Before the Canal
Although the Rivers Irwell/Mersey were used for navigation long before the opening of the Ship Canal in 1894, the lower end of the Mersey was navigable as far as Warrington from earliest times. The higher reaches were winding and indirect and suffered from either too much or too little water, Some improvements were made in the form of locks and straightened sections of river without total success, the locks restricting the boats to 50' Mersey Flats.
In the end though the final push for the building of the Manchester Ship Canal was the greed of the Port of Liverpool. It had reached the level when it had become cheaper to import and export from Manchester via the Port of Hull on the opposite side of the country, and so the seed for the canal was finally sown.
Some weren't so sure that a ship canal was a wise idea
A cartoon published in the satirical magazine Punch in 1882, ridiculing the idea that Manchester could become a major seaport
The Proposals
When fully half the cost of a ton of cotton from Manchester to Bombay was taken up with rail and dock fees to Liverpool and the high cost of carriage was pushing Manchester into a recession the time came to act.
A meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce met in April 1881 to consider the idea of George Hicks and Hamilton Fulton's proposal for a tidal Ship Canal. The meeting passed a resolution in support of a tidal waterway.
On the 27th June 1882 the historic meeting which proved to be the first formal step in the project took paces at The Towers, the Didsbury home of Daniel Adamson.
The Planning
Present at that first meeting in Didsbury were civic representitives of thirteen large Lancashire towns and fifty-five merchants and manufacturers. A provisional committee was formed with authority to commission a detailed survey of the route of a possible waterway and to take any steps to form the "Manchester Tidal Navigation Company".
Hamilton Fulton and Leader Williams were each invited to prepare a scheme for a tidal navigation. Both schemes comprised a deeply dredged channel retained by stone walls as far as Warrington. From that point Fulton proposed a deeply dredged channel without locks to Manchester. Manchester is about sixty feet above sea level! Leader Williams proposed deepening and widening the old Mersey and Irwell navigation, taking the tide half way to Manchester after which a succession of locks to the docks in Manchester.
Unsurprisingly, Leader Williams proposal was considered the most feasible and a series of public meetings were held to raise support and funds for the parliamentary bill. The level of hostility towards the canal from Liverpool, the railway companies and even those in Manchester was such that the inflow of funds halted. Supporters tried to restore confidence arguing that there was little point in producing cheap goods if they could not be moved at cheap rates. Objectors were reminded that the same objections had been raised against the Bridgewater Canal and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway,both of which were profitable enterprises by this time and that the tonnage of goods handled by Liverpool was so great that only a proportion would make the canal profitable.
Ferdinand de Lesseps was brought to speak at the Free Trade Hall and many pamphlets were published extolling the virtues of a canal.
To Parliament
The first bill was submitted in 1883 and rejected in August after objections by The Bridgewater Canal Company, the railway companies and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board.
In May 1884 the Lords passed the bill subject to the proviso that work should not commence until £5,,000,000 had been subscribed, but the bill was rejected by a select committee of the Commons subject to a promise of Liverpool interests not to oppose a new bill which request powers to construct the canal along the shore of the estuary, instead of the middle.
The submission of the third bill was obstructed when the Bridgewater Navigation said that it did not want to sell the canal and river navigation to the Ship Canal, instead they wished to carry out their own scheme to improve the river navigation and introduce steam tugs. When the Manchester Ship Canal act received assent in August 1885 it included a clause saying that the Bridgewater undertaking including the river navigation must be purchased and the Bridgewater canal kept in good order and open to navigation for all who wished to use it.
Clean Up
It was recently announced (16 Feb 2013) that United Utilities are to spend £90 million cleaning up the Ship Canal and associated water ways.
The work will consist of diverting foul water sewers, presently discharging into the canal and providing extra storage capacity for rain water to help to prevent it flowing into water courses and the canal.
The work is due to start later this year and should be completed by 2015.
It is envisioned that this work will see an increase in fish stocks, in some instances reintroducing them.
Some numbers
- The canal begins at Eastham locks
- It ends at Woden Street bridge, 36 miles from Eastham.
- The terminal docks are in Salford
- The purchase of The Bridgewater Canal Company resulted in the writing of a cheque for £1,710,000, the largest cheque ever written to that date.
- More than 54 million cubic yards of material were excavated
- An average of 12,000 workers were employed with a peak of 17,000
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