The Beginning of the Canals
Mr John Gilbert produced a Plan of a Canal or Cut proposed to be made from a Place in the Township of Salford to or near Worsley Mill … he is of opinion [that| it is very practicable to make a Canal sufficient for the Navigation of Boats and Vessels of considerable Burthens, whereby the Carriage of Goods will be greatly facilitated and become less expensive.
Journal of the House of Commons, 6 December 1758
Mr John Gilbert was the agent of the Duke of Bridgewater. The canal plans that he described to Parliament were those for the Bridgewater Canal – an undertaking which proved to be entirely practicable and every bit as efficient at improving transport as those who proposed it suggested. The first English canal to take a line across country which was independent of any natural waterway, it was the wonder of the day, and, from its opening in 1761, became an essential stopping-off place for the eighteenth-century tourist.
‘Tis not long since I viewed the artificial curiosities of London, and now have seen the natural wonders of the Peak; but none of them have given me so much pleasure as I now receive in surveying the Duke of Bridgewater’s navigation in this county. His projector, the ingenious Mr Brindley, has indeed made such improvements in this way, as are truly astonishing. At Barton bridge he has erected a navigable canal in the air; for it is as high as the tops of trees. Whilst I was surveying it with a mixture of wonder and delight, four barges passed me in the space of about three minutes, two of them being chained together, and dragged by two horses, went on the terras of the canal, whereon, I must own, I durst hardly venture to walk, as 1 almost trembled to behold the large river Irwell underneath me, across which this navigation is carried by a bridge, which contains upon it the canal of water, with the barges in it, drawn by horses, which walk upon the battlements of this extraordinary bridge.’
Anon, A History of Inland Navigations, 1779
But if, for the tourist, the canal was no more than an object of curiosity and a titillation for refined sensibilities, for others it was the inspiration for an outburst of engineering activity, the like of which Britain had not seen since the time of the Romans. Within half a century of the opening of the Bridgewater Canal, the canal builders had covered Britain with an intricate network of artificial waterways. They revolutionised the transport system of the country.
Cruikshank’s satirical view of speculators dashing away from a Loughborough inn to subscribe to the latest canal venture. (British Museum)
The idea of a revolution in civil engineering sits uneasily with many of the images that we have of England in the middle of the eighteenth century. But the chronicles for the year 1761 show a time of contrasts: a pause between an older Britain and a new. The aspect of the age that is the best known and the most chronicled is the world of the wealthy and the fashionable, the London of the 1760s that Boswell described in his Journal. It was the age of reason, of Hume and Voltaire, and the age of sentiment and elegance. Laurence Sterne’s verbal comic-strip of a novel, Tristram Shandy, was just starting to appear, Garrick ruled over the London theatre, Adam and Chippendale were transforming the fashionable house and its furnishings, while Capability Brown was transforming the grounds outside. This fashionable world can be seen staring out at us from the paintings of Gainsborough and Reynolds. With the third George now on the throne, it all seemed very safe and stable. True, the Seven Years War was still stumbling along and, in the course of the year, the elder Pitt resigned from office, but these were not major disturbances. If power shifted between the Whigs and the Tories, it was still the same narrow social stratum that would provide the rulers. Electioneering, after all, was an occupation reserved for the very rich: at a ‘small borough’, the bill of fare for the electorate on polling day was recorded as ‘980 stone of beef, 315 dozen bottles of wine, 72 pipes of ale, and 365 gallons of spirits converted into punch’.1
Francis Egerton, Third Duke of Bridgewater, points with pride at the Barton Aqueduct and the labouring teams hauling loads on the Irwell. (Hugh McKnight)
But there was much in the year 1761 that looked back to an earlier time. It was still only fifteen years since the ‘Bonnie Prince’ had marched his highlanders down into England and only fourteen years since the Rebellion had been quelled at Culloden. Dipping into the chronicles, the reader keeps meeting items that present an older, and perhaps more robust, image of the times. In 1761, a sophisticated and respectable publication like the Annual Register could still find room in its pages for an anecdote about a rich Spanish visitor to London losing his trousers in a brothel, and the Gentleman’s Magazine reported in April that ‘an old sorcerer of 30 years standing was convicted at the quarter sessions of Norwich for defrauding a poor woman of money, by pretending to lay evil spirits and cure her of witchcraft, and a letter from London on 12 May complained of ‘the pernicious practice of driving cattle thro’ the street of this city.’ There are endless stories of highwaymen, some of whom actually seem to have lived up to their fictitious counterparts. When the dashing Isaac Dumas was acquitted, a poem was published by ‘Certain Belles’:
Joy to thee, lovely thief! that thou
Hast ‘scap’d the fatal string;
Let gallows groan with ugly rogues,
Dumas must never swing.
