

but not completed till 41 years afterwards); and when the last canals

in England were completed, in 1830, the total amount that had been

expended upon our waterways was about 14,000,000_l._ Out of some 210

rivers in England and Wales, 44 in England have hitherto been made

navigable.[17] The Thames, the Severn, and the Mersey are connected

by 648 miles of river and canal, the Thames and Humber by 537 miles,

the Severn and Mersey by 832 miles, and the Mersey and Humber by 680

miles; the Fen waters have an extent of 431 miles, and the remaining

canals of England and Wales amount to 1204 miles.[18] This fine system

of waterways, with a total length of 4332 miles, furnishes no less than

21 through routes for traffic between London and the manufacturing

districts, but, as it is scarcely necessary to observe, a very large

portion of it has ceased to be of any practical value, while the

utility of that which is still available to the public is constantly

diminishing, through the neglect due to the impoverished condition of

many of the canal companies and other causes.

In the eyes of engineers, the defects of natural geography were made to

be corrected by their skill, experience, and ingenuity. Peninsulas and

isthmuses, whether large or small, appear to be designed only for the

purpose of being pierced with artificial waterways. Hydraulic engineers

are the high priests of science, whose mission it is to publish the

banns of marriage between seas and oceans, and complete the nuptials

in a way that no man may put asunder. By their sacerdotal functions,

the Mediterranean has been married to the Red Sea, the Caspian to

the Black Sea, the North Sea to the Atlantic, the Adriatic to the

Archipelago, and the Atlantic almost to the Pacific, while we have

seen many unions of less distinguished members of the great maritime

family. The importance of these alliances to the trade, the wealth, the

intercourse, the facility of intercommunication, and the general

convenience of the world, not to speak of strategical and political

considerations, affecting individual nations, can hardly be

over-estimated. But much still remains to be done. The high contracting

parties are in some cases coy and bashful, requiring more effective

wooing before they can be won. The prospective matchmakers must not

forget that

“It’s not so much the lover who woos

As the gallant’s way of wooing.”

There is a personal history belonging to the development of canal

navigation of a much more engrossing interest than can usually be

claimed for so unromantic a type of institutions. The annals of that

history extend over many centuries. They reach back even to the times

of ancient Egypt, the cradle of the sciences, and were contemporaneous

with the building of the Pyramids. Menes, who lived 2320 years before

the Christian era, constructed water-courses, which were simply canals,

for carrying off the superfluous waters that reduced the greater

part of Egypt in his time to the condition of an extensive marsh.[19]

Sesostris, 1659 B.C., undertook the cutting and embanking of

canals on a more extensive scale, carrying them at right angles with

the Nile, as far as from Memphis to the sea, for the quick conveyance

of corn and merchandise.[20] Ptolemy II. (Philadelphus) completed a

canal, which had been commenced and continued by several previous

sovereigns, and which is said[21] to have afforded a connection with

the sea;[22] while even at this early date, gates or sluices were

constructed, which opened to afford a passage through the Egyptian

canal to the sea.[23]

In Roman times, again, Julius Cæsar, Caligula, and Nero were

canal-makers, having each in his day attempted to unite the Ionian Sea

with the Archipelago, through the isthmus of Corinth—an undertaking

which is only in our own day being consummated. The emperor Trajan was

also greatly interested in canals, as his correspondence with Pliny

proves, while all the principal Roman consuls and generals appear to

have possessed some knowledge of hydraulics, and applied that knowledge

to useful purpose.

Charlemagne attempted to unite the Rhine with the Danube, and to

establish water communication between the German Ocean and the Black

Sea. Leonardo da Vinci was equally great as a canal-maker and a painter,

having constructed some of the earliest canals in Italy. The Doges

of Venice, “the City in the Sea,” naturally paid much attention to

the same subject, which was, indeed, essential to their convenience,

security, and prosperity.

It is to the credit of many of the sovereigns of France that they have

sought to promote the security and welfare of their country by similar

means. Henry II. employed Adam de Crapone, about 1555, to cut the Canal

of Charolais; and Henry IV. continued the work. Louis XIV. engaged an

Italian to construct one of the greatest of the French canals—that

of Languedoc, which is elsewhere referred to. In more recent times

Napoleon Buonaparte and Napoleon III. have interested themselves

actively on behalf of canal navigation; and it appears to have been by

a mere chance that the latter did not become a canal administrator in

Central America, where he took a keen interest in the proposed ship

canal across the isthmus of Nicaragua.

