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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.

                 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.

CHAPTER II.

ENGLISH RIVERS.

   “Rivers, arise; whether thou be the son
    Of utmost Tweed, or Ouse, or gulphy Don,
    Or Trent, who, like some earth-born giant, spreads
    His thirty arms along the indented meads;
    Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath;
    Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden’s death;
    Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee;
    Or coaly Tine, or ancient hallowed Dee;
    Or Humber loud, that keeps the Cythian’s name;
    Or Medway smooth, or royal-towered Thame.”
                                      —_Milton._

One of the earliest pioneers of inland navigation was Wm. Sandys,
of Ombersley Court, in Worcestershire, who, in 1636, applied for
Parliamentary powers to make the river Avon navigable for boats and
barges, from the Severn at Tewkesbury to the city of Coventry. Part
of the work which was executed in pursuance of the powers so obtained
exists to the present time. In 1661 Sandys sought for Parliamentary
authority to make the Salwarp navigable from the Severn to his own town
of Droitwich, and to make navigable the rivers Wye and Lug, and the
brooks running into the same in the counties of Hereford, Gloucester,
and Monmouth.

Our great rivers, the Thames, Severn, Trent, Ouse, &c., were the
recognised means of transit long before the time of the Romans, who
were so far advanced in inland navigation as to cut canals of forty
miles in length, as instanced in the Caerdyke, between Peterborough and
Lincoln (though now filled up), as also to build docks, as shown in the
old dock walls, &c., still standing at the outfall of the Trym into the
Avon below Bristol.

The Fossdyke navigation from Lincoln to the Trent is also of Roman
origin, and probably an extension of the Caerdyke, on their route to
York. Torksey, at the junction with the Trent, was a Roman town and
fort, and continued possessed of many privileges, down to the Norman
period, on condition that the knights who held it should carry the
King’s Ambassadors, as often as they came that way, down the Trent
in their own barges, and conduct them to York. This is recorded in
‘Domesday Book.’ Itchin Dyke to Winchester was also cut by the Romans.

It is usual to date the first beginning of canal navigation in England
from the time when Brindley constructed the famous canal between
Worsley and Salford for the Duke of Bridgwater. This, no doubt, was
the first important artificial navigation throughout. But Sandys had
practically undertaken canal construction about a hundred years before.
The Act of Parliament which sanctioned the various enterprises that he
had projected, authorised him to construct new channels, and to set
up, in convenient places, “locks, wears, turnpikes, penns for water,
cranes, and wharfs, to lay timber, coals, and all other materials that
shall be brought down;” to have and use “a certain path, not exceeding
four feet in breadth, on either side of the said rivers and passages,”
for the “towing, pulling, or drawing-up of their barges, boots,
leighters, and other vessels passing and repassing them, or any part
of them, by strength of men, horses, lines, ropes, winches, engines,
or other means convenient;” and “to dig, carry, trench, or cut, or
make any trench, river, or new channel, or wharf,” &c., after having
arranged with the “respective Lords, owners, or occupiers of the said
lands.”[29]

Sandys, however, did not succeed in carrying out the intended
navigation between the cities of Hereford and Bristol as he proposed.
He attempted to make the Wye navigable by locks and weirs on the
pound-lock system, which did not suit its rapid current. The enterprise
was accordingly abandoned, after a trial of several years.

In 1688 the project of making the Wye navigable was revived. It was
now proposed to abandon the pound-lock system, to purchase and remove
all the mill-weirs and fishing-weirs between Hay, in Herefordshire,
and the sea, and to deepen the channels of the shallow streams. The
weir-owners rose in opposition to these proposals, and for several
years the subject was the occasion of a bitter controversy. When the
Bill was applied for in 1695, the city of Hereford, and thirty-two
parishes in the county, petitioned in its favour; while the towns of
Ross and Monmouth, and thirteen parishes, petitioned against it. The
Bill, however, ultimately became law,[30] and although, owing to the
uncertainty of its depth and current, the Wye was never adapted for
regular navigation, it was so far improved that throughout the
eighteenth century it was of great service to the county of Hereford.[31]

One of the earliest to advocate river improvements in Britain was
Andrew Yarranton, an original genius, who had ideas and plans quite
a hundred years in advance of his times.[32] He occupied himself with
many different projects designed to effect improvements in means
of communication, and in developing the resources of the country
generally. At one time serving as a soldier, at another engaged in the
manufacture of iron; now planning how to provide employment for the
poor, and again studying how to bring about more economical processes
of husbandry, Yarranton made a special hobby of the improvement of
navigation, undertaking surveys of the principal rivers in the West of
England at his own cost, and urging upon the people the importance of
opening up the facilities of communication thereby available to them.