He did swing later though. The lovely thief was hanged in the year 1761.
Behind the fashionable world, there was the constant discontent of the poor, which frequently burst out into riot. At Hexham, in Northumberland, the coal-workers rioted and the militia opened fire:
‘The commanding officer ordered his men to fire over the heads of the rioters, but they, exasperated by the death of one of their officers, and two of their fellow militiamen, when once they began, were not to be kept within bounds. Think what a shocking sound! for near ten minutes, fellow subjects firing one upon another! and what a horrible scene did I behold afterwards, some carried by dead in carts, others on horses; and many were led along just dying of their wounds, and covered with blood! and to hear the dreadful shrieks of the women, whose husbands or sons were among the rioters, was enough to piece a heart of stone … They reckon in all above 100 killed and wounded.’2
Animal Register, 1761
There was discontent in the country as well as in the towns: ‘A dispute having happened between the farmers of Kings Langley and the Irish reapers, about wages, the latter, in order to oblige the farmers to comply with their demands, assembled, to the number of 200, armed with pistols, swords, guns and clubs, and threatened to fire the town.’3
Although it may not have preoccupied contemporary chroniclers, the most important factor of life in 1761 seems to us, looking back on it now, to be the continuing growth of industrial power. Already, the great iron founders like the Darbys of Coalbrookdale were producing more iron and of better quality than ever before. Mining was being improved by the use of atmospheric engines for draining. New machines to improve manufacture, particularly in the textile industries, were being designed and developed. Only transport lagged behind among the innovations. Transport in 1761 was still in a wretched state and unless it could be improved and made cheaper, trade would be inhibited. Most important of all, unless transport could be improved, the new towns of the Industrial Revolution would be starved of their most basic and essential commodity – coal.
Land transport in the middle of the eighteenth century was little better than it was in the middle of the seventeenth. Goods were still carried by pack-horse trains along winding country tracks. Heavier and bulkier goods had to be taken in wagons and carts that churned the already muddy roads into a quagmire. Various attempts were made in Parliament to legislate better land transport into existence by setting limits to the loads that could be carried, and by stipulating the use of broad wheels. The efforts met with little success:
‘The utility of broad-wheels, in amending and preserving the roads, has been so long and universally acknowledged, as to have occasioned several acts of the legislature to enforce their use. At the same time, the proprietors and drivers of carriages appear to be convinced by experience, that a narrow-wheeled carriage is more easily and speedily drawn by the same number of horses than a broad-wheeled one of the same burthen.
It is no wonder therefore that private interest, operating against public good, should have suggested expedients to elude the restrictions individuals were laid under; or that the letter of the law should be more attended to than the spirit of it.’2
J. Jacob, Observations on the Structure and Draught of Wheel-Carriages, 1773
The real need was for better roads, rather than unenforceable regulations. The answer seemed to lie with the steadily increasing number of turnpike trusts, but the much-vaunted turnpikes were often little better than the roads they replaced, particularly in the Midlands and the north where the new manufacturing interests were beginning to grow. Here is Arthur Young on the Wigan turnpike:
‘I know not, in the whole range of language, terms sufficiently expressive to describe this infernal road. To look over a map, and perceive that it is a principal one, not only to some towns, but even whole counties, one would naturally conclude it to be at least decent; but let me most seriously caution all travellers who may accidentally purpose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil; for a thousand to one but they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings down. They will meet with runs which I actually measured four feet deep, and floating with mud only from a wet summer: what therefore must it be like after a winter?’4
Even the better turnpikes were badly adapted for heavy commercial traffic: they were the routes of the post-chaise and the stage-coach. However, the reality of stage-coach travel was a very long way from the popular Christmas card picture – all crisp, white snow, post horn and jolly punch-swilling landlord beside a glowing log fire at the end of the journey. Here is a touch of the reality:
‘I here learnt that the stage was to set out that evening for London, but that the inside was already full; some places were however still left on the outside … I determined to take a place as far as Northampton on the outside.
