Inguinal canal

“ Engineers of the highest standing at home and abroad have expressed themselves for or against one type or the other, but it is a question upon which no complete agreement is possible. In theory a sea-level canal has unquestionable advantages, but, practically, the elements of cost and time necessary for the construction preclude to-day, as they did in 1894, when the New Canal Company recommenced active operations, the building of a sea-level canal. ”

“ For reasons which will be indicated later on, it is impossible to improve the Black Country canals on any large scale; but, in addition to what I have already related, the London and North-Western Railway Company are constantly spending money on small improvements, such as dredging, widening waterway under-bridges, taking off corners, and putting in side walls in place of slopes, so as to give more space for the boats. In the latter respect many miles have been so treated, to the distinct betterment of the canal. ”

“ But once more the greater facilities afforded by the railway have led to an almost complete neglect of the canal. Even where the quarries are immediately alongside the waterway (though this is not always the case) horses must be employed to get the blocks down to the canal boat; whereas the blocks can be put straight on to the railway trucks on the sidings which go right into the quarry, no horses being then required. ”

“ It really affects the whole question at issue, because, so long as public opinion is concentrated more or less on this strangulation fiction, due attention will not be given to the real causes for the decay of the canals, and undue importance will be attached to the suggestions freely made that if only the one-third of the canal mileage owned or controlled by the railway companies could be got out of their hands, the revival schemes would have a fair chance of success. ”

“ All of the evidence, all of the supplementary expert testimony which may be obtained upon the merits of the two propositions, will not change the position of those who rest their conclusions upon American experience and upon the judgment of American engineers, and who favor a lock canal. While there is no doubt that such a canal can be constructed and can be made a practicable waterway, there is a very serious question whether a sea-level canal can be constructed and made a safe and practicable waterway, at least within the limits of the estimated amount of cost and within the estimated time. ”

“ Lloyd thinks that the heavy cost involved in constructing canals of sufficient size to pass craft suitable for coasting and short continental voyages would be fatal to cheap conveyance.
The largest locks hitherto constructed are those on the St. Mary’s Falls Canal, in the United States, and the Welland Canal in Canada. On the former canal the lock opened in 1851 is 515 feet in length and 80 feet wide. The great tidal lock at Eastham, on the Manchester Ship Canal, will be 600 feet long and 80 feet wide. ”

“ The innovation might be of particular importance where a new canal system is being constructed, since the latter might be subdivided into main canals and branch canals—similarly as in the case of ordinary and narrow gauge railways—the main canal being built of a larger section and with larger locks to suit the duplex barges, while the branch canals could be planned of smaller dimensions calculated to suit the semi-barge. ”

“ It is true that no canal has been carried, like the Callao, Lima, and Oroya railroad, in Peru, to the height of nearly sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. [24] It has, however, on the Languedoc and other canals been found easily feasible to carry a canal to a height of 600 to 1000 ft. above the sea. Canal engineers have not, perhaps, pierced the Alps with a tunnel ten miles in length, as on the Saint-Gothard Railway; but they have carried a tide-water canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and they have essayed to perform the same feat through the Cordillera. ”

“ The movement in favour of resuscitating, if not also of reconstructing, the British canal system, in conjunction with such improvement as may be possible in our natural waterways, is a matter that concerns various interests, and gives rise to a number of more or less complicated problems. ”

“ Now, it stands to reason that special precautions would be employed during the passage of a very large vessel, either merchantman or man-of-war, and even if necessity should demand the rapid passage of a fleet of vessels, say twenty or thirty, it is not conceivable that a condition would arise which could not be efficiently safeguarded against by those in actual charge and responsible for safety in the management of the canal. ”

“ Although the Erie is perhaps the canal which bears the most valuable freight, it is by no means the greatest undertaking of the kind in the Union. The Chesapeake and Ohio canal, uniting Washington and Pittsburg, has nearly 400 locks, and is tunnelled four miles through the Alleghanies; and the Pennsylvania canal, as we have already seen in a former chapter, runs to the foot of the same ridge, and being unable to tunnel, uses boats in compartments, and drags them by stationary engines across the mountains. Nothing daunts American energy. ”

“ About noon on the seventh day we entered the canal which connects this arm of the gulf with the sea of the northern temperate zone. It varies in height from 400 to 600 feet, in width from 100 to 300 yards, its channel never exceeds 20 feet in depth, Ergimo explained that the length had been thought to render a tunnel unsuitable, as the ordinary method of ventilation could hardly have been made to work, and to ventilate such a tunnel through shafts sunk to so great a depth would have been almost as costly as the method actually adopted. ”

“ According to the Isthmian Canal Commission, the present canal affords greater safety for ships and less danger of interruption to traffic by reason of its wider and deeper channels; it provides for quicker passage across the Isthmus for large ships and for heavy traffic; it is in much less danger of being damaged, and of delays to ships because of the flood waters of the Chagres; it can be enlarged more easily and much more cheaply than could a sea-level canal. The lock canal has a minimum depth of 41 feet, and less than 5 miles of it has a width as narrow as 300 feet. ”

“ Although at first sight it may appear to be a work of supererogation, to carry the Canal over that part of the Isthmus which is traversed by navigable rivers, it is by many engineers considered preferable in forming a Canal, to use the rivers in its vicinity only for the purpose of supplying the Canal with water, and not as a continuation of the inland navigation, on account of the variation in the depth of rivers from floods, or other accidents. ”