In 1665 Yarranton proposed to the burgesses of Droitwich to deepen
the small river Salwarp, so as to connect that town, now an important
centre of the salt industry, with the river Severn. He was offered
terms to carry out his plans, but the offer does not appear to have
been good enough.[33]

In 1666 Yarranton proposed to make the river Stour navigable between
Stourport and Kidderminster, and to connect it with the river Trent by
a navigable canal. He carried out this work so far as to make the river
navigable from Stourbridge to Kidderminster; but his scheme was not
completely adopted for lack of means. He says that he “laid out near
1000_l._,” and “carried down many hundred tons of coal,”[34] although,
on account of the novelty of his enterprise, it was greatly ridiculed.
At a later date Yarranton proposed to connect the Thames and the
Severn by means of an artificial cut, “at the very place where, more
than a century after his death, it was actually carried out by modern
engineers.”[35]

Although the proprietors in what was called the “Old Quay Company”
had obtained an Act of Parliament in 1733 for improving by weirs and
cuts the rivers Mersey and Irwell, between Runcorn and Manchester, the
first association incorporated for making a regular navigable canal in
England was not till more than twenty years later, six centuries after
the first canals in Italy and Flanders, and a hundred years subsequent
to some of the chief canals of France being in operation. It is but
fair to add that England carried the movement further than most other
countries.

It is unnecessary to enter into the history of the development of the
navigable resources of the rivers of the United Kingdom during the last
two centuries, even if it were possible, which, of course, it is not
in a work of this description. The dates when the several principal
navigation works were undertaken will be found set out in Appendix I.
But we may, nevertheless, bestow some consideration upon the principal
steps that have brought about the remarkable facilities that England,
Scotland, and, to a less extent, Ireland, respectively enjoy at the
present time in the matter of internal transport. The Clyde, the
Tyne, the Tees, the Wear, and other prominent English rivers have
been transformed from shallow brawling streams, some of them easily
fordable at all states of the tide, into magnificent waterways, capable
of bearing on their bosoms the largest vessels afloat. This work has
necessarily involved great engineering capacity, a large expenditure,
and a judicious administration of their powers and resources by the
public bodies through whom it has been carried to completion.

THE MERSEY.

On the Liverpool side of the Mersey there are sixty docks and
basins of the ordinary type, having a total water area of 368 acres
and 25 miles of quay berthing. On the Birkenhead side, there are
164½ acres of docks, with 9½ miles of quayage, three graving docks,
having a total length of 2430 feet, and every facility for loading and
unloading ships.

The total expenditure incurred on this enormous provision for shipping
has been upwards of twenty millions, and the total annual revenue of
the Mersey dock estate is about a million and a half sterling.

The entire length of the Mersey is 56 miles. For the first 37 miles
of this distance, the river has a tortuous course, ill-adapted for
navigation, and passes through an almost exclusively agricultural
country. From Runcorn to the sea, the form of the river is that of a
bottle, of which the wide expanse between Runcorn and Liverpool forms
the body, and the narrow part opposite Liverpool the neck. Through this
neck there annually passes nearly twenty million tons of shipping,
including entrances and clearances.

The unassisted efforts of nature have hitherto maintained the navigable
channels of the Mersey, so that the conditions of navigation remain
practically uniform. The bar, however, is gradually moving in a seaward
direction, while maintaining its general form and characteristics. In
Liverpool Bay there is a great range of tide, which insures a depth
of at least 30 feet over the bar once in every twelve hours, even on
the lowest neaps. Some two or three million cubic yards of upland
water every twelve hours are discharged into the estuary, chiefly by
the Mersey and the Weaver, which, with 710 million cubic yards on a
high spring tide, maintains the normal capacity of the estuary, and
counteracts the process of silting. Some 17,300 acres of a deposit of
sand in the estuary are above the low-water mark. Through this the
upland water forms and maintains a channel in its course to the sea,
and any serious exclusion of this tidal water would be likely to so far
injure the sea channels as to interfere with the trade and shipping of
the port.

