Waterways and Water Transport in Different Countries by J. Stephen Jeans
5. The many links in the communications in the hands of the
1079 words | Chapter 60
railways paralyses any unity of action, and renders any
scheme of amalgamation between the several lines impossible.
If a restoration, or an extension of its ancient water lines, is to be
undertaken in Great Britain, it is essential that it should be devised
on the most improved principles. The chief points requiring attention
are the dimensions to be given to the main lines, with the best
relative proportion of width to depth; uniformity of gauge in the locks
or lifts, which should be so designed as to ensure changes of
level being overcome in the quickest time; the remodelling of the
cargo boats; the use of the electric light for night navigation; a
readjustment of the rates of toll; and suitable provision for loading
and discharging cargo.
The works of the canal and river engineer are of the most varied,
difficult, and onerous character. He has to deepen the beds of rivers,
so as to secure uniform depths and absolute immunity from dangers
of projecting rocks, reefs, or sandbanks. He has to divert the beds
of torrential streams, and construct new channels, as has been done
with the Thames, the Danube, the Tees, and many other rivers. He
has to overcome the obstacles to navigation presented by cataracts
like Niagara, St. Anthony’s, and other falls, by laying down a new
waterway, where locks or lifts will overcome the differences of level
or gradient represented by the cataracts. He has to feed artificial
waterways in such a fashion that they are never short of water. He has
to carry canals under mountains by tunnels, and through valleys by
aqueducts. He has to raise the level of his waterways for navigation
or for irrigation by barrage works, like those that are now being
carried out on the Nile at Damietta and Rosetta. He has to overcome
the differences of level in inland seas, as has been done by the St.
Mary’s Falls and Welland Canals on the American continent. He has to
join together seas that have been sundered by Nature, as in the case of
the Suez, Corinth, Panama, Nicaragua, and other canals. He has to build
training-walls, close passes, direct and confine currents, throw dams
across minor channels, concentrate low-water flows, rectify shifting
sandbars, equalise and distribute water-power, cleave through mountains
(as in the case of the Culebra Col, on the line of the Panama Canal),
raise rivers to the level of lakes, and lower lakes to sea-level
(as in the case of the proposed Nicaraguan Canal), and to deal with
many other phenomena that appear to the ordinary mind to be so many
impossibilities. The engineering history of some rivers is an epitome
of engineering achievements. The case of the Mississippi river, in
the United States, is a notable case in point. That splendid highway,
with its navigation of some 15,000 miles, and its infinite number of
tributaries, each of them a noble river in itself, has been regulated,
canalised, and otherwise improved at a hundred different points along
its course, with results that are notable in the annals of engineering
precedents. Most of our rivers, lakes, and canals have gone through the
same process. It has been the work of the engineer, and that alone,
which has conferred upon them the advantages possessed by our great
maritime highways at the present day. The extent of that work, and the
means whereby it has been accomplished, are the noblest memorial of
nineteenth century science.
One of the most important applications of canal navigation has been
in enabling the navigation of important rivers to be continued, where
Nature had interposed a barrier in the form of impassable cataracts or
otherwise. Examples of this sort are the Welland Canal between Lake
Erie and Ontario, which provides a navigation parallel to the Niagara
river, rendered impassable by the Falls of that name; the Des Moines
Canal, which overcomes the barrier interposed by the Des Moines Rapids,
on the Mississippi; the canal that overcomes, in the same way, the
difference of level in the Mississippi caused by the St. Anthony’s
Falls[54] near Minneapolis; and the Gotha Canal, which overcomes the
difficulties of Trolhätta Falls on the Gotha river in Sweden.
These achievements and responsibilities have not been carried so far in
Great Britain as in some other countries. The existing canal system of
that country is more primitive than that of any other leading European
State, and it is very much more imperfectly developed than those of
Canada and the United States. The Manchester Canal project, described
at a later stage of this work, will do something to wipe away this
reproach.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] ‘Journal of the Society of Arts,’ 1888.
[41] ‘Lives of the Engineers.’
[42] An excellent summary of these and other matters connected with
the early history of this enterprise is given in a little work
published in 1766, entitled “The History of Inland Navigation.”
[43] ‘History of Inland Navigations.’
[44] This refers to the South Staffordshire mine, which is hardly
worked now. The iron trade of that period was chiefly carried on in
Staffordshire, and nothing except a little charcoal iron was made
in the Cumberland district, where the annual production, including
Furness, is now over a million and a half tons per annum.
[45] It was thought a great thing that over five million quarters of
corn were exported from Great Britain in the five years ending 1750.
[46] ‘The History of Inland Navigations,’ &c., London, 1769.
[47] Ibid., p. 58.
[48] In the same district over a million tons are now annually sent
down the river Weaver.
[49] A detailed description of this Navigation is given in
Priestley’s ‘Historical Account of the Navigable Rivers, Canals, and
Railways of Great Britain,’ p. 385.
[50] Appendix to Report, p. 206.
[51] Report of Canal Committee of 1882, Appendix No. 9, p. 230.
[52] This, however, is not a canal of uniform size, and part of it
will only admit vessels 63 ft. by 14 ft. 7 in.
[53] This total does not include the Thames and Severn, the Wey, and
the Wisbech canals, because each of these has two dimensions, the
smaller of which is too limited to admit the passage of large craft,
and they are therefore unsuited, without trans-shipment of traffic,
for the purpose in view.
[54] At these falls 790,000 cubic feet of water drops from a height
of 75 feet every minute, giving some 112,000 horse-power, which is
utilised in manufactures of different kinds.
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