“ The next improvement was the [Pg 144] substitution of a railway for “The Ship of the Desert,” in 1858, and the transmission of the English mails to Brindisi instead of Marseilles, and finally, the construction of the Suez Canal by Ferdinand Lesseps, the French engineer, at a cost of sixty million dollars. The canal is ninety-nine miles long with a width of 327 feet for 77 miles and 196 feet for the remaining 22 miles; the depth was originally twenty-six feet throughout, but the canal is undergoing progressive enlargement and deepening. ”

“ At Anderton, on the Trent and Mersey Canal, there is a vertical hydraulic lift which raises or lowers two narrow boats 50 feet to enable them to pass between the canal and the River Mersey, the operation being done by means of troughs 75 feet by 141⁄2 feet. Inclined planes have also been made use of to avoid a multiplicity of locks. It is assumed that in the event of any general scheme of resuscitation being undertaken, the present flights of locks would, in many instances, be done away with, hydraulic lifts being substituted for them. ”

“ The subject of fast and safe transportation of freight has become so commonplace in our day of railways that it is with difficulty that we catch any true idea of the economic importance to our forefathers of the invention and general use of such an ordinary thing as a good wagon. The meaning of the successful opening of a great canal, such as the Erie Canal, can hardly be understood unless one has known nothing of the problem of transportation save as represented by the pack-saddle and "Conestoga" wagon. ”

“ When looked at from such a standpoint, the lock canal is at once seen to be one of the grandest inventions of any age; it was every whit as far ahead of any system of transportation when it was discovered as the railway is in advance of the best canal today.
From this point of view—that of the comparative value of this method of moving freight over any method known before it—it must seem most inexplicable that the lock canal was the invention of moderns. ”

“ Elsewhere the canals had to pass along high embankments or through deep cuttings. Canal tunnels of up to three miles in length were not infrequent, though some of these were made so narrow—in the interests of economy—that they had no towing-path, the boats being taken through by men who lay on their backs on the cargo, and pushed against the sides of the tunnel with their feet. Alternatively, it was sometimes possible to avoid rising ground or deep valleys, necessitating locks, by making wide detours in preference to taking the shortest route, as a railway would do. ”

“ The canal has a depth of 6 feet throughout. For about 60 miles it is 60 feet wide at the top, and 42 feet at the bottom; for 47 miles its surface width is 850 feet, and its bottom width, 32 feet; and for 771⁄2 miles more the surface width is 54 feet, and the bottom width 38 feet. The locks are 100 feet long and 15 feet wide in the clear; they are capable of passing boats carrying 120 tons. There are 74 lift-locks and a tide-lock. The water-supply is drawn entirely from the Potomac, seven dams having been constructed across the river for this purpose. ”

“ This last-mentioned point is one of considerable importance, though very few people seem to know that it enters into the canal question at all. When canals were originally constructed it was assumed that the companies were entitled to the land they had bought from the surface to the centre of the earth. But the law decided they could claim little more than a right of way, and that the original landowners might still work the minerals underneath. This was done, with the result that there were serious subsidences of the canals, involving both much loss of water and heavy expenditure in repairs. ”

“ He drew up estimates and plans for wide canals, of different cross sections, one of which was almost identical with the cross section proposed by Mr Saner. After very careful consideration with a disposition to improve the canal if possible, it was found that the cost of the necessary works would be too heavy. Bridges of wide span and larger headway—entailing approaches which could not be constructed without destroying valuable property on either side—new locks and hydraulic lifts would be required, and a transhipping depôt would have been necessary where each of the narrow canals joined. ”

“ Thanks to the canal, New York secured the domestic trade of a widespread territory in the middle west, while her rivals could not possess themselves of like facilities, because of the impracticability of constructing canals to cross the ranges of mountains separating them from the valley of the Mississippi and the basin of the Great Lakes—ranges broken only by the Hudson and the Mohawk valleys, of which the constructors of the Erie Canal had already taken advantage. ”

“ They advance a number of specific reasons why a lock canal when completed will for all practical purposes—commercial, military, and naval—be a better canal than a sea-level waterway with a tidal lock, as proposed by the majority members of the Board. ”

“ General Abbot, as a member of the consulting board, had signed the report of the minority in favor of a lock canal. Gen. George W. Davis, United States Army, for a time governor of the Canal Zone and president of the International Board of Consulting Engineers, restated his views and convictions as opposed to the lock-canal type and in favor of the sea-level project. ”

“ The existing canal only accommodates small vessels, and the entire journey is by no means a rapid one, for there are more than a hundred locks to be encountered, which gradually raise the boats to a level of nearly eight hundred feet above the sea. ”

“ Thus the works taken over by the United States in 1904 were available for any type of canal, and the decision to adopt the 85-foot-level was not taken until 1906. Even now, or in April, 1908, at the time of my visit, when so much work has been done upon the locks, many of the rank and file of the employees still cherish the hope of a tide-level canal, and there are not wanting well-informed people, both on the Isthmus and in the States, who, while accepting the high-level scheme as inevitable, regard a tide-level canal as essentially a better thing. ”

“ In place of the "great lowland plain" in which most of the Continental canal work we hear so much about has been done, we possess an undulating country whose physical conditions are well indicated by the canal sections given opposite this page. Such differences of level as those that are there shown must be overcome by locks, lifts, or inclined planes, together with occasional tunnels or viaducts. ”