Water transport

“ Advantage is taken of the natural water power created by the lock to establish by the side of it an accumulator for operating the gates and valves by hydraulic pressure—in the same manner as at the London and Liverpool docks—which works admirably. ”

“ Except in certain special localities the surface of the earth is so uneven that progression, especially for a loaded man or animal, is very difficult except on a prepared surface. On the other hand, the diminution of friction over a water surface makes transport over it relatively easy. It has been pointed out that, as a result of this fact, the great civilisations have developed in regions where water transport was possible, and have involved the progressive utilisation of larger and larger masses of water. ”

“ THE WATERWAYS OF FRANCE.
Within recent years, the advocates of water transport in Great Britain and other countries, have been accustomed to point to France as a notable example of the advantages of improving and extending the internal navigations of a country. It is true that no nation has done more with this end in view. From first to last, France has expended a larger sum on canal navigation than any other nation. ”

“ A glance at a map of the United States will suffice to show that it has unique natural facilities for water transport. Its great lakes, which are inland seas of no inconsiderable dimensions, now connected together by the Erie and St. Mary’s Falls Canals, its magnificent rivers, such as the Mississippi and the Missouri, and the natural configuration of the country, create an ensemble for cheap transportation such as no other country can surpass. Besides these resources, however, the United States have now a railway system of over 160,000 miles. ”

“ It must have been a long time before water transportation performed any considerable economic service. It is thought by some that primitive man conceived the idea of the use of water for transportation through his experience of floating logs, or drifts, or his own process of swimming and floating. ”

“ The modern processes of excavation of the soil, in order to form or deepen the bed of a waterway, or of the construction of an embankment, in order that a railway or a canal may be carried above the level of the surrounding country, are now so familiar and commonplace, that we are accustomed to think but little of the slow and laborious steps whereby the means of carrying them out have been evolved from the necessities, the experience, and the scientific acquirements of modern times. ”

“ The engineering history of some rivers is an epitome of engineering achievements. The case of the Mississippi river, in the United States, is a notable case in point. That splendid highway, with its navigation of some 15,000 miles, and its infinite number of tributaries, each of them a noble river in itself, has been regulated, canalised, and otherwise improved at a hundred different points along its course, with results that are notable in the annals of engineering [62] precedents. Most of our rivers, lakes, and canals have gone through the same process. ”

“ The boats are really iron boxes, which, when traffic is carried, say from Leeds to Goole for shipment, are placed in a hoist, inside which there is a cage with a cradle, in which the boat is secured. When the boat has been raised to the height of the shoot it turns over automatically and discharges the coal or other cargo into the ship through the shoot or spout employed for that purpose. The boat and cradle, having resumed their original position, are then lowered back again to the canal-level by the same hydraulic arrangement employed to raise them. ”

“ But in this utilitarian age—when steamers ply on the Grand Canal of Venice, when railways are carried up Vesuvius and the Righi, when the Alps are pierced by tunnels, and engineers are drawing the water supply of our great towns from the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland, heretofore the chosen retreat of our poets and philosophers—the test of most things is that of use and convenience ”

“ He has to overcome the obstacles to navigation presented by cataracts like Niagara, St. Anthony’s, and other falls, by laying down a new waterway, where locks or lifts will overcome the differences of level or gradient represented by the cataracts. He has to feed artificial waterways in such a fashion that they are never short of water. He has to carry canals under mountains by tunnels, and through valleys by aqueducts. He has to raise the level of his waterways for navigation or for irrigation by barrage works, like those that are now being carried out on the Nile at Damietta and Rosetta. ”

“ Only a very perfunctory acquaintance with the physical configuration of our planet is required, in order to show that the natural arrangement of land and water is not the most convenient that could be devised for the purposes of commerce and travel. The oceans and seas do not afford in all cases the most direct and desirable routes between one part of the world and another. Rivers of otherwise gigantic dimensions are now and again found to be possessed of rocky and shallow beds that are [2] unsuited to navigation except by the tiniest craft. ”

“ Canals were superior to rivers in so far as they could be taken where rivers did not go, and could be kept under control in regard to water supply without the drawbacks of floods or droughts, of high tides, or of being silted up by sand or mud. ”

“ The most important of the new works are those for the additional supply of water. They comprise pumping-stations at Pierre-la-Treiche and Valcourt, near Toul, at both of which the pumps are actuated by turbines, and a steam-pumping station at Vacon, as well as ducts for conveying the water from the pumping-stations to the canal, and an impounding reservoir at Paroy. ”

“ All other things being equal, the system of transport that is able to afford the greatest average speed will be certain to command the lion’s share of business. There are, however, both natural and economical limits to speed, alike on water and on land. ”

“ The only considerable traffic that is carried on in the upper reaches of the river is the transport of coal in barges from the Great Western Railway Company’s depots at Brentford to the docks, and this is about as unsatisfactory as it could well be, involving the repeated breaking of bulk, and the damage of the coals from frequent handling. ”

“ One of these systems depends upon gaining an impulse or hold against the ground at the bottom of the river or canal, in one of which a small boat moved by oars was proposed to be employed in successively carrying forwards and dropping anchors whose ropes were to be attached to a horse-gin, on board of a barge, which was designed to tow or drag a great number of others. ”

“ The improvements that have been carried out for the purpose of opening up the navigation of the river Tees, although less considerable than those carried out for some of the larger rivers of Great Britain, are yet entitled to take rank as among the most notable river engineering achievements of the century. ”

