Pre-Industrial Revolution transport systems opened circa 1670 Prior to the
Industrial Revolution, some natural waterways were "canalised" or improved for boat traffic in the 16th century. The first act of Parliament was obtained by the City of
Canterbury in 1515,
Deepening River at Canterbury Act 1514 (
6 Hen. 8. c. 17), to extend navigation on the
River Stour in
Kent, followed by the
River Exe, with the
River Exe Act 1539 (
31 Hen. 8. c. 4), which led to the construction in 1566 of a new channel, the
Exeter Canal. Simple
flash locks were provided to regulate the flow of water and allow loaded boats to pass through shallow waters by admitting a rush of water, but these were not purpose-built canals as we understand them today. The transport system that existed before the canals were built consisted of coastal shipping and horses and carts struggling along mostly unsurfaced mud roads (although there were some surfaced
turnpike roads). There was also a small amount of traffic carried along navigable rivers. In the 17th century, as early industry started to expand, this transport situation was highly unsatisfactory. The restrictions of coastal shipping and river transport were obvious, and horses and carts could only carry one or two
tons of cargo at a time. The poor state of most of the roads meant that they could often become unusable after heavy rain. Because of the small loads that could be carried, supplies of essential commodities such as
coal and
iron ore were limited, and this kept prices high and restricted economic growth. One horse-drawn canal barge could carry about thirty tonnes at a time, faster than road transport and at half the cost. In 1635
Sir Richard Weston was appointed to develop the
River Wey Navigation, making
Guildford accessible by 1653. In 1670 the
Stamford Canal opened, indistinguishable from 18th century examples with a dedicated cut and double-door locks. In 1699 legislation was passed to permit the
Aire and Calder Navigation which was opened 1703, and the Trent Navigation which was built by
George Hayne and opened in 1712. Subsequently, the
Kennet built by
John Hore opened in 1723, the
Mersey and Irwell opened in 1725, and the
Bristol Avon in 1727.
John Smeaton was the engineer of the
Calder and Hebble which opened in 1758, and a series of eight
pound locks was built to replace
flash locks on the River Thames between Maidenhead and Reading, beginning in 1772. The net effect of these was to bring most of England, with the notable exceptions of
Birmingham and
Staffordshire, within of a waterway. By the early 18th century, river navigations such as the Aire and Calder Navigation were becoming quite sophisticated, with pound locks and longer and longer "cuts" (some with intermediate locks) to avoid circuitous or difficult stretches of rivers. Eventually, the experience of building long multi-level cuts with their own locks gave rise to the idea of building a "pure" canal, a waterway designed on the basis of where goods needed to go, not where a river happened to be.
The Industrial Revolution as viewed from
Spike Island in Widnes The UK was the first country to develop a nationwide canal network. The canals caused a great change in the economy of Britain. They supported the industries that allowed the country to become the world's first industrial power and supported the economic powerhouse that was the
British Empire in the
Victorian Era. The canals were built because they offered the most economic and reliable way to transport goods and commodities in large quantities. The navigable water network grew rapidly at first and became an almost completely connected transport network. In addition to the building of new canals, older canals were improved. They were given new embankments, tunnels, aqueducts and cuttings. However, there was often fierce opposition to the building. The
Sankey Canal was the first British canal of the Industrial Revolution, opening in 1757. It connected St Helens with
Spike Island in Widnes. The canal fuelled the growth of the chemical industry in Widnes, which subsequently became the centre of the industry in England. In the mid-18th century the
3rd Duke of Bridgewater built the
Bridgewater Canal. Its purpose was to transport coal from his mines to the industrialising city of
Manchester. He commissioned the engineer
James Brindley to build the canal; the design included an aqueduct carrying the canal over the
River Irwell. The aqueduct was an engineering wonder which attracted tourists. Its construction was funded entirely by the Duke. It opened in 1761 and was the longest canal constructed in Britain to that date. Canal boats could carry thirty tons at a time; one horse could tow more than ten times the amount of cargo that was possible with a cart. On the majority of British canals, the canal-owning companies did not own or run a fleet of boats, since the acts of Parliament setting them up usually prohibited this, in order to prevent monopolies developing. Instead, they charged private operators tolls to use the canal. These tolls were regulated by the acts. From the tolls the owners would try, with varying degrees of success, to maintain the canal, pay back initial loans and pay dividends to their shareholders.