If we cast our eyes over the rest of the European Continent we shall

find that wherever artificial waterways have been provided, Royal or

Imperial encouragement has assisted in the operation. Peter the Great

and Catherine attached the utmost importance to the development of

Russia by this means. In Sweden, Gustavus Vasa and his successors were

equally solicitous, in a country full of natural waterways, that these

should be utilised and connected by artificial means.

A system that has been instrumental in giving to Europe such towns as

Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Venice, which has facilitated the progress of

commerce in a hundred different directions, which was practically the

only means of transport for nearly a century in all the chief countries

of the world, and which still makes provision for the interchange of

commodities at a cheaper rate than any other; which has involved the

expenditure of hundreds of millions, and has found employment for vast

numbers of well-remunerated _employés_; which abridges distance and

time, and brings into closer contact different districts and countries,

seas and oceans; which has engaged the attention of the greatest

potentates and princes of recorded history, and has in all times been

deemed a fit subject for the exercise of kingcraft; which, in our more

prosaic age, brings us cheap food, cheap coal, and cheap commodities

generally—such a system is one that can hardly be lightly esteemed,

even now, notwithstanding that its waning light has been eclipsed

by the brilliance of that other system which has been so marked a

development of our nineteenth century civilisation.

Canal engineering, besides, has a very remarkable record, and has

achieved many notable triumphs. These have hardly received the

attention to which their importance entitles them. It is true that no

canal has been carried, like the Callao, Lima, and Oroya railroad, in

Peru, to the height of nearly sixteen thousand feet above the level of

the sea.[24] It has, however, on the Languedoc and other canals been

found easily feasible to carry a canal to a height of 600 to 1000 ft.

above the sea. Canal engineers have not, perhaps, pierced the Alps with

a tunnel ten miles in length, as on the Saint-Gothard Railway; but they

have carried a tide-water canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea,

and they have essayed to perform the same feat through the Cordillera.

Hydraulic engineering has, next to railway engineering, been the most

remarkable manifestation of the applied science of modern times, and in

canal construction it has attained some of its most successful results.

Sufficient credit, moreover, has hardly been given to the canal system

for the important part which it has taken in opening up the resources

of different countries, and thereby bringing about the remarkable

development of commerce and industry which has been so marked a feature

of our own times. The Act for the construction of the Bridgwater Canal

was obtained in 1759, previous to which time the internal commerce of

the country, as we have seen, was carried on by pack-horses or waggons,

on common turnpike-roads. Mr. Wood has calculated[25] that the average

cost of conveying heavy goods on macadamised turnpike-roads by this

system was 8_d._ per mile, while light goods cost 1_s._ per ton per

mile. As that calculation applies to a time when wages, fodder, and

other items involved in the expense of such transport, were lower than

now, it is a fair assumption that it will be at least as much to-day,

and for facility of reckoning we may take the average at the convenient

and fairly likely figure of 10_d._ per ton per mile over all. Now, the

total quantity of merchandise carried on the railways of the United

Kingdom in 1887 was about 269 millions of tons. No evidence exists as

to the total mileage over which this vast tonnage was carried, or, as it

is expressed in railway phraseology, of the ton-mile traffic. But if we

assume that the average charge for traffic carried by railway in 1887

was 1_d._ per ton per mile, the total movement would be represented by

the enormous figure of 8962 millions of ton-miles. To have carried the

same traffic under the system of transport that preceded the canals

would have been impossible, but it would have cost the country, if

it had been practicable, no less a sum than 373½ millions sterling,

which is about one-third of the estimated amount of our national

income from all sources. But this, after all, is not the most curious

part of the calculation. In order to understand how impossible our

present transport system would have been under the old _régime_, we

must assume that a horse is capable, under ordinary circumstances, of

carrying one ton about ten miles a day. Working for 300 days a year,

therefore, he would be able to carry a total weight of about 3000 tons

one mile in the course of twelve months. To undertake the same work as

that performed by our railways would therefore require close on three

million horses, or, practically, the whole of the horses that exist in

the United Kingdom at the present time, for every purpose, including

agriculture.