But this ride from Leicester to Northampton I shall remember as long as I live …
The getting up alone was at the risk of one’s life; and when I was up, I was obliged to sit just at the corner of the coach, with nothing to hold by but a sort of little handle fastened on the side. I sat nearest the wheel, and the moment that we set off, I fancied that I saw certain death await me. All I could do, was to take still faster hold of the handle, and to be more and more careful to preserve my balance.
The machine now rolled along with prodigious rapidity over the stones through the town, and every moment we seemed to fly into the air; so that it was almost a miracle that we still stuck to the coach, and did not fall. We seemed to be thus on the wing, and to fly, as often as we passed through a village or went down a hill.
At last, the being continually in fear of my life became insupportable, and as we were going up a hill, and consequently proceeding rather slower than usual, I crept from the top of the coach, and got snug into the basket … As long as we went up hill, it was easy and pleasant. And, having had little or no sleep the night before, I was almost asleep among the trunks and the passages; but how was the case altered when we came to go down hill. Then all the trunks and parcels began, as it were, to dance around me, and everything in the basket seemed to be alive: and I every moment received from them such violent blows, that I thought my last hour was come … I was obliged to suffer this torture nearly an hour, till we came to another hill, when, quite shaken to pieces and sadly bruised, I again crept to the top of the coach, and took possession of my former seat …
We at last reached Northampton, where I immediately went to bed, and slept almost till noon, resolving to proceed to London in some other stage-coach, the following morn.’
Charles P. Moritz, Travels Through Various Parts of England in 1782 in William
Mavor, The British Tourists, 1809
A seventeenth-century view of the Thames at Windsor with a variety of barges, some sailing downstream with the wind, others being hauled or rowed upstream. (Her Majesty the Queen)
He may have had a decidedly uncomfortable passage, but at least he did reach his destination. Brief news items like the following were commonplace in the newspapers of the time: ‘On Sunday night between eleven and twelve o’clock, as the Salisbury stage was returning to London, it was overturned into a ditch near Basingstoke, owing to the coachman’s being very much in liquor.’5
Land transport was slow, unreliable and expensive, and, in the case of bulky goods, such as coal and ore, could even be impossible. The alternatives were the coastal routes and river navigations. During the first part of the eighteenth century, a great deal of effort was put into improving river navigations, and the main rivers – Thames, Severn, Trent and Mersey – were busy with trade. But they still left the central areas untouched and, even at their best, suffered from severe disadvantages. In spite of improvements brought about by the construction of locks, and weirs and navigation cuts that by-passed the worst stretches, travel by river was not without its hazards:
‘The barge Emma, laden with copper, and proceeding down the stream of the Thames, with all the expedition that could be used, was sunk on the 21st of February last on a shoal near Bell Weir Lock … The same barge on her return being laden with grocery, &c. was again sunk on the 20th of March last, a little above Boulters Lock, having first been dragged over a shoal between Windsor and Maidenhead!!!’
Western Union Canal, Replies to the Arguments
of the Thames Navigation Commission, 1820
Traffic by means of these river navigations often involved trans-shipment, for there was very little cooperation between the bargemen of different rivers. Any attempt to encroach on a rival’s territory could produce a fierce response, as William Darvall of Maidenhead discovered when he tried to take his Thames barges onto the Kennet. The local bargemen soon made their view of the matter very clear:
‘Mr Darvall wee Bargemen of Redding thought to Aquaint you before ‘tis too Late, Dam You, if y. work a bote any more at Newbery wee will Kill You if ever you come any more this way, wee was very near shooting you last time, wee went with to pistolls and was not too Minnets too Late. The first time your Boat Lays at Redding Loaded, Dam You, wee will bore holes in her and sink her so Dont come to starve our fammeleys and our Masters … so take warning before ‘tis too late for Dam you for ever if you come wee will doo it – from wee Bargemen.’