Railway competition and decline From about 1840, the railway network gained greater importance. With the transition from short-distance
horse-drawn tramways to increasingly practical, powerful
steam locomotives, trains could not only carry more than the canals, but could transport people and goods far more quickly than the walking pace of the canal boats. Most of the investment that had previously gone into canal building was
diverted into railway building. By the second half of the 19th century, many canals were owned by
railway companies or competing with them, and many were in decline, with decreases in mile-ton charges to try to remain competitive. After this, the less successful canals (particularly narrow-locked canals, whose boats could only carry about thirty
tons) failed quickly. Faced with decline, there were at least two attempts by canal owners to
convert their canal to a railway. This was vigorously opposed by competing rail interests, and so failed to gain the necessary acts of Parliament. Canal companies could not compete against the speed of the new railways, and in order to survive, they had to slash their prices. This put an end to the huge profits that canal companies had enjoyed before the coming of the railways, and also had an effect on the boatmen who faced a drop in wages. Flyboat working (see
§ Boats below) virtually ceased, as it could not compete with the railways on speed and the boatmen found they could only afford to keep their families by taking them with them on the boats. This became standard practice across the canal system, often with families with several children living in tiny boat cabins, creating a considerable community of boat people. Though this community ostensibly had much in common with
Gypsies, both communities strongly resisted any such comparison, and surviving boat people feel deeply insulted if described as "water gypsies". By the 1850s the railway system had become well established, and the amount of cargo carried on the canals had fallen by nearly two-thirds, lost mostly to railway competition. In many cases struggling canal companies were bought out by railway companies. Sometimes this was a tactical move by railway companies to gain ground in their competitors' territory, but sometimes canal companies were bought out either to close them down and remove competition, or to build a railway on the line of the canal. A notable example of this is the
Croydon Canal. Some larger canal companies survived independently and continued to make profits. The canals survived through the 19th century largely by occupying the niches in the transport market that the railways had missed, or by supplying local markets such as the coal-hungry factories and mills of the big cities. During the 19th century the canal systems of many European countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands were modernised and widened to take much larger boats. This did not happen on a large scale in the UK, mainly because of the power of the railway companies, who owned most of the canals and saw no reason to invest in a competing form of transport. The only significant exception to this was the modernisation carried out on the
Grand Union Canal in the 1930s. Thus, almost uniquely in Europe, many of the UK's canals remain as they have been since the 18th and 19th centuries: mostly operated with narrowboats. An exception to this stagnation was the Manchester Ship Canal, newly built in the 1890s using the existing
River Irwell and River Mersey, to take ocean-going ships into the centre of Manchester via its neighbour
Salford. During the 1950s and 1960s freight transport on the canals declined rapidly in the face of mass road transport. Coal was still being delivered to waterside factories that had no other convenient access. But many factories that had formerly used coal either switched to using other fuels, often because of the
Clean Air Act 1956, or closed completely. in 1944 This period was the most destructive for former waterways. The rise in road transport, and enthusiasm for development of new urban
trunk roads and
motorways, led to many routes being built over, such as parts of the
Stroudwater Navigation for the M5, A38, A419, and Dr. Newton's Way. Separately, old canal beds were used as
landfill sites, destroyed by
flood relief work on nearby rivers, or simply built over during the
post-war housing boom. Under the Transport Act 1962, the surviving canals were transferred in 1963 to the British Waterways Board (BWB), which later became
British Waterways. In the same year the BWB decided to formally cease most of its narrowboat operations and transfer them to a private operator called Willow Wren Canal Transport Services. By then the canal network had shrunk to , half the size it was at its peak in the early 19th century. However, the basic network was still intact; many of the closures were of duplicate routes or branches. By the mid-1960s only a token traffic was left. The
Transport Act 1968 required the British Waterways Board to keep commercial waterways fit for commercial use, and cruising waterways fit for cruising. However, these obligations were subject to the caveat of being by the most economical means. There was no requirement to keep them in a navigable condition; they were to be treated in the most economic way possible, which could mean abandonment. British Waterways could also change the classification of an existing waterway. All or part of the canals could be transferred to local authorities; this allowed roads to be built over them, mitigating the need to build expensive bridges and aqueducts. The last regular long distance narrowboat commercial contract, transporting coal from
Atherstone to the Kearley and Tonge jam factory at Southall in west London, ended in 1971. Lime juice continued to be carried between
Brentford and
Boxmoor until 1981. Substantial tonnages of aggregates were carried by narrowboat on the Grand Union Canal until 1996.
Growth of the leisure industry being used for recreation The establishment in 1946 of a group called the
Inland Waterways Association by
L. T. C. Rolt and
Robert Aickman helped revive interest in the UK's canals to the point where they are a major leisure destination. In the 1960s the infant canal
leisure industry was only just sufficient to prevent the closure of the remaining canals, but then the pressure to maintain canals for leisure purposes increased. Although out of commercial or leisure use, many canals survived because they formed part of local water supply and drainage networks. From the 1970s, increasing numbers of closed canals were restored by enthusiast volunteers. The
Canal and River Trust maintains a list of the sites it believes are the most important; it is called the
Seven Wonders of the Waterways. The list includes: •
Standedge Tunnel, the longest, deepest, and highest canal tunnel in the United Kingdom. • The
Caen Hill Flight lock flight, one of the longest continuous lock flights in the country. •
Barton Swing Aqueduct, the world's only swinging aqueduct, on the Bridgewater canal. • The
Anderton Boat Lift, the world's first commercially successful boat lift and until the opening of the
Falkirk Wheel the only boat lift in the United Kingdom. •
Bingley Five Rise Locks, a staircase lock that is the steepest in the country. •
Burnley Embankment, an innovative solution to a canal crossing a wide valley. • The
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, the longest and highest aqueduct in the United Kingdom.
Role in the slave trade During the
Atlantic Slave Trade, some canals were also used to carry cotton, tobacco and sugar produced by slaves.
Moses Benson, a Liverpool slaver, invested in the Lancaster Canal, which subsequently had a dramatic effect on the economy of
Preston. Other slavers like Lowbridge Bright sat on the board of Thames and Severn Canal Company. George Hyde Dyke was a shareholder in the Peak Forest Canal Company. William Carey owned shares in the Grand Junction Canal. ==Construction, features and maintenance==