140 History of Inland Transport 



or fourteen miles ; and inasmuch as two tons of coal were 

 required for every three tons of fine salt made, the cost of 

 transport of raw materials was a serious item. 



As for the manufactured salt, that was distributed in the 

 same way, even such small consignments as could then alone 

 be sent to Liverpool having to be taken thither by road. In 

 the circumstances the salt trade remained comparatively 

 undeveloped in Cheshire while it was making great advance 

 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where the coal readily obtained, by 

 water, from the neighbouring coal-fields was used in the 

 production of salt from sea-water. In the time of the Stuarts 

 the manufacture of salt was one of the most important of 

 Newcastle's industries and articles of export. 



When, under the Act of 1720, the Weaver was made 

 navigable as far as the Northwich and Winsford Bridge salt 

 works, the land journey for Lancashire coal was reduced from 

 twelve or fourteen miles to five or six miles, and the salt could 

 be sent direct to Liverpool by water. The greatest impetus to 

 the Cheshire salt industry (to the consequent detriment, and 

 eventual extinction, of that at Newcastle-on-Tyne, though 

 with a further advantage to the trade of Liverpool) was, 

 however, not given until the makers were enabled to get their 

 coal all the way by water through the supplementing of the now 

 navigable Weaver by the Sankey Canal of which more 

 hereafter. 



In the same year that the Act for improving the navigation 

 of the Weaver was passed, Parliament sanctioned a no less 

 important work on the river Douglas, which passes through 

 Wigan, and has its outlet in the Ribble estuary, at a point 

 about nine miles west of Preston. Wigan is situated on a part 

 of the Lancashire coal-fields which contains some of the 

 richest and most valuable seams of coal to be found in Lanca- 

 shire ; but down to 1720 the only means of distributing this 

 coal was by cart or packhorse. The opening of the Douglas 

 to navigation allowed of the coal being sent by water to the 

 estuary of the Ribble, and thence forwarded up the Ribble to 

 Preston, or, alternatively, along the coast either to Lancaster 

 in the one direction or to Liverpool and Chester in the other. 

 These were tedious routes, and the voyage from the Ribble 

 estuary along the coast was often very dangerous on account 

 both of storms and of sand-banks. The lines of water com- 