The Mersey is the outlet for several important canal navigations,
including the Weaver Navigation Canal, near Weston Point, the
Bridgwater Canal at Runcorn, the Sankey Canal at Widnes, the Shropshire
Union Canal at Ellesmere, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at the Docks,
and the Manchester Ship Canal, now under construction, at Eastham. The
position of these several canals in relation to the river may be traced
in a map accompanying a paper read by Mr. Lyster, the engineer, before
the Institution of Naval Architects. These canals are important factors
in assisting the growth of the trade of the Mersey. The Leeds and
Liverpool is, however, the only canal that has a direct connection with
the Liverpool Docks.

By this canal Liverpool has water communication with the important town
of Leeds, and thence, by the Aire and Calder Canal, with Hull and the
other ports on the Humber. By the Shropshire Union Canals the Mersey is
connected with the network of canals in the Midland Counties and with
the River Severn.

In Camden’s time Liverpool must have been a very obscure place. The
author of ‘Britannia’ dismisses it almost in a sentence, observing that
“from Warrington, the River Mersey, spreading abroad, and straightwaies
drawing in himselfe again, with a wide and open outlet, very commodious
for merchandise, entereth into the Irish Sea, where Litherpoole, called
in the elder ages Lipen-poole, common Lirpoole, is seated, so named, as
it is thought, of the water spreading itself in manner of a poole.”

With the exception of the Thames—which it rivals, and with which for
a number of years past it has run a neck-to-neck race—the Mersey is,
so far as its volume of business is concerned, the most important river
in the world. This, however, is an attainment of comparative modern
origin. The first wet dock was constructed at Liverpool, in 1708-9,
on the site now occupied by the Custom House. In the latter part of
the same century several other docks were constructed. The dock estate
has now an area of 1078 acres, the whole of which is appropriated to
basins, docks, quays, and premises worked in connection therewith.

THE WEAVER.

The history of the navigation of the river Weaver, which adjoins the
Mersey in Cheshire, supplies a notable example of what may be made of
an originally insignificant and tortuous stream in order to adapt it
for the requirements of commerce. The river has been canalised between
Northwich and Chester, twenty miles of the navigation being artificial
navigation, and the other thirty miles being river proper.

In 1721 three Cheshire gentlemen obtained the first Act of Parliament
for making the river Weaver navigable. The depth then provided for was
only 4 feet 6 inches, and boats of more than 40 to 50 tons could not
enter.

About the year 1760, the navigation was carried down so as to enable
vessels to enter at nearly all tides, and in 1810 the river was further
improved by the Weston Canal, which is four miles long, enabling
vessels of much deeper draught to enter without navigating a dangerous
part of the old river. This canal forms a junction with the Bridgwater
Docks at Weston Point, and a dock was formed in connection with it so
as to enable vessels to wait for the tide.

In 1830 the depth was increased to 7 feet 6 inches, with locks 88 feet
long and 18 feet wide, capable of taking cargoes of 100 to 150 tons.
There were at this time eleven single locks on the river, not including
the entrances to the Mersey. About 1860, a second set of locks, having
10 feet of water on the sills, and 100 feet long by 22 feet wide, was
placed by the side of the existing locks, and the number was reduced to
nine pairs. The larger size, owing to the vessels being built almost to
the shape of the lock, were capable of passing vessels with nearly 320
tons on board.

This continued until about seventeen years ago, when it was decided to
replace these locks by some of very much larger dimensions, and also to
greatly reduce the number. With this object, locks were built at Dutton
and Saltersford near the site of existing locks, and of sufficient
height of walls to enable the two ponds above to be thrown into one,
thus doing away with the four smaller locks. The same has been done at
Hunts, and, more recently, at Valeroyal, above Northwich. The locks at
Dutton and Saltersford are entirely built of masonry, having limestone
sills and rubbling courses, with the intermediate part sandstone. All
the work on the river is of this description, with the exception of the
Hunts and Valeroyal large locks, which are built of concrete.

