Construction In 1755, Thomas Williams and John Cooley made a survey to find a suitable route for a man-made waterway across north Leinster from Dublin to the Shannon. They originally planned to use a series of rivers and lakes, including the Boyne, Blackwater, Deel, Yellow, Camlin and Inny and Lough Derravaragh. A disgruntled director of the Grand Canal Company sought support to build a canal from Dublin to Cloondara, on the Shannon in West County Longford. Work on this massive project commenced in May 1790 at Cross Guns Bridge,
Phibsborough in a westerly direction towards
Ashtown. This is commemorated in the plaque beneath the keystone of Ranelagh Bridge. In Samuel Watson's ''"The Gentleman's and Citizen's Almanack"'' for the year 1792, it noted that the Court of Directors for the Royal Canal met at 1
Dawson Street every Tuesday and Thursday at 2 o'clock to discuss matters. At that stage, it was intended that the canal would have branches to (or near)
Trim,
Kells,
Athboy and
Castletown-Delvin. In 1817, twenty-seven years after it began, the canal reached the Shannon. The total cost of construction was £1,421,954. Building was unexpectedly expensive, and the project was ridden with problems; in 1794 the Royal Canal Company was declared bankrupt. The Duke of Leinster, a board member, insisted that the new waterway take in his local town of
Maynooth. The builders had to deviate from the planned route; this necessitated the construction of a 'deep sinking' between Blanchardstown and Clonsilla. The diversion also called for the building of the Ryewater Aqueduct, at Leixlip.
Operation In 1796, the canal reached
Kilcock and trade commenced. Two passenger boats, the
Camden and the
Phelan, went into service on 2 December 1796, with a fare of
1s 1d (first class cabin) or 6d (second class cabin) from Dublin to Leixlip, a journey of approximately 20 km. This was much cheaper than the
stagecoach at the time, which cost 8s 8d for the same journey. Passengers also had the option to dine on board the canal passenger boat, whereas this was not possible on the coach. This made a slow canal journey such as the 12 hours to
Mullingar more manageable. , in the north inner-city of Dublin, opened in 1809 In the early 1800s, the canal supplied water to
Dublin Corporation for its
north city water supply, which could make the water level drop on the canal at times, especially during dry summers. To counteract this, a small reservoir named after King
George III was opened in the north inner city in 1809, paid for by Dublin Corporation, which was fed from the 1 km-long spur that came off the Royal Canal to meet
Broadstone railway station near
Phibsborough. The ground alone, covering merely an acre, cost the Corporation
£1,052 9s 2d. The reservoir still exists, named the
Blessington Street Basin, although the spur has been filled in. In the late 1820s, as the quality of
roads in Ireland improved, road carriers such as
Bianconi's Coach and Car Service began to compete with the canal as an affordable alternative public transport option. By the 1830s the canal carried 80,000 tons of freight and 40,000 passengers a year. plaque on
Brougham (Broom) Bridge, Dublin In 1843, while walking with his wife along the Royal Canal, Sir
William Rowan Hamilton realised the formula for
quaternions and carved his initial thoughts into a stone on the
Broom Bridge over the canal. The annual
Hamilton Walk commemorates this event. In July 1845, the
Midland Great Western Railway company was formed by an act of Parliament, the
Midland Great Western Railway of Ireland Act 1845 (
8 & 9 Vict. c. cxix) authorising it to build a railway from Dublin to and and to purchase the Royal Canal, which they did that same year. They considered draining the canal and building a new railway along its bed; however they were "legally obliged to operate the canal as a separate transport system and so it (the Royal Canal) continued to operate". The train line was eventually laid adjacent to the canal, and the two run side by side from Dublin to Mullingar. In November 1845, fifteen passengers, including two children, were drowned in
an incident on the canal, near
Clonsilla, Dublin. At approximately 4:00pm on 25 November that year, the Royal Canal Company passenger boat
Longford, on its way from Dublin to Longford, was steered accidentally into the
bank, turned over (with the weight of 54 passengers suddenly thrown to one side), and capsized. In May 1847, during the
Great Famine, tenants of Major
Denis Mahon left his
Strokestown Park estate in County Roscommon. The tenants, who would become known locally as the "Missing 1,490", had been offered a choice of emigration with assisted passage, starvation on their blighted potato farms or a place in the local workhouse. Weakened by starvation, the 1,490 walked for days along the towpaths of the Royal Canal to Dublin, where they were put on boats to Liverpool, and from there travelled to
Grosse-Île, Quebec on four "coffin ships" – cargo vessels that were also, ironically, loaded with grain from Ireland, and were unsuitable for passengers. It is estimated that half of the emigrants died before reaching Grosse-Île. This was the largest single exodus of tenants during the Famine. Mahon was assassinated in November 1847, after news reached Roscommon about the fate of his former tenants. An annual walk on the canal banks commemorates these events. The 1852 edition of ''
Thom's Irish Almanac and Official Directory'' described the state of commerce on the canal, as well as
intermodal passenger transport options for travellers combining rail and canal: Trade Boats ply regularly between Dublin,
Athy and
Mountmellick, in the direction of
the Barrow, and to
Kilbeggan,
Tullamore,
Shannon Harbour, and
Ballinasloe, in the direction of
the Shannon... The river Shannon is navigable from Shannon Harbour to
Limerick and
Athlone, and
Steam Boats ply regularly for conveyance of Goods to both these places.
Passage Boats leave
Sallins for Tullamore, Kilbeggan, Shannon Harbour, and Ballinasloe, upon the arrival of the train, which leaves Dublin at half-past 4 o'clock, P.M., and leave Ballinasloe, returning every day at 3 o'clock, P.M., reaching Sallins in sufficient time to meet the train arriving in Dublin at 10 o'clock the following morning.
Decline Competition from the railways gradually eroded the canal's business, and by the 1880s annual tonnage was down to about 30,000 and the passenger traffic had all but disappeared. The canal had a brief resurgence during
World War II, when horses and barges returned.
CIÉ took over the canal in 1944. As rail and road traffic increased, the canal fell into disuse. In 1951, one boat was left using the canal commercially, which ceased in July of that year. A decade later, in 1961, CIÉ closed the navigation on the canal, and placed a dam across it "three miles west of Mullingar, thereby cutting off the main water supply to the western section". In 1974, volunteers from the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland formed the Royal Canal Amenity Group to save the canal. By 1990 they had 74 kilometres of canal, from the 12th lock in Blanchardstown to Mullingar, open again for navigation. In 2000, the canal was taken over by Waterways Ireland, a cross-border body charged with administering Ireland's inland navigations. On 1 October 2010, the whole length of the canal was formally reopened. ==Management==