“ A very excellent paper on the rate of speed which it is possible or usual to attain in canal navigation, under varying conditions of towage, locks, depth, and other elements that influence the question, was submitted to the Institution of Civil Engineers some years ago by the late Mr. Conder, who devoted much attention to the subject. [285]
On the Belgian canals, where human labour is employed for towage, the rate of speed does not exceed 1 to 11⁄3 mile per hour, against 22⁄3 miles on the same canals with steam towage. ”

“ The Clyde, the Tyne, the Tees, the Wear, and other prominent English rivers have been transformed from shallow brawling streams, some of them easily fordable at all states of the tide, into magnificent waterways, capable of bearing on their bosoms the largest vessels afloat. This work has necessarily involved great engineering capacity, a large expenditure, and a judicious administration of their powers and resources by the public bodies through whom it has been carried to completion. ”

“ The canal system of a hundred years ago has been put to the trial, and has been found wanting. We now carry millions where we then carried hundreds and thousands of tons.
The great commercial characteristics of our time are to have things done on a large scale, with the utmost practicable facility, and at the lowest possible cost. ”

“ Even in the most favourable conditions of tide or water supply, the boats had to be dragged up and down the stream by men, who did the work of beasts of burden until the construction of the rival waterway led to the navigation proprietors employing horses or mules instead. ”

“ The economists and engineers of Germany have devoted a considerable amount of attention to the question of the cost of transport by water as compared with the cost of railway transport. For such an inquiry they have had ample facilities, having not only an economically-worked railway system, but having also several navigable rivers, on which a large traffic is carried, in addition to their system of canals. ”

“ It was very quickly discovered that the vessel was next to useless on a shallow canal—the section of that particular waterway only averages from 40 feet to 50 feet in width at the surface, with flat sloping sides under water, tapering down to a mid-channel or gutter with an average depth of only 41⁄2 feet—inasmuch as with that depth (in mid-channel only) a screw propeller of sufficient diameter could not be used to utilise the power of the engines without a very great amount of “slip” and churning of the water instead of doing useful work. ”

“ Here then we have only 3063⁄4 miles of canal suited to the passage of craft 84 feet by 12 feet, including the river Trent, which, of itself, contributes 72 miles to the total. In other words, only about twenty per cent. of the total independent waterways of the country can admit craft that would enable them to realise the full value of economical transport. ”

“ Several attempts have been made on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to introduce steam towage, and in the year 1879 the company tried a screw steamer with compound condensing engines, to tow six 40-ton barges on a river or deep canal. ”

“ They rest on a central hydraulic ram, three feet in diameter, working in two hydraulic presses underground, which can be connected at pleasure, making the troughs counterbalance one another. One trough ascends as the other descends. Hydraulic power is only required when the descending trough reaches the water in the lift-pit, the motion of the troughs being effected by removing about six inches from the lower trough. This arrangement is very economical of time, inasmuch as a 100-ton barge can be transferred from the river to the canal, and another from the canal to the river, in eight minutes. ”

“ The question of how far it would be expedient to construct a ship canal that would relieve the congested traffic of the river, and permit of vessels entering the docks at all times, has been mooted, but has never been very seriously entertained. ”

“ The cost of transport, whether by land or by water, is necessarily largely affected by the method of propulsion or traction employed. On the ocean, on lakes, and, for the most part, on rivers as well, steam and wind are the systems available. On canals, however, the wind is practically impossible as a motive power, and steam is not always convenient. It has, therefore, become necessary and customary to employ other methods. Of these, the most common in Great Britain is horse traction, which, however, is often varied by manual labour on the towing path. ”

“ Hydraulic engineering has, next to railway engineering, been the most remarkable manifestation of the applied science of modern times, and in canal construction it has attained some of its most successful results. ”

“ In most winters it happens that an ice not more than 1 or 11⁄2 inches thick continues for a considerable length of time on canals and other stagnant waters. This, or even a less thickness of ice, is sufficient to stop the trade upon the canals unless the ice is broken ”

“ When the original builders of canals had to cross the grand ridge, or any other elevation over which they required to pass, they sought to economise water consumption and to keep down both cost of construction and working expenses by making the locks on the top levels only just large enough to pass boats of a small size. ”

“ Deposits were formed for the reception of the excavated material, which constitute filtering basins enclosed within vaults formed by the solid materials previously removed. Where it was not possible to discharge direct into their depots by the long conductor, barges received the mud and carried it to a convenient destination. ”

“ On many waterways, and especially in countries which have limited railway facilities, like Russia, canals are found as well adapted as railways to all purposes of transport. On the canals of the United States, the canals compete with the railways in carrying wheat and other agricultural produce. On the Aire and Calder canal, the canal boats are adapted to carry, and as a matter of fact do carry, considerable quantities of general merchandise, as well as minerals. ”

“ At 6 miles an hour he calculated that nearly three times as much power would be required to move an equal mass on a canal, while at 20 miles an hour he computed that twenty-four times as much power would be required. At 8 miles per hour the same writer estimated that the resistance in water increased so much that two horses on a road would do as much as one on a canal, although at 2 miles an hour the same amount of horse power that is required to drag one ton on a good road would drag 30 tons on a canal. ”

“ Between Gloucester and Birmingham the merchandise sent by river and canal is delivered as quickly as that despatched by railway. [287]
Speed on canals is regulated by the effect of breaking waves on their banks. In narrow canals or rivers, such a wave first appears at from 3 to 31⁄2 miles per hour, and it has been found that at 4 miles per hour it exercises an injurious effect on the banks of the canal. When the speed is increased to 5 miles an hour, the effect becomes much more marked, the waves breaking over the towing-path, and rendering navigation destructive. ”