Our memoir of the man who originated that system of canal navigation, which contributed in no secondary degree to the wonderful increase of our national wealth in the last century, is taken entirely, and in many parts verbatim, from Dr. Kippis’s Biographia Britannica. The article Brindley in that work, communicated by Brindley’s brother-in-law, Mr. Henshall, and his friend Mr. Bentley, appears to be the only original account of him extant, and the source from which all later accounts have been taken.

James Brindley was born in the parish of Wormhill in Derbyshire, in 1716. He was the son of a small freeholder, who squandered his property in rustic dissipation, and could scarcely afford to give him even the rudiments of education. His boyhood, therefore, was spent in rural labour: but at the age of seventeen he left his home, to be apprenticed to a millwright at Macclesfield. He soon exhibited an uncommon share of mechanical ingenuity, which enabled him to excel his master in planning and executing orders for machinery more complicated than usual, and caused his services to be eagerly sought and highly prized by those who had once occasion to employ him.

At a later period he went into business on his own account, and, by many useful inventions and contrivances, established his reputation throughout the neighbourhood as a skilful mechanic. He gradually obtained a wider range for the exercise of his powers. In 1752 he erected a remarkable engine to drain some coal mines at Clifton, in Lancashire, of which the moving power was a wheel fixed thirty feet below the surface of the earth, and driven by water drawn from the river Irwell, by a tunnel cut for near 600 yards through the rock. In 1755 he was employed to construct portions of the works for a silk mill at Congleton, under the superintendence of an engineer, who proved incompetent to the task which he had in hand. Brindley does not appear ever to have executed machinery of the sort required, and he had not even been permitted to see the general model of the mill: but on the incompetency of his superior being discovered, he came forward and told the proprietors, that if they would let him know what was the effect they wished to have produced, and would permit him to perform the business in his own way, he would finish the mill to their satisfaction. The knowledge which they had of his ability and integrity induced them to repose confidence in this assurance; he accomplished that very curious and complex piece of machinery, in a manner far superior to the expectations of his employers, and with the addition of several new and useful contrivances. He also invented machines for making tooth and pinion wheels, which hitherto had been cut by hand, and with great labour.

Many other improvements Brindley introduced into the mechanical arts. But about this time his thoughts were drawn towards a larger sphere of action by the resolution of Francis Duke of Bridgewater to cut a canal from his coal mines at Worsley to the town of Manchester, distant about seven miles. This scheme is said to have been before conceived by one of that nobleman’s predecessors: but that circumstance does not detract from the honour due to the great perseverance and resolution displayed in the execution of his plan. Divesting himself of the splendour which usually belongs to his rank, he devoted his large revenue almost entirely to his favourite undertaking: resisting the temptation to borrow money, lest he should involve himself and his successors in irremediable difficulties, in case of the failure of an undertaking which, from its novelty, no man living could assert to be certain of success. At the same time having selected Brindley as his engineer, on good experience of his skill and talent, he placed a noble confidence in him; and, without fear or distrust, devoted his energy and fortune to work out the magnificent design which the genius of his coadjutor had planned. As the difficulties to be overcome were very great, so there was little experience to guide the projectors. Navigable rivers indeed had been improved, and those which were not navigable by nature had been made so by pounding up their waters with locks and dams: but of canals, properly so called, this was the first constructed in England. That it might be perfect in its kind, it was resolved to preserve a level, and avoid locks altogether: but to effect this obstacles were to be overcome, such as never had been surmounted in England,—obstacles which had always been considered insurmountable. Navigable tunnels were to be cut, long and large mounds to be carried across valleys, and in the line which finally was adopted, an aqueduct bridge of three arches, nearly fifty feet in height, and including the embankments on each side, five hundred yards in length, was to be carried over the river Irwell. This part of the scheme being generally considered wild and extravagant, Brindley, to justify himself to his employer, desired that the opinion of another engineer might be taken. This was accordingly done: but the second, on being conducted to the spot where it was intended that the aqueduct should be made, exclaimed, “I have often heard of castles in the air, but never before was shown the place where any of them were to be erected.” But the Duke of Bridgewater’s confidence in Brindley was not to be shaken, and the bridge was undertaken and finished within less than a year.

It is needless now to give the details of works which, though they excited the wonder of contemporaries, have been far surpassed in magnitude by more recent undertakings. One feature in the Duke of Bridgewater’s canal, however, is too remarkable to be passed over: it is continued on the same level more than three quarters of a mile into the heart of the hill in which the collieries are situated, so that after a short transit in low waggons along the galleries of the mine, the coal is deposited at once in the barges which convey it to Manchester. For a fuller account, we may refer to Phillips’s History of Inland Navigation. In 1762, the Duke of Bridgewater obtained an Act of Parliament, enabling him to continue his canal from Worsley in an opposite direction to Runcorn, in the tideway of the Mersey, so as to establish a perfect water-way between Liverpool and Manchester, unembarrassed by the constant current, and inequalities of flood and drought, which impeded the navigation of the Irwell. In this part of the line several deep valleys, especially those of the rivers Mersey and Bollin, were to be crossed, and this was done without the assistance of a single lock. Brindley’s method of constructing the long embankments, which occurred in some places, was remarkable: he built caissons along the line of its intended course, into which boats laden with excavated soil were conducted by the canal itself, and discharged their contents upon the very spot where the ground was to be raised. Thus the canal, as it were, pushed itself forward; and the labour and expense of transporting these immense masses of earth was greatly diminished. To guard against the total loss of water, and ruin to the surrounding country, which might occur from a breach of these embankments, Brindley contrived stops, which were gates so hung as to lie horizontally near the bottom when the water was at rest, but to rise and close when any current should be produced by the banks giving way, and thus prevent the escape of any water, except that portion near the breach which should be comprised between them. It is hardly necessary to add that the result of this, the greatest undertaking perhaps ever performed by any private person out of his own fortune, has been the realization of an enormous income to the peer who undertook it, and to his heirs.