Letter dated 10 July 1725 (British Transport Historical Archives)
Unsatisfactory though they were in some respects, the river navigations were still a far more efficient and cheaper way of moving goods than any overland method. They also had an added importance in that it was in the river improvement work that the engineering skills and techniques that were to make the later canal age possible were pioneered. One navigation in particular, the Sankey, was so little dependent on its accompanying river as to be virtually an artificial waterway. The rivers, though, were only connected to each other by the coastal traffic and this had its own difficulties. The most obvious of these was dependence on the weather – a sailing ship could be stuck in harbour for weeks waiting for a favourable wind and even when it left, there was no guarantee of a speedy voyage to its destination. Sir Edward Parry, giving evidence before Parliament in favour of cutting the Caledonian Canal, reported the case of two boats leaving Newcastle on the same day: the first reached Bombay before the second had completed its trip round the north of Scotland to Liverpool. There were other difficulties: theft and pilfering, which affected both the ports and the river navigations. J. Phillips, a well-known canal propagandist, stated the case at its most extreme. Even so, his version reflects a view very widely held in the eighteenth century. He describes the practice of ‘pilfering earthen wares, and other small goods, and stealing and adultering wines and spiritous liquors.’ He goes on:
‘The losses, disappointments, and discredit to the manufacturers, arising from this cause are so great, that they frequently choose to send their goods by land at three times the expense of water carriage, and sometimes even refuse to supply their orders at all, rather than run the risk of forfeiting their credit, and submitting to the deductions that are made on this account.’
J. Phillips, A General History of Inland Navigation, 1792
So, by the 1760s there was an increasing demand for a reliable, efficient, cheap and speedy transport system. The river engineers had shown that the technological means were available, but for a whole new system to be developed at speed, more than the means were required – the will to produce it had also to exist. The summit canal, joining one river system to another, presented a few special problems, but none that could not be overcome, provided that investors were convinced that it was worth the effort. The Duke of Bridgewater’s Canal was no technological miracle, but it did something new and it came at just the right moment. It captured the imagination of the general public, and it also seemed likely that, if it succeeded, the duke would make a great deal of money. So, among the ladies and gentlemen who watched the progress of the Duke of Bridgewater’s Canal, there were many who looked with more than disinterested curiosity. They had been told by some very authoritative people that the whole scheme was an expensive farce. A leading engineer of the day, on being shown the site for the proposed aqueduct at Barton that was to carry the canal over the River Irwell, was heard to remark that he had ‘often heard of castles in the air, but never was before shown where any of them were to be erected.’ But the ‘castle in the air’ was built and was successful, and the interested spectators were not slow to draw the lesson from what they saw:
‘The difference in favour of canal navigation was never more exemplified, nor appeared to more full and striking advantage than at Barton-bridge, in Lancashire, where one may see, at the same time, seven or eight stout fellows labouring like slaves to drag a boat slowly up the river Irwell, and one horse or mule, or sometimes two men ar most, drawing five or six of the duke’s barges, linked together, at a great rate upon the canal.’
J. Phillips, A General History of Inland Navigation, 1792
Even more effective than the inspiring sight of the canal was the inspiring sight of reduced transport costs. Before the Bridgewater Canal opened, coal sold in Manchester at 7d per hundredweight: the canal trade cut the price exactly in half. Manufacturers and traders, seeing such a dramatic drop in costs, became converts to the idea of canal transport, speculators with money in their pockets began to dream of fat cash profits, and the small group of men who had been engaged in building the Bridgewater Canal found themselves suddenly in demand as the only experts in the new technology. Thanks largely to the initiative taken by the Duke of Bridgewater, the great age of canal construction was begun.