When these improvements are completed there will be only four locks on
the twenty miles of navigation, the larger of each pair of locks being
220 feet long, by 42 feet 6 inches wide, and having 15 feet of water
on the sills. Most of the river is now dredged to 12 feet, there only
being 10-feet bars at certain points. The ordinary width is about 95 to
100 feet at water level, and 45 feet at the bottom. More than a million
tons of salt annually pass down the Weaver to the Mersey.

THE TYNE.

This noble river, from Newcastle to the sea, is one of the greatest
triumphs of modern engineering. Good old Camden quaintly remarks, that
“where the wall (Roman) and the Tine almost met together Newcastle
sheweth itself gloriously, the very eye of all the townes in these
parts, ennobled by a notable haven, which Tine maketh, being of that
depth that it beareth very tall ships, and also defendeth them, that
they can neither easily be tossed with tempests nor driven upon
shallows and shelves.”[36]

No better example of what has been done within recent years in the way
of providing additional facilities for the wants of British shipping,
could be quoted than the case of the Tyne. That river is the natural
outlet of the great northern coalfield. It is also the outlet for a
very great trade in chemicals, engineering, iron and steel, and other
industrial products. But in order to adapt it for the purposes of
its large and rapidly-growing commerce, it was necessary not only to
provide several docks—the more important of which, the Northumberland
and the Coble Dene, cost 352,000_l._ and 528,000_l._ respectively—but
it was also requisite to expend over 1,300,000_l._ in dredging the bed
of the river, so as to provide access for the largest size of vessels,
to expend nearly three-quarters of a million on other river works,
to construct North and South Piers at a cost of over 820,000_l._;
and to incur a total outlay considerably exceeding 4,000,000_l._ The
effect of these improvements and structural works has been that the
Tyne has been transformed from “a series of shoals, with a narrow and
generally serpentine channel between and past them, through which
vessels of about 15-ft. draught could get up at high-water spring
tides, whilst at low-water it was a not uncommon occurrence for small
river steamers, drawing from 3 to 4 ft. of water, to be aground on
their passage between Shields and Newcastle for three or four hours,”
to a magnificent navigable highway, that admits vessels of 3000 tons
and upwards at all states of the tide with perfect safety. At the time
that the great work was commenced, and for many years afterwards,
the revenue from shipping dues was quite insufficient to enable any
substantial progress to be made, and the trade grew so rapidly that
it became imperative to either borrow money in order to carry out the
required works, or allow the shipping to seek other ports, where better
facilities were provided. The works to the end of 1882 had, therefore,
to be chiefly carried out by the aid of borrowed money. As a matter of
fact, only 426,000_l._ was expended out of income, while 3,673,000_l._
was borrowed. The results, however, appear to have justified the
course. The annual income from dues and tolls has grown, within twenty
years, from 91,000_l._ to over 251,000_l._

The Tyne Improvement Commission, chiefly under the presidency of Sir
Joseph Cowen, have deepened the river to a uniform depth of nearly 30
feet, built training walls, dredged the bar, built new channels, and
otherwise revolutionised the old order of things. The results have been
extremely striking. In 1888 14,668 vessels, having a total tonnage of
6,734,000 tons, cleared from the Tyne ports; while 6093 ships, having
1,662,000 tons register, entered the same ports. The people of Tyneside
are proud of their river, as well they may be.

THE RIBBLE.

