Waterways and Water Transport in Different Countries by J. Stephen Jeans

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.