In the days of Brindley and of Smeaton, and of the other fathers
of our profession, whose portraits are on these walls, canals and
canalized rivers formed the only mode of internal transit which was
less costly than horse traction, and, thanks to their labors, the
country has been very well provided with canals; but the introduction
of railways proved, in the first instance, a practical bar to the
extension of the canal system, and, eventually, a too successful
competitor with the canals already made. Frequently the route that had
been selected by the canal engineer was found (as was to be expected)
a favorable one for the competing railway, and the result was, the
towns that had been served by the canal were served by the railway,
which was thus in a position to take away even the local traffic of
the canal. For some time it looked as though canal and canalized river
navigations must come to an end; for although heavy goods could be
carried very cheaply on canals, and with respect to the many works and
factories erected on the canal banks, or on bases connected therewith,
there was with canal navigation no item of expense corresponding to
the cost of cartage to the railway stations, yet the smallness of the
railway rates for heavy goods, and the greater speed of transit, were
found to be more than countervailing advantages. But when private
individuals have embarked their capital in an undertaking, they do not
calmly see that capital made unproductive, nor do they refrain from
efforts to preserve their dividends, and thus canal companies set
themselves to work to add to their position of mere owners of water
highways, entitled to take toll for the use of those highways, the
function of common carriers, thus putting themselves on a par with the
railway companies, who, as no doubt is within the recollection of our
older members, were in the outset legalized only as mere owners of
iron highways, and as the receivers of toll from any persons who might
choose to run engines and trains thereon, a condition of things
which was altered as soon as it was pointed out that it was utterly
incompatible either with punctuality or with safe working. This
addition to the legal powers of the canal companies, made by the acts
of 1845 and 1847, has had a very beneficial effect upon the value
of their property, and has assisted to preserve a mode of transport
competing with that afforded by the railways. Further, the canal
proprietors have from time to time endeavored to improve the rate of
transport, and with this object have introduced steam in lieu of horse
haulage, and by structural improvements have diminished the number of
lockages. Many years before the period we are considering, there was
employed, to save time in the lockages and to economize water, the
system of inclined planes, where, either water-borne in a traveling
caisson, as on the Monklands incline, or supported on a cradle, as
in the incline at Newark, in the State of New Jersey, the barges were
transferred from one level to another; but an important improvement on
either of these modes of overcoming a great difference of level is the
application of direct vertically lifting hydraulic power. A notable
instance of this system was brought before the Institution in a paper
read on the "Hydraulic Canal Lift at Anderton, on the River Weaver,"
by S. Duer,[2] and another instance exists on the Canal de New Fosse,
at Fontinettes, in France, the engineers being Messrs. Clark and
Standfield, who have other lifts in progress. This system reduces the
consumption of water and the expenditure of time to a minimum.
[Footnote 2: Minutes of Proceedings Inst. C. E., vol. xlv., p. 107.]
With respect to canalized rivers, the difficulty that must always have
existed when these rivers (as was mostly the case) were provided with
weirs to dam up the water for giving power to mills has been augmented
of late years by the change in the character of floods. It has
frequently been suggested that in these days of steam motors in lieu
of water power, and of railways in lieu of water carriage, the injury
done by obstructing the delivery of floods is by no means compensated
by the otherwise all but costless power obtained, or by the
preservation of a mode of transport competing with railways. It has
thereupon been suggested that it would be in the interests of the
community to purchase and extinguish both the manufacturing and the
navigating rights, so as to enable the weirs to be removed, and free
course to be provided for floods. It need hardly be said, however,
that if means could be devised for giving full effect to the river
channels for flood purposes, while maintaining them for the provision
of motive power and of navigation, it is desirable that this should be
done. The great step in this direction appears to be the employment
of readily or, it may be, of automatically movable weirs. Two very
interesting papers on this subject by Messrs. Vernon-Harcourt and E.
