During the period between 1790 and 1840, England and Wales became obsessed with canals. This was a period of intense canal building and the speculative frenzy that accompanied it in the early 1790s came to be known as Canal Mania. People invested their hard-earned money into practically every canal project. Canals played a huge role in the Industrial Revolution at a time when trains and highways didn’t exist, and pack-horses were the only means of accessible transport. Waterways became the only option to speed up trade and boost industrialisation. This frenzy also created plenty of new jobs.

The frenzy

Though canals existed from Roman times, the art of building one faded with the collapse of the Roman Empire. Then in the 1660s, France began construction of the Canal du Midi to link the Mediterranean with the Atlantic to enable the transport of wheat.

Around the 1750s, Francis Egerton, the Duke of Bridgewater, visited continental Europe and saw the Canal du Midi and was impressed. The Duke owned a large coal mine at Worsley, England. The main market for his coal was the then fast-growing town of Manchester. However, the roads between Worsley and Manchester were very bad. Bridgewater had to use horses to transport coal instead of wagons. But each horse could only carry a limited quantity of coal at one time, making it a tedious, time-consuming and expensive process.

So, on his return to England in 1759, he decided to build a canal from his mine directly to Manchester. It would mean a cheaper way of transporting coal from his colliery in Worsley to customers in Manchester. After securing permission from the Parliament, he began building the Bridgewater Canal. It took 18 months to build the 10-mile canal, making it Britain’s first industrial canal. At the colliery in Worsley, a network of underground waterways was constructed. Though the Duke had gone into heavy debt to seek Parliament’s approval, once the canal was built, it halved the price of coal and the Duke’s profits soared.

The success of the Bridgewater Canal encouraged other people to build canals. Josiah Wedgwood, a potter from Burslem, in Staffordshire, who used to transport his pottery by pack-horses, built the Trent & Mersey Canal. It’s over 90 miles long with more than 70 locks and five tunnels and cost £1,30,000 to build. But it reduced the cost of transporting the goods.

So, to increase profits, canals were now built all over Britain. These navigable waterways made it easy and profitable to carry heavy goods by boat. Soon, there were other canals such as Coventry Canal, Oxford Canal, and Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal among others. In a few years, there were about 2,200 miles of canals, linking almost every factory and industrial town in Britain. The network was also used to distribute foreign goods arriving in Britain.

The boom

Though canals were a cheaper way of transporting goods, building them was an expensive task, and needed a lot of investment upfront. At the same time, as work moved from cottage to factory, power shifted from humans to the steam engine, and workers moved from the country to cities, demand for coal grew. So, while one canal was approved in 1790, six got the nod the very next year, seven in 1792, and 21 a year later in 1793. Considering the amount of money involved in the process to build these canals, many speculators eyed this as an opportunity to make a quick profit.

Over the next few years, fortunes were made, and soon over 3,200km of canals were built. Regions such as Staffordshire Potteries and midlands Black Country saw a lot of development and wealth flowed in because of their canals. Though the cost of building the canals often overshot initial estimates, people were confident about the returns and so did not think twice before investing in these projects.

In one example, a stock exchange was established in Liverpool to exchange canal shares. In a single month of October 1792, shares of the Grand Junction Canal — built from Braunston in Northamptonshire to the River Thames at Brentford, with a number of branches — went up from around £100 to £473. Keeping in mind the South Sea Bubble, the Parliament then debated whether or not to limit trading in canal shares.

The bubble bursts

However, in February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland. Even as England began preparing for the war, inflation set in and the investments in canals were curtailed. The shares of Grand Junction Canal fell back to around £100 by 1795. Many canals were built, some earned profits for many years, others like the Dorset and Somerset Canal were abandoned during construction. By the 1820s, the boom was over, with the lure of the steam engine capturing the imagination of many speculators. In another few years, railways began to threaten the canals — with the latter not able to compete with the speed of the former. Also, railways meant that transport costs fell further. Now, everyone began chasing railway schemes.

By the middle of the 19th century, railways took centre stage, forcing canals further down into oblivion. This decline lasted for over 100 years.

In the 1950s and 1960s, there was renewed interest in canals. However, this time it was for leisure use. Many derelict canals were opened again. Today, the network is used to promote tourism. Private pleasure boats, cruisers, hotel boats and day trip boats use these canals.

(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)

First Published:Feb 25, 2021 3:22 PM IST