British Canals: Is their resuscitation practicable?

CHAPTER II EARLY DAYS

It seems to be customary with writers on the subject of canals and waterways to begin with the Egyptians, to detail the achievements of the Chinese, to record the doings of the Greeks, and then to pass on to the Romans, before even beginning their account of what has been done in Great Britain. Here, however, I propose to leave alone all this ancient history, which, to my mind, has no more to do with existing conditions in our own country than the system of inland navigation adopted by Noah, or the character of the canals which are supposed to exist in the planet of Mars.

For the purposes of the present work it will suffice if I go no further back than what I would call the "pack-horse period" in the development of transport in England. This was the period immediately preceding the introduction of artificial canals, which had their rise in this country about 1760-70. It preceded, also, the advent of John Loudon McAdam, that great reformer of our roads, whose name has been immortalised in the verb "to macadamise." Born in 1756, it was not until the early days of the nineteenth century that McAdam really started on his beneficent mission, and even then the high-roads of England—and especially of Scotland—were, as a rule, deplorably bad, "being at once loose, rough, and perishable, expensive, tedious and dangerous to travel on, and very costly to repair." Pending those improvements which McAdam brought about, adapting them to the better use of stage-coaches and carriers' waggons, the few roads already existing were practically available—as regards the transport of merchandise—for pack-horses only. Even coal was then carried by pack-horse, the cost working out at about 2s. 6d. per mile for as much as a horse could carry.

It was from these conditions that canals saved the country—long, of course, before the locomotive came into vogue. As it happened, too, it was this very question of coal transport that led to their earliest development. There is quite an element of romance in the story. Francis Egerton, third and last Duke of Bridgewater (born 1736), had an unfortunate love affair in London when he reached the age of twenty-three, and, apparently in disgust with the world, he retired to his Lancashire property, where he found solace to his wounded feelings by devoting himself to the development of the Worsley coal mines. As a boy he had been so feeble-minded that the doubt arose whether he would be capable of managing his own affairs. As a young man disappointed in love, he applied himself to business in a manner so eminently practical that he deservedly became famous as a pioneer of improved transport. He saw that if only the cost of carriage could be reduced, a most valuable market for coal from his Worsley mines could be opened up in Manchester.

It is true that, in this particular instance, the pack-horse had been supplemented by the Mersey and Irwell Navigation, established as the result of Parliamentary powers obtained in 1733. This navigation was conducted almost entirely by natural waterways, but it had many drawbacks and inconveniences, while the freight for general merchandise between Liverpool and Manchester by this route came to 12s. per ton. The Duke's new scheme was one for the construction of an artificial waterway which could be carried over the Irwell at Barton by means of an aqueduct. This idea he got from the aqueduct on the Languedoc Canal, in the south of France.

But the Duke required a practical man to help him, and such a man he found in James Brindley. Born in 1716, Brindley was the son of a small farmer in Derbyshire—a dissolute sort of fellow, who neglected his children, did little or no work, and devoted his chief energies to the then popular sport of bull-baiting. In the circumstances James Brindley's school-teaching was wholly neglected. He could no more have passed an examination in the Sixth Standard than he could have flown over the Irwell with some of his ducal patron's coals. "He remained to the last illiterate, hardly able to write, and quite unable to spell. He did most of his work in his head, without written calculations or drawings, and when he had a puzzling bit of work he would go to bed, and think it out." From the point of view of present day Board School inspectors, and of the worthy magistrates who, with varied moral reflections, remorselessly enforce the principles of compulsory education, such an individual ought to have come to a bad end. But he didn't. He became, instead, "the father of inland navigation."

