Manchester Ship Canal

After the almost straight stretch from Runcorn to Latchford, the canal goes through the valleys of the Mersey and Irwell. Both these rivers wind a great deal, and therefore the line of the canal, kept as straight as possible, had to cross and recross the river channels. When these cuttings were finished, the end dams were removed, the Mersey and Irwell flowed into the new channel and became the upper portion of the ship canal. This has proved a blessing to districts which had come to regard periodical floods of great severity as something that could not be cured. There is a rise of 6oft. 6in. from the tidal part of the canal to the Man chester docks level, and the water is carried up about 15ft. at each set of locks: at Latchford, Irlam, Barton and Mode Wheel, which is at the entrance to the docks. The locks are in duplicate, and are filled or emptied in five minutes. For the greater part of the 34m. stretch between Barton and Mode Wheel the canal is widened at bottom from its normal i2oft. to 170f t. so that wharves may be used without impeding traffic. In solving a problem in an original manner, James Brindley left another problem which Sir Leader Williams solved in a manner no less striking. Brindley had taken his canal across the Irwell in the first navigable aqueduct to be made in this country ; and when the Irwell became part of the ship canal Williams had to face the question of taking ships past what looked like an immovable obstacle. His solution was the Barton swing aqueduct—like Brindley's aqueduct, the first thing of its kind in the country. The swing aqueduct moves on a pivot. When it is closed, traffic on the Bridgewater canal goes on as usual; when it is open, pointing up and down the ship canal, vessels may pass on either side of it. The water at these times is retained in the swung portion by iron doors, and similar doors seal the ends of the Bridgewater canal. So that as the Gowy flows under the ship canal, the Bridgewater canal flows over it; and five lines of railway were taken across it, too. The viaducts give a clear headway of 75ft. at ordinary water level. Nine main roads cross the canal on swing bridges, which vary in width from 20 to 36 feet. The total amount of excavation was 54 million cu.yd., nearly one-fourth of this being sandstone rock. About 17,000 men were employed, and the plant used cost nearly LI,o00,000.

In the port of Manchester there are eight docks with a water space of 120 acres, and provision has been made for a ninth which will be larger than any of these. The largest in 1928 was 2,7ooft. long and 25oft. wide. The Manchester Dry Docks Com pany had three graving docks, and there were two pontoon dry docks with a lifting capacity of 2,000 tons. Great attention was paid at the beginning, and is still paid, to arranging docks, cranes, railways, transit sheds, grain elevators, warehouses, etc., in such relation to one another that goods can be quickly handled. Ships are unloaded straight into sheds or trains or lorries with one handling, and every quay is directly linked up by rail with the railway systems of Britain. The company's own railways cover 161m. of single track, and another 31m. are leased or worked. There are 6o locomotives and 2,438 railway wagons; and the cranes number 248 : 53 hydraulic, 53 steam and 142 elec tric, with a radius of from 16 to 40f t. They are capable of lifting from one to seven tons up to a height of from 13 to 8oft. above rail level. There are also six electric grab cranes of 5 tons capacity each, a 3o ton steam crane, a pontoon sheers capable of dealing with weights up to 25o tons with a lift of 2I ft., a coaling crane which can manipulate i 2-ton waggons for cargo or bunkers, and a floating crane that can handle 6o tons. Each of the two grain elevators can store 40,00o tons (1,500,00o bushels). The warehouses, transit sheds and cold storage houses are of varying size, growing with the growth of the port. The two latest and

greatest at No. 9 dock are of five floors each, 450f t. long and 'loft. wide. They cost something like L5o0,000. The Trafford wharf is 2,5ooft. long, and near it is the lairage where cattle from Ireland and from across the Atlantic are disembarked. There is accommo dation for 1,850 cattle and 1,500 sheep, and when reserve land is used these numbers will be doubled. The chief subsidiary ports along the canal are the Stanlow oil dock, near the entrance on the Mersey, where petroleum spirit and other oils of low flash point are dealt with ; Runcorn where there are six docks and a water space of 15 acres; the Partington coaling basin, with 20 acres of quays and 64acres of water; and Ellesmere Port, which has a grain warehouse of 20,000 tons capacity and a most modern coal ing plant. The total area of the dock estate is 4064 acres. The quays are a little more than 54m. in length, and the quay and storage areas cover 2864 acres. The great industrial area of Traf ford Park adjoins the dock estate and is directly linked up with it, forming, as it were, one huge workshop.

The Effect on Manchester.

The effect of the canal on Man chester justified the faith of Adamson and the pioneers. Not only were the empty houses quickly filled but between 1894 and 1911 32,623 new ones were built. In that same period the rateable value of towns within tom. of Manchester increased from L2,200,000 to L7,100,000. Old industries prospered and new industries came to the port. Their variety is seen in this list of Manchester's principal exports: manufactured cotton and woollen goods, yarns, machinery, locomotives, implements, tools, hardware, earthen ware, paper-making materials, chemicals, coal, salt and pitch. Once this new duct was opened, Manchester became in a more real sense than ever before the railhead and clearing house to the enormous industrial population that lies about her. Within a 75m. radius of the city there are 14,106,432 people, compared with 13,131,319 within a similar radius of London. This is the most densely-packed population in the world, and it could not fail to ensure the prosperity of a port lying at its heart. The cotton in dustry alone, pursued in 32 towns, employing 6o,000,000 spindles and 300,000 looms, inevitably enriched, and was in turn enriched by, the enterprising city which had removed a crippling disability. As the hub of so vast an industrial activity, Manchester, after London, is the greatest commercial centre in the British empire.

In its first year of work (1894) the canal earned £97,901 and carried 925,659 tons. With some slight fluctuations, the rise was steady after that, and in the year before the war (1913) it reached 5,780,161 tons and After 1921, the lowest point touched since 1901, the rise began again and in 1927 6,359,420 tons were carried and the revenue was L1,576,237. The first dividend to ordinary shareholders was paid for the year 1915. At the end of 1927, the issued capital was L19,488,000, the expenditure on capi tal account to that date being L16,675,000.

Ship Canal House, the new headquarters of the Ship Canal Company, was opened in 1927. It is the most distinguished of the city's modern buildings, and stands out, like the realisation of Adamson's dream, dominating an inland town which has succeeded in making itself, in the face of great natural difficulties, the fourth port of Great Britain.

History of the Manchester Ship Canal (Man chester, 2 vols.) was written by Sir Bosdin Leech, who was closely associated with the movement from the beginning. "The Economic Value of the Ship Canal to Manchester and District," a paper read by James S. McConechy to the Manchester Statistical Society on Nov. 13, 1912, was published by John Heywood, in Manchester, and London.