Preston is a busy town and port in the county of Lancashire, situated
on the river Ribble, about seventeen miles from the sea. The navigation
of the port has hitherto been confined to coasting vessels drawing
about 14 feet of water. The amount of shipping entering the port has
been under 30,000 tons a year. The Ribble rises in the West Riding of
Yorkshire, at the east foot of Whernside, and arrives at Preston after
a course of fifty-seven miles. With its tributaries it drains about 800
square miles of land, a great part of which is moorland. The annual
rainfall over this district averages about 37 inches. Below Preston,
the channel of the river opens out into a broad sandy estuary, four or
five miles in width, the whole of which is covered at high water of
spring tides, and the greater part of which is dry at low water. The
course of the river, after it leaves the trained portion, is along the
northern shore of this estuary to Lytham, whence the main navigable
channel, called “The Gut,” bends in a south-westerly direction between
the Salt-house and the Horse-shoe banks to the Irish Sea. The width of
the estuary between the two forelands on the coast, Stanner Point on
the north, and Southport on the south, is five miles. The sands extend
four miles seaward beyond this line, and are uncovered at low water.
The depth at low water spring tides on the bar, or the portion of the
navigable channel with deep water, is four feet. Beyond this the depth
seawards rapidly increases, from 20 feet immediately beyond, till,
at the Nelson buoy—which is two miles beyond the bar, and the first
buoy belonging to the Ribble navigation—the depth is six fathoms. The
depth above the bar along the Gut channel, which is rather tortuous
and narrow, being shown on the Admiralty chart as less than a quarter
of a mile wide, varies from 4 to 24 feet. This channel is buoyed out
with eight buoys, which are shifted as the channel varies. There are
three other channels between Lytham and the sea, called, respectively,
the South Channel, the Penfold, and the North Channel. These are more
or less navigable; but the Gut is the main sea-fairway. From Lytham a
shallow channel runs near the shore for about a mile to “The Dock,”
where ships can lie at anchor. Thence it winds towards the Wage through
the sands. This channel is continually shifting its course, owing to
gales and freshets. From this point the river has been trained by
rubble-stone training walls, put in about thirty-four years ago, which
continue for seven miles up to Preston. These walls rise seven feet
above low water, and are 300 feet apart at the top. Spring-tides rise
24 feet at the bar, and neaps 17 feet, and at Preston the rise is 10
feet and 4 feet 6 inches. The project of constructing a dock at Preston
has been agitated for some years, and has been strongly advocated
by Mr. Garlick, M.I.C.E., who was the engineer to the Navigation
Commissioners. It was considered that by providing deep-water
accommodation to the town, its trade and prospects would be greatly
increased, having regard to the large manufactories by which it is
surrounded, the immense population in the immediate neighbourhood, and
the nearness of the Wigan coalfield. This work is now in progress,
including the division of the river; the estimated cost being about
440,000_l._

THE SEVERN.

This famous river is navigable up to Welshpool, a distance of 155 miles
by water, from the mouth of the Bath Avon river. The extreme branch
of this river may be traced for about 45 miles above Welshpool, to
Plinlimmon Hill, and numerous other branches extend for great distances
into the country on both sides. The whole of this great length of
navigation was, till lately, unimproved by art, the river having no
locks, weirs, or other erections throughout its whole length, for
surmounting the numerous shallows and irregularities which the current
over variable strata had formed in its bed. The first or lowest 42
miles of this river, extending to the city of Gloucester, are very wide
for a great part of the way, and have a most rapid tide; but the last
28 miles are so crooked, that ships are said to be often several days
in passing it; on which account, a ship canal, calculated for vessels
of 300 tons burthen, was in the year 1793 projected and begun between
Gloucester and Berkeley, of 18¼ miles in length, for avoiding these 28
miles of the river. From Gloucester to Worcester the distance is 30
miles by the course of the stream, the rise in this length being 10
feet, or at the rate of 4 inches a mile; from Worcester to Stourport
the distance by water is 13 miles, and the rise 23 feet, or at the rate
of 1 foot 9 inches per mile; from Stourport to Bridgnorth it is 18
miles, and the rise 41¾ feet, or 2 feet 4 inches per mile on the
average; and from Bridgnorth to the new town at the junction of the
Shropshire canal, called Coalport, the distance is about 7 miles, and
the rise about 19 feet, being a rate of about 2 feet 8 inches per mile.
William Reynolds, the founder of Coalport, caused an account to be
daily registered of the depth of the stream in the bed of the Severn at
that place, between the 7th of October, 1789, and the 23rd of December,
1800, of which Mr. Telford has given the particulars, except on twelve
occasions when the river had overflown its bounds and covered the usual
marks (on Sundays during some part of the time), the intervals of frost
in which the river was frozen over, and for three short intervals,
when, unfortunately, the experiment was by some accident suspended.
During all the months of January, in the above period of eleven years,
ending the 6th of October, 1800, the river does not appear to have
exceeded the depth of 16 feet, that being the greatest depth at any
time recorded; and several times, when no depths are inserted to the
great floods, it is stated in the table that the water was above all
the marks. Besides these, there were thirty-two smaller floods, or
times when the water had risen, and was falling again for some days
after; the highest of these had a depth of 13 feet (5th January, 1790),
the lowest 4 feet, and the mean of the whole of these floods is 7½
feet. In the months of February there were two of these overflowings,
one of which (11th February, 1795) followed a frost and continued for
five successive days: nineteen floods, the two highest of which were
equal (17th and 20th February, 1799) to 12 feet.