It was while we were depending exclusively upon this expensive and

tedious system of conveyance, when the internal development of the

country was rendered all but impossible by the heavy expense of

bringing produce to the sea, and when our export trade was consequently

of the most restricted dimensions, that canals came to the rescue. They

worked a marvellous change in the trade of the country—a change which

can, perhaps, be best illustrated by the ordinarily dry, but in this

case almost thrilling, returns of our exports and imports. Burke, in

one of his greatest speeches,[26] spoke of a total exportation of the

value of 14½ millions, and a total importation of 9½ millions sterling,

as an index of extraordinary prosperity. In another equally great

oration[27] he said, speaking of the fact that we were then exporting

rather over six millions a year to our colonies, that “when we speak of

the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth; invention is

unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.” What would he have said

had he lived to see, as we have done, our exports reach the vast total

of 250 millions a year, with nearly 90 millions of exports to our

colonies? Canals certainly did not complete this revolution, but they

had a very important share in giving it a start. Between the time

when the canal system was commenced, about 1760, and the end of the

first canal period, which may be put at 1838, the export trade of the

country advanced from 14 millions to about 50 millions per annum. This

is poor progress, compared with what has since been attained, through

the development of the steamship, the railway, the telegraph, and other

modern adjuncts of commerce, but it was deemed as remarkable for that

day as we consider our subsequent progress to be in ours.

It is practically impossible to arrive at a correct estimation of the

tonnage of goods of different kinds that goes to make up the inland

and the external trade of this country. We know that the railways

of the United Kingdom annually carry about 280 millions of tons of

minerals and merchandise (according to the Board of Trade returns),

but a considerable part of this tonnage is duplicated, in consequence

of passing over more than one railway. Of the total tonnage carried by

railway, the greater part probably goes no farther. It is consumed on

the spot, like the coal traffic of London and the minerals supplied

to our great ironmaking centres. But a very much larger quantity is

carried from inland centres to seaports, and thence shipped for places

of consumption at home and abroad. The coastwise carrying trade of

the United Kingdom is now represented by 60 million tons a year. The

foreign shipping trade amounts to over 70 million tons a year. Only a

comparatively small proportion of these quantities is consumed at the

ports of shipment. The greater part is carried farther by railway, thus

breaking bulk twice—once in moving it from the ship to the railway

wagon, and again in removing it from the railway wagon. Much of it has

to be carried from the ship in barges, and thence transferred to the

railway. All this means loss of time, loss of money, and deterioration

of quality, which adequate water facilities should do much to obviate.

There is no class of property that has undergone a more remarkable

range of vicissitudes than canal ownership. In the early years of

the present century, the value of canal companies’ shares was much

higher than that of any railway property has been since that time. The

price of some canal shares rose to a hundred times their nominal or

par value. Enormous dividends were often paid. In other cases, where

the navigation had been neglected, the properties were very lightly

esteemed, and yielded unsatisfactory results. The Fossdyke Navigation

in Lincolnshire was leased about 1840, by the Corporation of Lincoln,

to a Mr. Elison for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, at 75_l._ a

year! Six years later the executors of the lessee leased it to the

Great Northern Railway Company for 9575_l._[28] The Loughborough Canal

shares, which were once worth 4500_l._, are now scarcely worth 100_l._;

and a still more notable decline is that of the Erewash Canal, whose

shares, now quoted at about 50_l._, were once worth fully 3000_l._

There are three great epochs in the modern history of canal navigation,

each marked by characteristics peculiar to itself, and sufficiently

unlike those of either of the others to enable it to be readily

differentiated. They may be thus described:—

1. The era of waterways, designed at once to facilitate the transport

of heavy traffic from inland centres to the seaboard, and to supersede

the then existing systems of locomotion—the wagon and the pack-horse.

This era commenced with the construction of the Bridgwater Canal

between 1766 and 1770, and terminated with the installation of the

railway system in 1830.

2. The era of interoceanic canals, which was inaugurated by the

completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, and is still in progress.

3. The era of ship-canals intended to afford to cities and towns remote

from the sea, all the advantages of a seaboard, and especially that of

removing and despatching merchandise without the necessity of breaking

bulk.

