The Manchester Ship Canal is a 36 mile inland waterway in the North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the Mersey Estuary at Eastham, near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, it generally follows the original routes of the rivers Mersey and Irwell through the historic counties of Cheshire and Lancashire before joining the latter at Salford Quays. Several sets of locks lift vessels about 60 ft to the canal's terminus in Manchester. Landmarks along its route include the Barton Swing Aqueduct, the world's only swing aqueduct, and Trafford Park, the world's first planned industrial estate and one of the largest in Europe.
The rivers Mersey and Irwell were first made navigable in the early 18th century. Goods were also transported on the Runcorn extension of the Bridgewater Canal (from 1776) and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (from 1830) but by the late 19th century the Mersey and Irwell Navigation had fallen into disrepair and was often unusable. Manchester's business community viewed the charges imposed by Liverpool's docks and the railway companies as excessive. A ship canal was proposed to give ocean-going vessels direct access to Manchester. The region was suffering from the Long Depression; the canal's proponents argued that the scheme would boost competition and create jobs. They gained public support for the scheme, which was first presented to Parliament as a bill in 1882. Faced with stiff opposition from Liverpool, the canal's supporters were unable to gain the necessary act of Parliament to allow the scheme to go ahead until 1885.
Construction took six years, beginning in 1887, and cost just over £15 million. When the ship canal opened in January 1894 (12 years after the first meeting of the Manchester Ship Canal company) it was the largest river navigation canal in the world and enabled the new Port of Manchester to become Britain's third-busiest port despite being about 40 mi inland. Changes to shipping methods and the growth of containerisation during the 1970s and 80s meant that many ships were too big to use the canal and traffic declined, resulting in the closure of the terminal docks at Salford. Although able to accommodate vessels from coastal ships to intercontinental cargo liners, the canal was not large enough for most modern vessels. By 2011 traffic had decreased from its peak in 1958 of 18 e6LT of freight each year to about 8 e6LT. The canal is now privately owned by Peel Holdings, whose plans include redevelopment, expansion and an increase in shipping from 8,000 containers a year to 100,000 by 2030 as part of their Atlantic Gateway project.
History
The canal was completed just as the Long Depression was coming to an end, but in its early years it was not the commercial success its sponsors had hoped for. At first gross revenue was less than a quarter of expected net revenue, and throughout at least the first nineteen years of the canal it was unable to make a profit or meet the interest payments to the Corporation of Manchester.[1] Many ship owners were reluctant to dispatch ocean-going vessels along a "locked cul-de-sac" at a maximum speed of 6 knot. The Ship Canal Company, which developed the canal, found it difficult to attract a diversified export trade, which meant that ships frequently had to return down the canal loaded with ballast rather than freight. However traffic gradually developed and the Canal became successful, paying dividends from 1921 onwards. As the import trade in oil began to grow during the 20th century the balance of canal traffic gradually switched towards the west, from Salford to Stanlow. Unlike most other British canals, the Manchester Ship Canal was never nationalised.
Early history
The idea that the rivers Mersey and Irwell should be made navigable from the Mersey Estuary in the west to Manchester in the east was first proposed in 1660 and revived in 1712 by the English civil engineer Thomas Steers. The necessary legislation was proposed in 1720, and the act of Parliament for the navigation, the Rivers Mercy and Irwell Navigation Act 1720 (7 Geo. 1. St. 1. c. 15), passed into law in 1721. Construction began in 1724, undertaken by the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company
Present day
In 1984 Salford City Council used a derelict land grant to purchase the docks at Salford from the Ship Canal Company,[16] rebranding the area as Salford Quays. Principal developers Urban Waterside began redevelopment work the following year,[17] by which time traffic on the canal's upper reaches had declined to such an extent that its owners considered closing it above Runcorn.[18] In 1993 the Ship Canal Company was acquired by Peel Holdings;[19] as of 2014 it is owned and operated by Peel Ports, which also owns the Port of Liverpool.[20] The company announced a £50 billion Atlantic Gateway plan in 2011 to develop the Port of Liverpool and the Manchester Ship Canal as a way of combating increasing road congestion.
