July 2014 – Edition 112

However, the reason is that canals may have played a part in how they met, and what they did afterwards, leading me to research this aspect, with very interesting results. I found some excellent stories which I am itching to tell you. So the couple will have to wait for a month to tie the knot.

The photo at the top of this article shows the picturesque Leeds and Liverpool Canal’s Five Rises Locks at Bingley in the South Pennines, Yorkshire. Framed by trees, and with three white swans paddling placidly in the foreground, this scene epitomises the modern recreational usage of canals in England.

Readers will no doubt have seen references to canals in television documentaries, travel brochures, books and articles. They are particularly common in England and France, and there are some in the United States (the most famous being Erie Canal).

Some time ago I referred to the Erie Canal in New York State in my articles about the “Wappenham” arm of the Jerrems family. In that case the families would have used the Erie Canal to reach their ultimate destination in Utica, and they worked in occupations which the canal had made possible.

The bulk of the canal system was built in the industrial Midlands and the north of England, where navigable rivers most needed extending and connecting, and heavy cargoes of manufactured goods, raw materials or coal most needed carrying. Most of the traffic on the canal network was internal. However the network linked with coastal port cities such as London, Liverpool, and Bristol, where cargo could be exchanged with seagoing ships for import and export.

The Aire & Calder Navigation, constructed around 1700, can be considered as Britain’s first industrial waterway. Later in the century, after the opening of the Bridgewater Canal in 1763, there was a rapid increase in canal building.

The size of the canals varies considerably. They vary from large canals which can now cater for large cruise boats to small canals which are only wide enough to take the “narrow boats” which were built for that purpose (see later).

Holidaying on the canals has become a popular pastime, leading to the restoration of some previously abandoned canals, and the tourist industry has expanded to cater for the canal users.

Perhaps surprisingly, some canals date back to the Roman times, when the innovative Romans built them to carry goods, materials and men into the interior of England. Some canals were constructed in the 17th Century.However the main impetus occurred during the 18th Century when the Industrial Revolution gained momentum.

In the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution, long before the introduction of railways, canals were built to carry raw materials and manufactured goods throughout England, enabling England to develop a mosaic of canals which connected industrial centres and helped make England the largest manufacturing country in the world.

Perhaps we tend to think of the railways as providing the genesis of the Industrial Revolution, from the 1830s onwards. Admittedly the railways provided the means of carrying goods and materials in terrain unsuitable for canals, and the railways were much faster, but canals played an important part in the century preceding the development of railways.
In the times when roads were poor and the means of transport were limited to horse drawn vehicles with low maximum loads, the use of boats and barges on canals provided a means of transporting large quantities of items cheaply, simply and and safely.
Most of the canals were developed in conjunction with existing rivers, often linking rivers to provide continuity of a waterway, or replacing sections of a meandering river which had poor carrying capacity (known colloquially as canalisation).

As would be obvious to the reader by now, the term “flight” is used to describe a series of locks.
Locks were used to provide a lifting point to ascend a rise or a hill which could not be avoided. In simple terms a lock consisted of two watertight gates across the canal, set at least several boat lengths apart.

When a boat arrived to be lifted, the upstream gate would already be in place, holding the upstream water back at the higher level. The downstream gate would be swung into position downstream of the boat, forming the downstream wall of the lock, and water would be released through a valve in the upstream gate into the lock, lifting the boat to the upstream level. The upstream gate would then be opened to allow the boat to proceed upstream. For boats travelling downstream the process was reversed.

Almost all of the locks had dual gates which swung to the side.

This process relied purely on hydraulic pressure, no pumps (which did not exist in those days anyway) were required.

High lifts could be accommodated by the use of multiple locks, as shown in the photo at the top of this article and in the above photo.

The main cost in construction of locks was to construct gates that were watertight, however they did require regular maintenance and the employment of a lock keeper. Accordingly they would only have been installed when absolutely necessary.

Locks were not required in flat country like much of Lincolnshire and nearby Norfolk. For instance although Gainsborough was seventy miles up the River Trent the tidal influence still reached it. Similarly, the tidal influence on River Witham extended upstream past Boston to reach the city of Lincoln.

The introduction of marine steam engines in the 1840s led to the use of steam power for canal boats and the use of tugboats to tow barges.

This photo shows a modern narrowboat’s kitchen-diner.

The building shown in the photo (formerly a warehouse) is now a visitors’ centre, and the small boat is an electric tug which pushes boats through the tunnel (there is no ventilation so narrowboats’ petrol and diesel motors cannot be used).

The tunnel was only wide enough and high enough to fit a narrowboat, and it did not have a towpath. Instead, one or more boatmen lay on the cargo and pushed against the roof or walls of the tunnel with their legs. Professional “leggers” were paid one shilling and six pence for working a boat through the tunnel, which took one hour and twenty minutes for an empty boat, and three hours with a full load.

One of the boat crew would have had to lead the boat’s draught horse around to the other end of the tunnel.

Later the tunnel played an important role in the construction of a railway tunnel next to it. The spoil from the railway tunnel was taken out through the canal tunnel.

Secondly, I now have a familiar story for you. Having started off to write a single article about canals I have now found that I have uncovered so much interesting material that I will need to write a second article. My second article will tell you some more amazing stories and (at last) demonstrate the relevance of canals in the Jerrems family history.