The second great stage in the development of canal transport is of

comparatively recent origin. It may, in fact, be said to date only from

the time when the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Suez

was proved to be not only practicable as an engineering project, but

likewise highly successful as a commercial enterprise. Not that this

was by any means the first canal of its kind. On the contrary, as we

have shown elsewhere, the ancients had many schemes of a similar kind

in view across the same isthmus. The canal of Languedoc, constructed

in the reign of Louis XIV., was for that day as considerable an

undertaking. It was designed for the purpose of affording a safe

and speedy means of communication between the Mediterranean and the

Atlantic Ocean; it has a total length of 148 miles, is in its highest

part 600 ft. above the level of the sea, and has in all 114 locks and

sluices. In Russia, canals had been constructed in the time of Peter

the Great, for the purpose of affording a means of communication

between the different inland seas that are characteristic of that

country. The junction of the North and Caspian Seas, of the Baltic and

the Caspian, and the union of the Black and the Caspian Seas, had all

been assisted by the construction of a series of canals which were

perhaps without parallel for their completeness a century ago. In

Prussia a vast system of inland navigation had been completed during

the last century, whereby Hamburg was connected with Dantzic, and the

products of the country could be exported either by the Black Sea or by

the Baltic. In Scotland the Forth and Clyde Canal, and the Caledonian

Canal, were notable examples of artificial navigation designed to

connect two seas, or two firths that had all the characteristics of

independent oceans; and the Erie Canal, in the United States, completed

a chain of communication between inland seas of much the same order.

But, although a great deal had been done in the direction of

facilitating navigation between different waters by getting rid of the

“hyphen” by which they were separated anterior to the date of the Suez

Canal, this grand enterprise undoubtedly marked a notable advance in

the progress of the world from this point of view. The work was at once

more original and more gigantic than any that had preceded it—so much

so that in this country, as we have elsewhere shown, it was generally

discredited. Probably no other canal previously constructed had cost

anything like the same large sum that was set aside for that of Suez.

The canal of Languedoc, constructed in the seventeenth century, is

stated to have cost fourteen millions of livres. The Erie Canal had

cost five million seven hundred thousand dollars (1,140,000_l._).

The Caledonian Canal cost 1,035,460_l._ The Amsterdam Canal cost

about the same amount. The Suez Canal, however, was estimated to cost

8,000,000_l._ to 10,000,000_l._, or nearly ten times as much as the

largest canals constructed up to that time. Nowadays this would not be

regarded as a large sum for such a purpose. We have got accustomed to

big figures. A hundred millions sterling is not an uncommon capital for

a railway company. The Manchester Canal, only some thirty miles long,

is estimated to cost about eight millions sterling, and more than sixty

millions have been sunk at Panama. But so little faith was felt in the

success of the Suez Canal, with such a large expenditure, that it was

seriously maintained in the “Edinburgh Review” that, “were it to become

the great highway of nations between the West and the East—even the

Gates of the East, as it has been the fashion to call it—and were all

the local advantages predicted for Egypt to be derived from it, still,

on account of the enormous expense of construction and maintenance, it

would not pay.”

While these views were entertained about a waterway that promised to

become the general and almost exclusive means of communication between

the West and the East, between Great Britain and her Australasian

and Indian possessions, it is not much a matter for surprise that

other projects of a similar character remained in abeyance. But the

Suez Canal once completed and successful, other ship canal schemes

came “thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa.” Several of these were

eminently practical, as well as practicable. The Hellenic Parliament

determined on cutting through the tongue of land which is situated

between the Gulfs of Athens and Lepantus, known as the Isthmus of

Corinth. This isthmus divides the Adriatic and the Archipelago, and

compels all vessels passing from the one sea to the other to round Cape

Matapan, thus materially lengthening the voyages of vessels bound from

the western parts of Europe to the Levant, Asia Minor and Smyrna. The

canal is now an accomplished fact. Another proposal was that of cutting

a canal from Bordeaux to Marseilles, across the South of France, a

distance of some 120 miles, whereby these two great ports would be

brought 1678 miles nearer to each other, and a further reduction,

estimated at 800 miles, effected in the distance between England and

India. The Panama Canal (projected in 1871, and actually commenced

in 1880) is, however, the greatest enterprise of all, and in many

respects the most gigantic and difficult undertaking of which there is

any record. The proposed national canal from sea to sea, proposed by

Mr. Samuel Lloyd and others for Great Britain, the proposed Sheffield

Ship Canal, the proposed Irish Sea and Birkenhead Ship Canal, and the

proposed ship canal to connect the Forth and the Clyde, are but a few

of many notable examples of the restlessness of our times in this

direction. All these canals are intended to economise time and space,

which has become the greatest desideratum of our age. By fulfilling

this mission they facilitate commerce, cheapen the cost of commodities,

bring nations into closer touch, and materially lengthen the sum of

work and knowledge that can be crowded into the average span of human

life.

