The Canal Era 167 



years and the canal schemes which, themselves a great 

 advance thereon, were to be substituted for them, only to be 

 supplanted in] turn [by the still further development in 

 inland communication brought about by the locomotive. 



All the same, it was the canals of Francis, Duke of Bridge- 

 water, as constructed by James Brindley, a remarkable genius 

 and a great engineer, which gave the main incentive to the 

 canal movement. 



The chief purpose of the Bridgewater canals was to meet 

 the deficiencies of the Mersey and Irwell navigation by pro- 

 viding new waterways, cut through the dry land, and carried 

 across valleys and even over rivers without any connection 

 with streams already navigable or capable of being rendered 

 navigable, an advance on the precedent established by the 

 Sankey Canal. 



The Duke's first artificial waterway was from his collieries 

 at Worsley to the suburbs of Manchester. His coal beds at 

 Worsley were especially rich and valuable ; but, although 

 they were only about seven miles from Manchester, and 

 although Manchester was greatly in need of a better coal 

 supply for industrial and domestic purposes, it was practically 

 impossible to get the coal carried thither from Worsley at 

 reasonable cost. The seven-mile journey by bad roads was 

 not to be thought of. The alternative was transport by the 

 Mersey and Irwell navigation, which was, in fact, within 

 convenient reach of the collieries. But the company of pro- 

 prietors would not abate their full charge of 35. 6d. per ton 

 for every ton of coal taken along the navigation even in the 

 Duke's own boats, and in 1759 the Duke obtained powers to 

 construct an independent canal. Possessing no technical 

 skill himself (though he is said to have been greatly impressed 

 by what he had seen, in his travels, of the grand canal of 

 Languedoc, in the south of France), he called in James 

 Brindley to undertake the carrying out of his plans. 



Born in 1716, in the High Peak of Derbyshire, and appren- 

 ticed to a wheelwright whose calling he adopted, Brindley 

 had been brought up entirely without school learning. Though 

 in his apprenticeship days he taught himself to write, his 

 spelling was so primitive that even in his advanced years he 

 wrote in a scarcely decipherable hand " novicion " for 

 navigation, " draing " for drawing, "scrwos" for screws, 