THE WITHAM.

On the Witham, for a distance of thirty miles, between Boston and
Lincoln, the river is practically a canal. The tide is stopped by
a sluice at Boston, and a weir and locks had to be constructed at
Bardney and Lincoln. The inland water is held up to a constant height
on the sill of this sluice by penstocks, for the purposes of the
navigation. The navigation having been taken over by the Great Northern
Railway Company, the works are maintained in efficient condition; but
the obligation imposed by the original Act of holding up the water
seriously affects the drainage. The river Slea, from Sleaford to the
Witham, was made into a canal in 1792. The navigation on this river
having almost entirely ceased, the company was dissolved by an Act of
Parliament. The Bane, another affluent of the Witham, was also
canalised, forming a navigation from the Witham to the town of
Horncastle; but the dues obtained are insufficient to maintain the
works in proper order.

THE NENE AND OUSE.

On the Nene, which is canalised from Peterborough to Northampton, the
navigation is reduced to a few barges. The constant floods on this
river are ascribed in a great measure to the defective condition of the
works. The proprietors of the navigation, on whom was cast the duty of
maintaining the river, no longer have the funds, and there is nobody
to take their place. The same thing has occurred on the Ouse between
Earith and Bedford.

On some of the affluents of these rivers, which, under legislative
powers granted last century, had been converted into “navigations,” the
proprietors have obtained Acts of Parliament relieving them of their
rights and liabilities, and there is now no jurisdiction over these
rivers, or anybody responsible for removing shoals or cutting weeds.
The beds of these streams have consequently become shallow, and they
are no longer capable of acting as efficient arterial drains. Thus,
on the Ivel, an affluent of the Ouse, the navigation trust, created
in the reign of George II., was abolished in 1876. The river is said
to have since diminished one-half in width, and one-half in depth,
and the bottom is being gradually raised to the level of the land. In
like manner, the Lark, another canalised affluent, has almost entirely
silted up since the navigation of the river ceased. The Ouse itself,
above Earith, is obstructed by numerous shoals, and an enormous growth
of weeds. These were originally kept down by the constant passage
of the vessels, and the shoals were removed by the trustees of the
navigation.

THE TEES.

The improvements that have been carried out for the purpose of opening
up the navigation of the river Tees, although less considerable than
those carried out for some of the larger rivers of Great Britain, are
yet entitled to take rank as among the most notable river engineering
achievements of the century. They are also among the most recent. It
was not until 1852 that the Act was passed creating the Tees Navigation
Commission. At that time there were three or four channels in the
estuary, all of them very shallow. The shifting sandbanks caused great
trouble and not a little danger to navigation, and the depth of water
near to Middlesbro’ did not admit of the passage of vessels of large
size. Since then, about twenty miles of low water training walls have
been erected for the purpose of confining the navigable channel. The
volume of water and its scour have thereby been much increased. The
river has been continuously dredged in order to secure a depth of
water that would allow of the passage of vessels of large tonnage into
the Middlesbro’ Docks. About 23 million tons of material have been
dredged from the bed of the river, and the channel has been generally
straightened and widened. Breakwaters have been constructed on both
sides, one of them, called the North Gare, being about two miles and a
half long. A remarkable feature of the work is that these breakwaters
have been constructed of slag, obtained from the blast-furnaces in the
neighbourhood. Some millions of tons of slag have been employed in this
way, the ironmasters having paid to the Conservancy Commissioners a
small sum for removing the slag, the disposal of which had been a great
source of difficulty previous to this application.