We are now in the very throes of the revolution that appears to be

destined, before it closes, to secure for most of the great inland

centres of population a large share of the advantages that result from

being on the seaboard. The location of many of our large towns is

difficult to understand. Their prosperity, in spite of their location,

is still more unintelligible, on the first blush. Very few of our

great cities are on the seaboard. London is over 60 miles from the

Nore. Paris is 227½ miles from the sea at Havre, and Berlin, Vienna,

and Madrid are each over or nearly 200 miles. In England we have such

towns as Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, and Birmingham, situated at long

distances from shipping facilities, and flourishing in spite of that

disadvantage. But the fact has been recognised as a disadvantage, none

the less. Manchester, less unfavourably situated than some of the towns

we have named, has resolved to “burst its birth’s invidious bar” by

the construction of the ship canal that is now being proceeded with.

Sheffield has initiated a project with the same end in view. The people

of Birmingham and the Midlands generally appear to have made up their

minds to have direct communication with the Bristol Channel. In regard

to all of these towns canal facilities of an inferior kind already

exist. These, however, are now held to be quite unequal to the demands

of modern commerce. They do not give to any town the position of a

seaport, and that is the main requirement. The time has gone past when

barges of forty or fifty tons, plying on a canal 60 to 80 feet wide,

could be seriously put forward as contributing essentially to this end.

The canal system of a hundred years ago has been put to the trial, and

has been found wanting. We now carry millions where we then carried

hundreds and thousands of tons.

The great commercial characteristics of our time are to have things

done on a large scale, with the utmost practicable facility, and at the

lowest possible cost. The existing canal system is quite out of touch

with these desiderata. It “cumbereth the ground,” and must be got rid

of. But the waterways that still survive may in many cases be made the

nucleus of a new and better system, under which the great inland towns

of Lancashire, Staffordshire, and Yorkshire may find their lines cast

in more satisfactory maritime places.

There are not a few people who regard the canal system almost as they

might regard the Dodo and the Megatherium. It is to them an effete

relic of a time when civilisation was as yet but imperfectly developed.

It is placed on the shelf of their memories and sympathies much as the

old hand-loom, or the earliest forms of metallurgical processes, might

be; and if by accident an old canal happens to cross their path, it is

regarded with the same sort of curiosity as would be bestowed upon the

Great Wall of China or the Pyramids of Egypt.

Canals do, indeed, belong to the past. In this respect they are

entitled to be regarded with interest, and even with veneration. The

Cnidians, according to Herodotus, the Bœtians, according to Strabo,

the Babylonians, according to Ptolemy, and the Romans, according to

Pliny, were all skilled in the art of canal-making, and employed

their skill to good purpose. From those times until these the

waterways of art have supplemented those of nature as handmaidens of

trade and commerce, as fertilisers of the soil, and as military and

strategical highways. That canals also belong to the present, Egypt,

the American isthmus, Manchester, Corinth, and other places, fully

prove; and, unless we greatly err, they are no less the heritage of

the future.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Smiles’s ‘Lives of the Engineers,’ vol. i. p. 180.