James Brindley had served his apprenticeship to a millwright, or engineer; he had started a little business as a repairer of old machinery and a maker of new; and he had in various ways given proof of his possession of mechanical skill. The Duke—evidently a reader of men—saw in him the possibility of better things, took him over, and appointed him his right-hand man in constructing the proposed canal. After much active opposition from the proprietors of the Mersey and Irwell Navigation, and also from various landowners and others, the Duke got his first Act, to which the Royal assent was given in 1762, and the work was begun. It presented many difficulties, for the canal had to be carried over streams and bogs, and through tunnels costly to make, and the time came when the Duke's financial resources were almost exhausted. Brindley's wages were not extravagant. They amounted, in fact, to £1 a week—substantially less than the minimum wage that would be paid to-day to a municipal road-sweeper. But the costs of construction were heavy, and the landowners had unduly big ideas of the value of the land compulsorily acquired from them, so that the Duke's steward sometimes had to ride about among the tenantry and borrow a few pounds from one and another in order to pay the week's wages. When the Worsley section had been completed, and had become remunerative, the Duke pledged it to Messrs Child, the London bankers, for £25,000, and with the money thus raised he pushed on with the remainder of the canal, seeing it finally extended to Liverpool in 1772. Altogether he expended on his own canals no less than £220,000; but he lived to derive from them a revenue of £80,000 a year.

The Duke of Bridgewater's schemes gave a great impetus to canal construction in Great Britain, though it was only natural that a good deal of opposition should be raised, as well. About the year 1765 numerous pamphlets were published to show the danger and impolicy of canals. Turnpike trustees were afraid the canals would divert traffic from the roads. Owners of pack-horses fancied that ruin stared them in the face. Thereupon the turnpike trustees and the pack-horse owners sought the further support of the agricultural interests, representing that, when the demand for pack-horses fell off, there would be less need for hay and oats, and the welfare of British agriculture would be prejudiced. So the farmers joined in, and the three parties combined in an effort to arouse the country. Canals, it was said, would involve a great waste of land; they would destroy the breed of draught horses; they would produce noxious or humid vapours; they would encourage pilfering; they would injure old mines and works by allowing of new ones being opened; and they would destroy the coasting trade, and, consequently, "the nursery for seamen."

By arguments such as these the opposition actually checked for some years the carrying out of several important undertakings, including the Trent and Mersey Navigation. But, when once the movement had fairly started, it made rapid progress. James Brindley's energy, down to the time of his death in 1772, was especially indomitable. Having ensured the success of the Bridgewater Canal, he turned his attention to a scheme for linking up the four ports of Liverpool, Hull, Bristol, and London by a system of main waterways, connected by branch canals with leading industrial centres off the chief lines of route. Other projects followed, as it was seen that the earlier ventures were yielding substantial profits, and in 1790 a canal mania began. In 1792 no fewer than eighteen new canals were promoted. In 1793 and 1794 the number of canal and navigation Acts passed was forty-five, increasing to eighty-one the total number which had been obtained since 1790. So great was the public anxiety to invest in canals that new ones were projected on all hands, and, though many of them were of a useful type, others were purely speculative, were doomed to failure from the start, and occasioned serious losses to thousands of investors. In certain instances existing canals were granted the right to levy tolls upon new-comers, as compensation for prospective loss of traffic—even when the new canals were to be 4 or 5 miles away—fresh schemes being actually undertaken on this basis.

The canals that paid at all paid well, and the good they conferred on the country in the days of their prosperity is undeniable. Failing, at that time, more efficient means of transport, they played a most important rÔle in developing the trade, industries, and commerce of our country at a period especially favourable to national advancement. For half a century, in fact, the canals had everything their own way. They had a monopoly of the transport business—except as regards road traffic—and in various instances they helped their proprietors to make huge profits. But great changes were impending, and these were brought about, at last, with the advent of the locomotive.

The general situation at this period is well shown by the following extracts from an article on "Canals and Rail-roads," published in the Quarterly Review of March 1825:—

"It is true that we, who, in this age, are accustomed to roll along our hard and even roads at the rate of 8 or 9 miles an hour, can hardly imagine the inconveniences which beset our great-grandfathers when they had to undertake a journey—forcing their way through deep miry lanes; fording swollen rivers; obliged to halt for days together when 'the waters were out'; and then crawling along at a pace of 2 or 3 miles an hour, in constant fear of being set down fast in some deep quagmire, of being overturned, breaking down, or swept away by a sudden inundation.

