Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

156 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. Salford Docks. Water space......................... 83| acres. Quays (area)........................ 252 acres. Quays (total length).................. 4 miles. Manchester Docks. Water space......................... 36| acres. Quays (area)........................ 34| acres. Quays (total length)................... miles. Partington Coal Basin. Water space.......................... 6J acres. Quays (area)......................... 20 acres. Quays (length)...................... | mile. a sum. But the word “ failure ” was indig- nantly scouted by all concerned in the realiza- tion of the local ambition. Powers granted in the following session en- abled interest to be paid on capital employed during construction. Then came the division of the capital into preference and ordinary shares under the authority of another Act of Parliament. This step secured the co-opera- tion of the great financial houses of Roths- The promoters also offered to purchase the docks above and below the London and North child and Baring, and in August 1887 it was announced that practically the whole of the Western Railway bridge at Runcorn, as these docks formed part of the under- taking worked by the Bridgewater Navigation Company. A tremendous struggle took place in Committee ; and finding that the engi- neering por- tion of the receives . Royal Assent. scheme was likely to meet with acceptance, the opponents attacked the financial side of the case, declaring that, even if sanc- the Canal. SIR EDWARD LEADER WILLIAMS, Designer of share capital (£8,000,000) had been allotted, and that the Bridgewater Canal had been purchased for the sum of £1,710,000. The Bridgewater Canal (about which a few words may be added here), 42 miles long, was designed by Mr. James B r i n d 1 ey, who, although unable to read or write, had peculiar methods of calculating strains and stresses known to himself only. The origi- The Bridgewater Canal. to every inter- But the pro- water’s estate tioned by Parliament, the undertaking would speedily become bankrupt, and re- main as a standing menace est centred in the Mersey, moters satisfied first one Committee and then another, with the result that in August 1885 the Bill received the Royal assent. The pro- ceedings in Committees alone lasted 175 days, and the cost of obtaining the Act of Parlia- ment (that is, for the three sessions) involved an outlay of nearly £150,000 by the pro- moters. It was estimated that the opponents incurred an expenditure of £100,000. Those who resisted the enterprise predicted that it would be impossible to raise so large nal purpose of this canal was the conveyance of coal from the Duke of Bridge- at Worsley to Manchester, at that time an insignificant population of only 20,000. usefulness expanded, and the extended until it reached secondary object in view being the conveyance of cotton from Liverpool to the Lancashire mills. The canal gave Man- chester cheap coal and cheap cotton, and there followed an growth in the cotton industry of the county far exceeding the wildest anticipations of town with a The field of waterway was Runcorn, the Cheap Coal and Cheap Cotton secured. extraordinary