[10] Judging from the diary of Mr. Justice Rokeby, which has been

recently printed by Sir Henry Peek, in the time of William and Mary

going circuit was arduous work, and the arrangements for reaching the

scene of his labours occupied almost as much of a Judge’s attention

as the execution of the Royal commission when he arrived. Mr. Justice

Rokeby, according to this record (as abridged in the _Times_),

usually travelled in a four-horse coach with his chamber clerk,

while his groom or valet attended him on a saddle-horse, which also

carried the Judge’s “portmantle.” Generally both coach and horses

were hired for the occasion, the rate appearing to be about 22_s._

for each travelling day, and 12_s._ for each resting day. Sometimes

the learned Judge economised by “putting a pair of his own horses to

the wheel,” and had his own coachman to drive. But more than once

it was necessary to take six horses in the coach, and occasionally

a couple of servants on saddle-horses were in attendance. In the

spring of 1692-93, “after the circuits were all settled and the term

ended—viz. February 25—there fell a very great snow, which occasioned

the King to issue out a proclamation, March 2, 1692-3, to alter all

the circuits to later days but only the Norfolk and Oxford circuits,

which continued upon their first appointment.” Mr. Justice Rokeby,

being unlucky enough to be going on the Norfolk circuit, derived no

benefit from the postponement, but “by reason of the badness of the

ways was forced to take six horses,” so that he was “out of purse” on

the circuit above 52_l._ The previous summer the waters were out, and

travelling in the valley of the Thames was no easy matter. “I began

my journey into this circuit (the Oxford) from London,” says the

Judge, “on Monday, June 27, and baited at Maidenhead, but the waters

were so great upon the road that at Colebrook they came just into the

body of the coach, and we were forced to boat twice at Maidenhead,

and we boated the coach, and at the second time we boated ourselves,

but the coach came through the water, and it came very deep into

the body of it, and that night we lay at Henley-upon-Thames, where

we were forced to boat the coach again.” For years afterwards we

read that the way from Oxford to Gloucester was so bad that it

took 14 hours to accomplish the distance, though it was not more

than 33 miles, while there was a “very bad and shaking way” from

Monmouth to Hereford; and at an earlier stage of the circuit the

Judge chronicles his safe arrival at High Wycombe from London with

the pious but significant ejaculation, “Thanks be to God!” Sometimes

the Judges, apparently, hired a coach between them, but Mr. Justice

Rokeby had a little difference with his brother Judge, Mr. Justice

Eyre, on his second circuit, concerning the division of expenses, and

this probably led to his making independent carriage arrangements

subsequently. On this occasion Mr. Justice Rokeby was called back to

town at an early point of the circuit, and Mr. Justice Eyre declined

to take on the coach, but finished the circuit on horseback, and it

was his demand to be paid a share of the expenses of his saddle-horse

which led to the difference of opinion.

[11] The difference between macadamised and ordinary roads, in the

cost of conveyance, not to speak of comfort, is extraordinary.

Nicholas Wood estimated that the transport of coal by the old pack

horse was reduced from about 2_s._ 6_d._ to 8_d._ per ton on a good

road of this description.

[12] According to the tables in Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’

(Book i. chap. xi.) the average price of wheat between 1637 and 1700

was 2_l._ 11_s._ 0⅓_d._ per quarter; from 1700 till 1764 it was 2_l._

0_s._ 6-9/32_d._ per quarter.

[13] Even so late as 1794, Hepburn, in his ‘General view of the

Agriculture and Economy of East Lothian,’ stated that, not long

before, not a single bullock was slaughtered in the butcher market at

Haddington except at a special time.

[14] The writer has shown, in articles published in the _Times_ on

January 5th, 1887, and again on January 2nd, 1888, what are the

extent and the distinguishing features of this supremacy.

[15] The average cost per mile of the railways in England and Wales

is about 50,000_l._, as against 12,700_l._ in the United States,

21,000_l._ in Germany, 25,300_l._ in Belgium, 27,500_l._ in France,

and 20,000_l._ in Holland.

[16] See a paper read before the British Association at Birmingham,

1887.

[17] Report of House of Lords Committee on Conservancy Boards, 1877.

[18] Report of Select Committee on Canals, 1883.

[19] Herodotus, lib. ii. c. lxlix.

[20] Diodorus Siculus, lib. i. c. iv.

[21] Strabo, lib. xvii.

[22] Diodorus Siculus, lib. i. c. i.

[23] Cresy’s ‘Encyclopædia of Civil Engineering,’ c. iv.

[24] The railway starts from Callao at a height of 448 ft. above sea

level, and at 104½ miles distance it passes through the summit tunnel

at a height of 15,645 ft. above that level.

[25] ‘Practical Treatise on Railroads,’ third edition, p. 684.

[26] Observations on a late publication ‘The Present State of the

Nation,’ Bohn’s series, vol. i. p. 198.

[27] Speech on conciliation with America, Ibid., pp. 461-62.

[28] The navigation had, however, been deepened in the interval

for drainage purposes, largely at the expense of the Land Drainage

Commissioners, which caused a considerable increase of traffic.