The civil engineering that went on during the fifty years of
the canal boom was on a scale unprecedented in Britain.
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Where did the engineering
expertise and craft skills come from to plan the routes and
execute the building works? |
 In
the middle of the eighteenth century when the canal boom began
there was really no such thing as a civil engineer. The
most important engineers were probably mining engineers who had
the difficult job of digging the mines and removing the water
that flooded them, so much so that a contemporary definition of
an engineer was "Engineers make engines for raising of water
by fire...". There were also estate managers and drainage
engineers, such as the Dutch Vermuyden who was brought over by
King James 1st to drain the Fen district of East Anglia (and was
later imprisoned for draining marshes that the locals didn't
want draining!). There were additionally craftspeople like
millwrights, used to working with water for waterpower. The
supply, storage, harnessing and removal of water were important
issues in the eighteenth century, so despite the absence of a
civil engineering profession it was not difficult to find the
brains, and the brawn, to rapidly develop the canal system.
Hundreds of engineers were involved on thousands of projects,
most of them never getting beyond the surveying stage. However
some names keep reoccurring. |
James
Brindley (1716 - 1762)
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James Brindley was employed to work on the
building of the Bridgewater Canal
with the Duke of Bridgwater's land agent, John Gilbert
(1724-1795), a mining expert. Brindley, of humble origins, was a
millwright by training. He went on to act as senior engineer on
the Trent and Mersey Canal. When
his fame spread he then became involved, in some capacity, in
work on 363 other canal projects! Brindley had many assistants
working for him, some of whom became well known as canal
engineers, but the work load on him must have been enormous and
he died in 1772 when only three of his canal projects, the
Bridgewater Canal, the Droitwich
Canal and the Staffordshire and
Worcestershire Canal, had been completed. Yet he set the
standards for most of what followed, especially the dimensions
for the narrow canals. His canals followed the contours, later
engineers like Telford built more direct canals by using
cuttings and embankments. |
John
Smeaton (1724 - 1792)
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William
Jessop (1745 - 1814)
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John Smeaton was the first Englishman to describe
himself as a civil engineer. He wanted to gather other like
minds to discuss their interests so he set up the Society of
Civil Engineers in 1771. He started out as an instrument maker
but became interested in windmills and watermills and other
sources of power. He became well known and respected, a Fellow
Of The Royal Society (F.R.S.) at the age of 29. He reconstructed
the Eddystone Lighthouse and then became involved in canal and
river surveying and engineering, doing his most successful work
in Scotland (the Forth and Clyde Canal)
and Ireland (the Grand Canal with Jessop). |
William Jessop was the son of a naval shipwright.
His father Josias had worked with Smeaton on the the third
Eddystone Lighthouse and when he died Smeaton took the young
William under his wing and trained as an engineer. Jessop worked
on many River Navigations and canals mainly in Eastern England
and the Midlands and many consider him to be the greatest expert
on canal and river navigations of his time. He was engineer on
the Grand Junction (Grand Union Canal) and Ellesmere (Llangollen
Canal) Canals and on the Rochdale Canal. He was also
responsible for the East India docks in London and dock
improvements in Bristol. His son Josias was a canal, railway and
harbour engineer, notably during the construction of the Bristol
Floating harbour. |
Thomas
Telford (1757 - 1834)
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John
Rennie (1761 - 1821)
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| Thomas Telford was also from a
humble background and began work apprenticed to a stonemason.
His work was noticed while working as a stone hewer on the
construction of Somerset House in London and after
reconditioning Shrewsbury Castle he was appointed Surveyor of
Public Works for Shropshire. He became engineer, beneath William
Jessop, on the Ellesmere canal, later to become the
Llangollen Canal. The magnificent
cast iron aqueducts at Pontcycyllte and Chirk are his work, he
reasoned that they would be less likely to suffer frost damage
than Brindley's which contained moist earth. He was chief
engineer on the Liverpool and Birmingham Canal, now called the
Shropshire Union Canal,
making much use of long embankments and deep cuttings to create
more direct routes than had his predecessors. He engineered the
new Harecastle tunnel when Brindley's could no longer cope alone
with traffic levels and made improvements to the
Birmingham Canal systems.
He worked on canals in Europe and was involved in much road
construction, designing the famous Menai suspension bridge
between Anglesey and the North Wales mainland. |
John Rennie was a new type of
university trained engineer. He worked as a millwright in his
vacations but his first challenge was to design the steam
powered Albion flour mills. He set up his business in London and
became a prominent figure in the growing science and engineering
establishment. He became surveyor, then engineer, on the
Kennet and Avon Canal, one of the
most architecturally impressive canals with its classical
bridges and aqueducts. However he seems to have overlooked a
basic rule of canal building, that the summit level of a canal
must have sufficient supplies of water, and steam pumps had to
be installed to replace water used by the locks. He also acted
as engineer on the Rochdale Canal and
Lancaster Canal, both with the same
impressive feeling of scale as the Kennet and Avon. He had a
wide range of interests, from designing docks to experimenting
with diving bells. |
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