Ship canal

[Johnny39]

Just flying a kite here - I seem to remember reading in the dim and distant past, that there were plans to build a ship canal from the Humber to Leeds, something along the lines of the Manchester ship canal. Does anyone else recall reading anything similar and the reason it did not come about?If this has been covered in another thread I apologise.

[simong]

Interesting... I came up with this: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4Da8 ... s&f=falsea Leeds-Selby canal was proposed but not built in the heyday of canal building, so the same route wouldn't have been unthinkable a hundred years later, but the rail network in the east was probably better developed than that in west - one of the reasons that the Manchester Ship Canal was built was that there were few viable rail routes between Liverpool and Manchester for rail and those that existed levied heavy charges.

[jim]

I'm not sure about the "few viable rail routes between Liverpool and Manchester" statement, Simonq. There were four,very strongly competitive, including the first "modern" railway, the original Liverpool and Manchester, later owned by the L&NWR. That company had a second route via Lymm and Speke, and there were also the L&Y route via Wigan and the CLC route via Glazebrook, Widnes, and Halewood. I presume that the need for all these routes, additionally including the later Ship Canal and the original Irwell Navigation and the Runcorn branch of the Bridgewater Canal, was the sheer demand for transport between Manchester and it's surrounding manufacturing area and the port of Liverpool.The main advantage of the Ship Canal would have been to reduce the number of transhipments by allowing ocean-going vessels to access Manchester. Such vessels are also a cheaper form of transport due to economies of scale.As to the mooted Ship Canal to Leeds, this proposal was often raised over the years, but never seriously enough to warrant the needed Act of Parliament, as far as I can remember from my reading. The subject was certainly raised again at the time of the construction of the Great Northern Railway's Hunslet East Branch from Beeston in the late Nineteenth Century, when they were made to construct the huge swing bridge over the Aire at Stourton "in case the Aire and Calder company wished to construct a Ship Canal in the future". See other S.L. threads for further details            

[majorhoundii]

jim wrote: I'm not sure about the "few viable rail routes between Liverpool and Manchester" statement, Simonq. There were four,very strongly competitive, including the first "modern" railway, the original Liverpool and Manchester, later owned by the L&NWR. That company had a second route via Lymm and Speke, and there were also the L&Y route via Wigan and the CLC route via Glazebrook, Widnes, and Halewood. I presume that the need for all these routes, additionally including the later Ship Canal and the original Irwell Navigation and the Runcorn branch of the Bridgewater Canal, was the sheer demand for transport between Manchester and it's surrounding manufacturing area and the port of Liverpool.The main advantage of the Ship Canal would have been to reduce the number of transhipments by allowing ocean-going vessels to access Manchester. Such vessels are also a cheaper form of transport due to economies of scale.As to the mooted Ship Canal to Leeds, this proposal was often raised over the years, but never seriously enough to warrant the needed Act of Parliament, as far as I can remember from my reading. The subject was certainly raised again at the time of the construction of the Great Northern Railway's Hunslet East Branch from Beeston in the late Nineteenth Century, when they were made to construct the huge swing bridge over the Aire at Stourton "in case the Aire and Calder company wished to construct a Ship Canal in the future". See other S.L. threads for further details             And of course, although the docks in Salford have been closed the canal is still in use - I was at EMR's scrapyard next to the canal at Eccles last week - ocean going ships collect the scrap from there.I'd have thought a canal from Selby to Leeds for large vessels wouldn't have been that great a project given the technology of the day. There was certainly a plan in the seventies to ship goods to the Humber ports in large barges which would sail into some sort of ship and save all the unloading and loading hassle - I think it was scuppered by the Hull dockers.

[BJF]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighter_Aboard_Ship

[Johnny39]

From the interest shown it would appear that the story I read was overstating the case. I think that what was intended was a "super" canal from Leeds to Selby. Nevertheless it would have been interesting to see what kind of a city Leeds would have become had a "real ship" canal been built.

[Electric City]

A very interesting topic. I've often thought about this myself but have never done any serious research.If I recall correctly from my previous Wikipedia ramblings, the Manchester Ship Canal was proposed mainly because Manchester businesses were being squeezed by the Liverpool Port and the rail freight companies.Before the waterway was built, it was actually cheaper for some goods to be shipped to Manchester via Hull and the Leeds-Liverpool Canal!By creating their own canal, they could circumvent these problems (at least until the size of ships became too big for the locks during the 20th Century).Whilst some Liverpool magnates tried to block the idea, in the end, others joined in with the financing so they could profit either way.I would guess that, for any Leeds ship canal to have been successful, it would have to have been finished well before plans were mooted for the Manchester one. That way, Leeds would have become a major transshipment point. They would also have had to upgrade the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, in order to accommodate the increased traffic. Apparently there were problems in dry periods because of the shortage of water for the locks.