He soon obtained employment under
Jesse Hartley at the
Liverpool docks, and subsequently was made engineer in charge of the railway and navigation works of the
Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal Company. In 1845 he became chief engineer to the
Manchester and Leeds Railway, and in 1847 to its successor, the
Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway for which he constructed a large number of branch lines. One such was the
Manchester and Southport line surveyed by his associate
Clement Wilks and as well as the
Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway near Heckmondwike. In 1850 he moved to London and began to practice as a consulting engineer, at first alone, but subsequently in partnership with
Harrison Hayter. In that capacity his work was of an extremely varied nature, embracing almost every branch of engineering. He retained his connection with the Lancashire & Yorkshire Company until his retirement from professional work in 1888, and was consulted on all the important engineering points that affected it in that long period. In London he was responsible for the
Charing Cross and
Cannon Street railways, together with the two bridges which carried them over the
Thames; he was engineer of the East London railway, which passed under the Thames through
Sir Marc Brunel's well-known
tunnel; and jointly with
Sir J Wolfe-Barry he constructed the section of the Underground railway which completed the
inner circle between the
Aldgate and
Mansion House stations. In addition, many railway works claimed his attention in all parts of the world—Germany, Russia,
India, Mauritius, etc. One noteworthy point in his railway practice was his advocacy, in opposition to
Robert Stephenson, of steeper gradients than had previously been thought desirable or possible, and so far back as 1838 he expressed decided disapproval of the maintenance of the broad gauge on the
Great Western, because of the troubles he foresaw it would lead to in connection with future railway extension, and because he objected in general to breaks of gauge in the lines of a country. The construction of
canals was another branch of engineering in which John Hawkshaw was actively engaged. In 1862 he became a chief engineer of the Dutch
North Sea Canal ship-canal. According to a speech of
Lord Houghton, he may be said to have been the saviour of the
Suez Canal. About that time the scheme was in very bad odour, and the
khedive determined to get the opinion of an English engineer as to its practicability, having made up his mind to stop the works if that opinion was unfavourable. Hawkshaw was chosen to make the inquiry, and it was because his report was entirely favourable that
Ferdinand de Lesseps was able to say at the opening ceremony that to him he owed the canal. However, in his books with documents related to the Suez Canal, De Lesseps does not mention Hawkshaw. As a member of the International Congress which considered the construction of an inter-ocean canal across Central America, he thought best of the
Nicaragua route, and privately he regarded the
Panama scheme as impracticable at a reasonable cost, although publicly he expressed no opinion on the matter and left the Congress without voting. Sir John Hawkshaw also had a wide experience in constructing harbours (e.g.
Holyhead) and docks (e.g.
Penarth, the
Albert Dock at
Hull, and South Dock (formerly the
City Canal) of the
West India Docks in London), in river-engineering, in drainage and sewerage, in water-supply, etc. He was engineer, with
Sir James Brunlees, of the original
Channel Tunnel Company from 1872, but many years previously he had investigated for himself the question of a tunnel under the
Strait of Dover from an engineering point of view, and had come to a belief in its feasibility, so far as that could be determined from borings and surveys. Subsequently, however, he became convinced that the tunnel would not be to the advantage of Great Britain, and thereafter would have nothing to do with the project. He was also consulting engineer to the
Severn Tunnel, which, from its magnitude and the difficulties encountered in its construction, was one of the most notable engineering undertakings of the 19th century. Following the inundation of the tunnel working in 1879, he employed
Thomas A. Walker as lead contractor to complete the work. He also designed the famous Puerto Madero, the port of
Buenos Aires, collaborating with
Thomas A. Walker and
James Murray Dobson. The works started its construction in 1885 and was finished in 1898. He is also known for his construction of the Brighton sewerage system. ==Family==