Route
Geography
From Eastham, the canal runs parallel to, and along the south side of the Mersey estuary, past Ellesmere Port. Between Rixton east of the M6 motorway's Thelwall Viaduct and Irlam, the canal joins the Mersey; thereafter it roughly follows the route the river used to take. At the confluence of the Mersey and Irwell near Irlam, the canal follows the old course of the River Irwell into Manchester.
Locks, sluices and weirs
Vessels travelling to and from the terminal docks, which are 60 ft above sea level, must pass through several locks. Each set has a large lock for ocean-going ships and a smaller, narrower lock for vessels such as tugs and coasters. The entrance locks at Eastham on the Wirral side of the Mersey, which seal off the tidal estuary, are the largest on the canal. The larger lock is 600 ft long by 80 ft wide; the smaller lock is 350 ft by 50 ft. Four additional sets of locks lie further inland, 600 ft long and 65 ft wide and 350 ft by 45 ft for the smaller lock; each has a rise of approximately 15 ft. The locks are at Eastham; Latchford, near Warrington; Irlam; Barton near Eccles and Mode Wheel, Salford.
Five sets of sluices and two weirs are used to control the canal's depth. The sluices, located at Mode Wheel Locks, Barton Locks, Irlam Locks, Latchford Locks and Weaver Sluices, are designed to allow water entering the canal to flow along its length in a controlled manner.
Crossings
Significant crossings of the Canal include:
- Runcorn Railway Bridge
- Silver Jubilee Bridge
- Mersey Gateway Bridge
- M6 motorway
- Warburton Toll Bridge
- Hulme Bridge Ferry between Irlam and Flixton[34]
- M60 motorway
- Barton Swing Aqueduct and Barton Road Swing Bridge
- Latchford Viaduct which carried the Warrington and Stockport Railway over the canal until 1985. Since then has been closed but the viaduct including the lines remain in situ.
Ecology
The quality of water in the ship canal is adversely affected by several factors. The high population density of the Mersey Basin has, historically, placed heavy demands on sewage treatment and disposal. Industrial and agricultural discharges into the Irwell, Medlock, and Irk rivers are responsible for industrial contaminants found in the canal. Matters have improved since 1990 when the National Rivers Authority found the area between Trafford Road Bridge and Mode Wheel Locks to be "grossly polluted". The water was depleted of dissolved oxygen, which in the latter half of the 20th century often resulted in toxic sediments normally present at the bottom of the turning basin in what is now Salford Quays rising to the surface during the summer months, giving the impression of solid ground. Previously, only roach and sticklebacks could be found in the canal's upper levels, and then only during the colder parts of the year, but an oxygenation project implemented at Salford Quays from 2001, together with the gradual reduction of industrial pollutants from the Mersey's tributaries, has encouraged the migration into the canal of fish populations from further upstream. The canal's water quality remains low, with mercury and cadmium in particular present at "extremely high levels". Episodic pollution and a lack of habitat remain problems for wildlife, although in 2005, for the first time in living memory, salmon were observed breeding in the River Goyt (a part of the Mersey's catchment). In 2010 the Environment Agency issued a report concluding that the canal "does not pose a significant barrier to salmon movement or impact on migratory behaviours".[35][36]
See also
- Canals of the United Kingdom
- History of the British canal system
- Waterways in the United Kingdom
- Liverpool–Manchester rivalry, generally considered to result from the construction of the canal
Further reading
External links
- Manchester Ship Canal – official website
- The Building of Barton High Level Bridge (archived)
- A documentary about the history of the Ship canal, in three parts
- Manchester Ship Canal, a Virtual Tour
- Manchester Region History Review Volume 8 1994, The Ship Canal: Raising the Standard for Popular Capitalism, Ian Harford (archived)
- MSC Online tracking of vessels on the Ship Canal
- The Transport Archive: Archive images of the Manchester Ship Canal
References
- H. G. Moulton. The Manchester Ship Canal The Journal of Political Economy, 1 June 1910^
- Bringing the Sea to Manchester—The Need for a 'Big Ditch' retrieved 7 September 2011^
- Manchester Ship Canal Opening January 1st 1894, The Norseman Leading from Latchford