As a result of the works that have been carried out for the improvement
of the navigation of the Tees, the shipping trade of the river, and
especially of the port of Middlesbro’, has greatly increased. The main
element in this development has been the growth of the iron industry;
but the second element has undoubtedly been the increased facilities
for navigation. The popular impression about Middlesbro’ is that only
a single house stood in 1830, where there is now a busy town of more
than 70,000 inhabitants. This may or may not be a legend, but there is
no doubt about the fact that in 1850 there were only from two to three
feet of depth on the bar of the Tees, where it was possible to wade
across at low water; whereas now there is about 20 feet of water, and a
harbour of refuge has been provided in which ships can ride in safety
whatever the condition of the usually stormy seas outside.

THE IRWELL.

This river has been partly canalised, in order to afford a means
of communication between Warrington, Manchester, and other large
towns, and Liverpool, but it was only adapted for light craft and
has consequently fallen largely into disuse. The Mersey and Irwell
Navigation was acquired by the Bridgwater Company, and has now, with
the rest of the Bridgwater property, passed under the control of the
Manchester Ship Canal Company.

THE WEAR.

This river, which has its rise in the district that unites Durham and
Westmoreland, falls into the North Sea at Sunderland after a course
of thirty miles. The river is under the jurisdiction of the Wear
Commissioners from about nine miles from the bar to the sea. Over this
distance very considerable improvements have been carried out during
the last half century. These improvements have resulted in making the
Wear one of the foremost shipbuilding rivers in the United Kingdom, and
have given it the second place in the coal-shipping trade. The revenue
of the Wear Trust, which only averaged about 14,000_l._ a year between
1840 and 1850, has within recent years amounted to about 130,000_l._ a
year. One of the most extensive works undertaken on the river, besides
graving docks, wharves, &c., and the deepening of the bed, was the
construction of a lock at the sea outlet, designed to obviate the
detention of screw-colliers when waiting for the tide. This lock is 481
feet in length by 90 feet in breadth, and has a depth of 29½ feet at
ordinary spring tides. The present docks can accommodate 200 ships of
large size, drawing up to 24 feet of water. The area of the docks is
over 78 acres, and they are fitted with nineteen coal spouts, at which
15,000 tons of coal can be shipped daily.

In this chapter we have dealt with a few only of the more notable
examples of river improvement in modern times. The list might be almost
indefinitely extended. There is hardly a brawling mountain torrent
between Land’s End and John o’ Groat’s that has not been reclaimed,
deepened, widened, or otherwise improved upon by the art and the genius
of the engineer. Nor has the work been confined to modern times. The
Romans are known to have constructed embankments for the control of
British rivers during the period of their occupation, although for
something like 1000 years afterwards their example was not followed.
The engineers and the local authorities of the nineteenth century have
done much to redeem this reproach. The improvement and conservancy of
rivers have now been reduced to a science, founded mainly upon the
following general principles[37]:—

    1. That the freer the admission of the tidal water, the
    better is the river adapted for all purposes, whether of
    navigation, drainage, or fisheries.

    2. That its sectional area and inclination should be made to
    suit the required carrying power of the river throughout its
    entire length, both for the ordinary flow of the water and
    for floods.

    3. That the downward flow of the upland water should be
    equalised as much as possible throughout the entire year; and

    4. That all abnormal contaminations should be removed from
    the streams.

Our tidal rivers are undoubtedly one of the chief sources of our
maritime supremacy. For this reason it is of the utmost importance
that they should be kept in good repair, free from unnecessary
obstructions, and well adapted to the purposes of navigation. As it is,
however, this is not always the case. The chief reason for existing
maladministration, where it exists, is the absence of a uniform system
of control. The Thames, for example, has been hitherto controlled
partly by the Thames Conservancy and partly by the Metropolitan Board
of Works. The Great Sluice, at Boston, in Lincolnshire, was constructed
in 1764 by Smeaton, for the purpose of stopping the flow of the tide
in the river Witham, and converting the upper part of the river into a
fresh-water canal as far as Lincoln. As, however, the control of the
river is divided—one body dealing with the tidal part from the Grand
Sluice to the sea, and the other with the canal and drainage of the
land above—each opposes the schemes of the other, and the navigation
has been ruined.[38]