B. Buckley were read and discussed in the session 1879-1880. These
dealt, I fear exclusively, with foreign, notably with French and
Indian, examples. I say I fear, not in the way of imputing blame to
the authors for not having noticed English weirs, but because the
absence of such notice amounts to a confession of backwardness in the
adoption of remedial measures on English rivers. An instance, however,
of improvement since then has been the construction by Mr. Wiswall,
the engineer to the Bridgewater Navigation Company (on the Mersey and
Irwell section of that navigation), of the movable Throstle Nest weir
at Manchester. It does seem to me that by the adoption of movable
weirs, rivers in ordinary times may be dammed up to retain sufficient
water to admit of a paying navigation and water for the mills on their
banks; while in time of flood they shall allow channels as efficient
for relief as if every weir had been swept away.
But the great feature of late years in canal engineering is not the
preservation or improvement of the ordinary internal canal, but the
provision of canals, such as the completed Suez canal, the Panama
canal in course of construction, the contemplated Isthmus of Corinth
canal--all for saving circuitous journeys in passing from one sea to
another; or in the case nearer home of the Manchester ship canal, for
taking ocean steamers many miles inland.
But the old fight between the canal engineer and the railway engineer,
or, more properly speaking, between the engineer when he had his canal
"stop" on and the same individual when he has his railway "stop"--you
will see that I am borrowing a figure, either from Dombey & Son, where
Mr. Feeder, B.A., is shown to us with his Herodotus "stop" on, or,
as is more likely, I am thinking of the organs to be exhibited in the
Second division, "Music," of that exhibition of which I have the honor
to be chairman--I am afraid this is a long parenthesis breaking
the continuity of my observations, which related to the old rivalry
between canal and railway engineering. I was about to say that this
rivalry was revived, even in the case of the transporting of ocean
vessels from sea to sea, for we know that our distinguished member,
Mr. Eads, is proposing to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by
means of a ship railway across the Isthmus of Panama. He suggests that
the largest vessels should be raised out of the water, in the manner
commonly employed in floating docks, and should then be transferred
to a truck-like cradle on wheels, fitted with hydraulic bearing blocks
(this being, however, not a new proposition as applied to graving
docks), so as to obtain practical equality of support for the ship,
notwithstanding slight irregularities in the roadway, while he
proposes to deal with the question of changes of direction by the
avoidance of curves and by the substitution of angles, having at the
point of junction of the two sides turntables on which the cradle
and ship will be drawn; these can be moved with perfect ease,
notwithstanding the heavy load, because the turntable will be floating
in water carried in circular tanks.
The question of preserving the level of the turntable, whether
unloaded, partially loaded, or loaded, is happily met by an
arrangement of water ballast and pumping. I cannot pass away from the
mention of Mr. Eads' work without just reminding you of the successful
manner in which he has dealt with the mouth of the Mississippi, by
which he has caused that river to scour and maintain a channel 30 feet
deep at low water, instead of that 8 feet deep which prevailed there
before his skillful treatment. Neither can I refrain from mentioning
the successful labors of our friend Sir Charles Hartley, in improving
the navigation of that great European river, the Danube. I am sure we
are all rejoiced to see that one of the lectures of the forthcoming
series, that on "Inland Navigation," is to be delivered by him, and I
do earnestly trust he will remember it is his duty to the Institution
not to leave important and successful works unreferred to because
those works happen to be his own.
I regret that time does not admit of my noticing the many improved
machines for excavating, to be used either below water or on dry land.
I also regret, for similar reasons, I must omit all mention of ship
construction, whether for the purpose of commerce or of war, a subject
that would naturally follow that of rivers and of ship railways and
canals, and would have enabled me to speak of the great debt this
branch of civil engineering owes to the labors of our late member,
William Froude, and would have enabled me also to deal with the
question of material for ships, and with the question of armor
plating, in which, and in the construction of ordnance, our past
president, Mr. Barlow, and myself, as the two lay members of the
Ordnance Committee, are so specially interested.