"Such was the travelling condition of our ancestors, until the several turnpike Acts effected a gradual and most favourable change, not only in the state of the roads, but the whole appearance of the country; by increasing the facility of communication, and the transport of many weighty and bulky articles which, before that period, no effort could move from one part of the country to another. The pack-horse was now yoked to the waggon, and stage coaches and post-chaises usurped the place of saddle-horses. Imperfectly as most of these turnpike roads were constructed, and greatly as their repairs were neglected, they were still a prodigious improvement; yet, for the conveyance of heavy merchandise the progress of waggons was slow and their capacity limited. This defect was at length remedied by the opening of canals, an improvement which became, with regard to turnpike roads and waggons, what these had been to deep lanes and pack-horses.[1] But we may apply to projectors the observation of Sheridan, 'Give these fellows a good thing and they never know when to have done with it,' for so vehement became the rage for canal-making that, in a few years, the whole surface of the country was intersected by these inland navigations, and frequently in parts of the island where there was little or no traffic to be conveyed. The consequence was, that a large proportion of them scarcely paid an interest of one per cent., and many nothing at all; while others, judiciously conducted over populous, commercial, and manufacturing districts, have not only amply remunerated the parties concerned, but have contributed in no small degree to the wealth and prosperity of the nation.

"Yet these expensive establishments for facilitating the conveyance of the commercial, manufacturing and agricultural products of the country to their several destinations, excellent and useful as all must acknowledge them to be, are now likely, in their turn, to give way to the old invention of Rail-roads. Nothing now is heard of but rail-roads; the daily papers teem with notices of new lines of them in every direction, and pamphlets and paragraphs are thrown before the public eye, recommending nothing short of making them general throughout the kingdom. Yet, till within these few months past, this old invention, in use a full century before canals, has been suffered, with few exceptions, to act the part only of an auxiliary to canals, in the conveyance of goods to and from the wharfs, and of iron, coals, limestone, and other products of the mines to the nearest place of shipment....

"The powers of the steam-engine, and a growing conviction that our present modes of conveyance, excellent as they are, both require and admit of great improvements, are, no doubt, among the chief reasons that have set the current of speculation in this particular direction."

Dealing with the question of "vested rights," the article warns "the projectors of the intended railroads ... of the necessity of being prepared to meet the most strenuous opposition from the canal proprietors," and proceeds:—

"But, we are free to confess, it does not appear to us that the canal proprietors have the least ground for complaining of a grievance. They embarked their property in what they conceived to be a good speculation, which in some cases was realised far beyond their most sanguine hopes; in others, failed beyond their most desponding calculations. If those that have succeeded should be able to maintain a competition with rail-ways by lowering their charges; what they thus lose will be a fair and unimpeachable gain to the public, and a moderate and just profit will still remain to them; while the others would do well to transfer their interests from a bad concern into one whose superiority must be thus established. Indeed, we understand that this has already been proposed to a very considerable extent, and that the level beds of certain unproductive canals have been offered for the reception of rail-ways.

"There is, however, another ground upon which, in many instances, we have no doubt, the opposition of the canal proprietors may be properly met—we mean, and we state it distinctly, the unquestionable fact, that our trade and manufactures have suffered considerably by the disproportionate rates of charge upon canal conveyance. The immense tonnage of coal, iron, and earthenware, Mr Cumming tells us,[2] 'have enabled one of the canals, passing through these districts (near Birmingham), to pay an annual dividend to the proprietary of £140 upon an original share of £140, and as such has enhanced the value of each share from £140 to £3,200; and another canal in the same district, to pay an annual dividend of £160 upon the original share of £200, and the shares themselves have reached the value of £4,600 each.'

"Nor are these solitary instances. Mr Sandars informs us[3] that, of the only two canals which unite Liverpool with Manchester, the thirty-nine original proprietors of one of them, the Old Quay,[4] have been paid for every other year, for nearly half a century, the total amount of their investment; and that a share in this canal, which cost only £70, has recently been sold for £1,250; and that, with regard to the other, the late Duke of Bridgewater's, there is good reason to believe that the net income has, for the last twenty years, averaged nearly £100,000 per annum!"

In regard, however, to the supersession of canals in general by railways, the writer of the article says:—

"We are not the advocates for visionary projects that interfere with useful establishments; we scout the idea of a general rail-road as altogether impracticable....

"As to those persons who speculate on making rail-ways general throughout the kingdom, and superseding all the canals, all the waggons, mail and stage-coaches, post-chaises, and, in short, every other mode of conveyance by land and water, we deem them and their visionary schemes unworthy of notice."

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