There is one course whereby this condition of things, where it
exists, may be prevented. It has been suggested that a new Government
Department should be created, with entire charge of and control over
all estuaries and navigable channels, and presided over by a member of
the Cabinet. The interests at stake are sufficiently large to justify
this.[39] They are as vital to our commerce and industry as any matter
now dealt with by the State, affecting our material well-being, and
they are every year increasing in extent and importance. As regards
the principal rivers—the Mersey, the Tyne, the Tees, the Clyde,
and the Wear especially—they are now controlled in accordance with
the recommendation made by the Duke of Richmond’s Select Committee,
that “each catchment area should be placed under a single body of
conservators, who should be responsible for maintaining the river, from
its source to its outfall, in an efficient state.” There are other
rivers, however, that are administered rather in the interest of the
landed proprietors than in that of navigation, and where these two come
into conflict the State should have powers that would enable the public
interest, which is both national and international, to be effectually
protected.

The following table gives the area and length of some of the chief
rivers of England:—

          NORTH-EAST OF ENGLAND.
                                 Area.     Length.
                                Miles.      Miles.
    Coquet                        240        40
    Wansbeck                      126        22
    Blyth                         131        16
    Tyne                        1,130        34
    Wear                          456        45
    Tees                          708        79
    Esk                           147        21
    Humber                     10,500        ··
    Hull                          364        20
    Foulness                      133        14
    Derwent                       794        64
    Ouse                        1,842        40
    Aire and Calder               815        78
    Don                           682        57
    Trent                       4,052       147
    Ancholme                      244        25
    Ludd                          139         7
    Withern Eau                   189        13

          EAST ANGLIAN RIVERS.
                                Area.      Length.
                               Miles.       Miles.
    Bure                         348         45
    Yare                         880         48
    Blyth                         79         17
    Alde                         109         24
    Deben                        153         27
    Orwell                       171         16
    Stour                        407         45
    Colne                        192         24
    Crouch                       181         15
    Roding                       317         33

           OTHER RIVERS.
                                Area.      Length.
                               Miles.       Miles.
    Witham                     1,079         40
    Welland                      760         42
    Nene                       1,077        100
    Great Ouse                 2,667        143
    Wissey, or Stoke             243         28
    Nar, or Setchy               131         25

Many of the above rivers are not navigable for vessels of any size,
and are therefore not of much value to the transportation resources
of the country. In the majority of cases, also, the character of the
waterways, as regards locality, water-supply, &c., would not justify
any large expenditure in adapting them for purposes of transport.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] A.D. 1661, Anno. 14 Car. Reg. ii.

[30] 7 and 8 Gul. III.

[31] Papers relating to the History and Navigation of the Rivers Wye
and Lug. By John Lloyd, junr.

[32] Andrew Yarranton was born in the parish of Astley,
Worcestershire, in the year 1616. He wrote a work which is well known
to economists, entitled ‘England’s Improvement by Land and Sea, or
How to beat the Dutch without Fighting,’ describing observations
that he had made during his travels in Holland, Saxony, and other
countries.

[33] Smiles states that Yarranton was offered 250_l._ and eight salt
vats at Upwich, valued at 80_l._ per annum, with three quarters of
a vat in Northwich for 21 years, in payment for the work. It is
interesting to compare these terms with those on which some of our
modern streams have been deepened and improved.

[34] Yarranton’s ‘Improvement by Land and Sea.’

[35] ‘Industrial Biography,’ by S. Smiles, p. 65.

[36] ‘Britannia,’ Holland’s Translation, 1637.

[37] Address of the President of Section G, British Association
Meeting at Dublin, 1878.

[38] Paper on “River Control and Management,” by J. C. Hawkshaw,
‘British Association Report for 1878.’

[39] The following figures give the tonnage of the entrances and
clearances in the foreign trade (including British possessions) of
the principal rivers in 1888:—