This success encouraged others to proceed in the same course; and in 1765 a subscription was raised, and an Act of Parliament procured, for uniting the rivers Mersey and Trent, and consequently the ports of Liverpool and Hull, by what is commonly called the Grand Trunk Canal. Brindley bestowed this name upon it, in the expectation that, traversing a large and important portion of our manufacturing district, it would be the main trunk, from which a number of minor branches would spring. The scheme had been projected so early as 1755, and the ground surveyed, which for the most part offered little difficulty. But there was one line of high ground, called Harecastle Hill, which could neither be turned nor surmounted by any expedient that former engineers could devise. Brindley overcame the obstacle by driving a tunnel through it, upwards of a mile and five furlongs in length, and in some parts seventy yards below the surface of the ground. This canal, which is ninety-three miles long, was begun in 1766, and finished in May, 1777, less than eleven years after its commencement. In connexion with it, Brindley planned and executed a branch which joined the Severn, and thus gave Bristol an inland navigation to Hull, Liverpool, and Manchester.

Some notion may be formed of the impulse which Brindley’s energy and skill gave to the system of internal navigation, when it is stated that during the few years which elapsed between the completion of the Bridgewater Canal, and his death in 1772, he was engaged in at least eighteen different projects for cutting canals, or for improving rivers, without including those we have already mentioned. The mere names of these would be matter of little interest; they may be seen in the Biographia Britannica. Nor shall we now be expected to dwell on the unprecedented increase of trade and manufactures during the last century, and to point out how closely this is connected with our great facilities of internal communication. One thing, however, is too remarkable to be passed over: it was as nearly as possible at the same time that Watt, Arkwright, and Brindley, were effecting, each in his own department, those wonderful improvements in mechanical science, which conjointly have given such vast extent and importance to all branches of our manufactures, and which singly would have been, as it were, each of them crippled and imperfect. Of Brindley’s private history, scarcely any particulars are preserved. The following account of his character is stated by Dr. Kippis to proceed from the pen of Mr. Bentley, a partner in the celebrated house of Wedgwood, who knew him well:—

“When any extraordinary difficulty occurred to Mr. Brindley in the execution of his works, having little or no assistance from books, or the labours of other men, his resources lay within himself. In order therefore to be quiet and uninterrupted, whilst he was in search of the necessary expedients, he generally retired to his bed; and he has been known to lie there one, two, or three days, till he had attained the object in view. He then would get up, and execute his design without any drawing or model. Indeed, it never was his custom to make either, unless he was obliged to do it to satisfy his employers. His memory was so remarkable, that he has often declared that he could remember and execute all the parts of the most complex machine, provided he had time, in his survey of it, to settle in his mind the several departments, and their relation to each other. His method of calculating the powers of any machine invented by him was peculiar to himself. He worked the question for some time in his head, and then put down the results in figures; after this, taking it up again in that stage, he worked it further in his mind for a certain time, and set down the results as before. In the same way, he still proceeded, making use of figures only at stated periods of the question. Yet the ultimate result was generally true, though the road he travelled in search of it was unknown to all but himself; and, perhaps, it would not have been in his power to have shown it to another.

“The attention which was paid by Mr. Brindley to objects of peculiar magnitude did not permit him to indulge himself in the common diversions of life. Indeed, he had not the least relish for the amusements to which mankind in general are so much devoted. He never seemed in his element, if he was not either planning or executing some great work, or conversing with his friends upon subjects of importance. He was once prevailed upon, when in London, to see a play. Having never been at an entertainment of this kind before, it had a powerful effect upon him, and he complained for several days afterwards, that it had disturbed his ideas, and rendered him unfit for business. He declared, therefore, that he would not go to another play upon any account. It might, however, have contributed to the longer duration of Mr. Brindley’s life, and consequently to the further benefit of the public, if he could have occasionally relaxed the tone of his mind. His not being able to do so, might not solely arise from the vigour of his genius, always bent upon capital designs; but be, in part, the result of that total want of education, which, while it might add strength to his powers in the particular way in which they were exerted, precluded him, at the same time, from those agreeable reliefs that are administered by miscellaneous reading, and a taste in the polite and elegant arts. The only fault he was observed to fall into, was his suffering himself to be prevailed upon to engage in more concerns than could be completely attended to by any single man, how eminent soever might be his abilities and diligence. It is apprehended that, by this means, Mr. Brindley shortened his days, and in a certain degree abridged his usefulness. There is, at least, the utmost reason to believe, that his intense application in general to the important undertakings he had in hand brought on a hectic fever, which continued upon him, with little or no intermission, for some years, and at length terminated his life. He died at Turnhurst, in Staffordshire, on the 27th of September, 1772, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was buried at New Chapel in the same county. The vast works Mr. Brindley was engaged in at the time of his death, he left to be carried on and completed by his brother-in-law Mr. Henshall, for whom he had a peculiar regard, and of whose integrity and abilities in conducting these works he had the highest opinion.

“The public could only recognise the merit of this extraordinary man in the stupendous undertakings which he carried to perfection, and exhibited to general view. But those who had the advantage of conversing with him familiarly, and of knowing him well in his private character, respected him still more for the uniform and unshaken integrity of his conduct; for his steady attachment to the interest of the community; for the vast compass of his understanding, which seemed to have a natural affinity with all grand objects; and likewise for many noble and beneficent designs, constantly generating in his mind, and which the multiplicity of his engagements, and the shortness of his life, prevented him from bringing to maturity.”