It is difficult to imagine an era before modern transportation moved people and goods unimpeded at a steady pace over long distances. Prior to the late 18th century, only the royal court, aristocrats, soldiers, sailors, political adventurers, missionaries, and merchants traveled freely. A sedentary society had a local orientation and for the most part was held in check by physical impediments. Great Britain experienced three important transportation developments in the first century of the Industrial Revolution: canal construction, improvements in road-building, and the appearance of the railroad.
The first leap in transportation came in the form of artificial waterways or canals. In 1692 the French constructed the first modern canal, the Canal du Midi, connecting the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Originally built as part of Louis XIV’s grand military strategy, it soon led to further canal building and boosted commerce. The implications of the French canals did not escape the British. During the middle of the 18th century, the Duke of Bridgewater traveled to France and Italy, where canal construction had also begun. His experience led him to encourage the introduction of canals into Lancashire in order to move coal quickly from mines to the growing industrial town of Manchester. The result was the Bridgewater Canal, which opened in 1761. The effort required river improvements. The duke’s dedicated approach ensured that a marriage of public and private efforts succeeded in the canal’s construction. Parliamentary legislation specified the routes, and private companies purchased the land. The first canals were a product of an economy of engineering, lined in clay to create a watertight seal, and could only support very narrow boats. Unlike later versions, the first canals generally followed the contours of the landscape to avoid tunneling wherever possible. Brick and masonry aqueducts were constructed to cross rivers.
The men who designed and built the canals were truly remarkable and inspired the development of modern engineering technology in Great Britain. For example, the Duke of Bridgewater hired James Brindley, a millwright, for three shillings a day to build a canal. Brindley employed navies (a term referring to navigators or men who used shovels and wheelbarrows to excavate earth). He was noted for his tough, tenacious work ethic and possessed few social graces. Brindley was articulate enough, however, to convince Parliament of the worthiness of his projects. This initial effort resulted in a canal eighteen feet wide, four and a half feet deep, and 10 miles long, which sliced in half the expense of transporting coal to Manchester. The cost of the canal is unknown, but its profits financed the duke’s next venture—a canal linking the port city of Liverpool with Manchester. Brindley constructed the canal along a valley to keep it level and then gently let it slope down using a series of 10 locks. The canal is estimated to have cost about 225,000 pounds, but it also cut in half the cost of freight charges between Liverpool and Manchester. The economics were simple. Eight horses formerly were needed to haul a wagon weighing six and a half tons, whereas a single horse walking along a towpath could move with little effort a loaded barge weighing almost thirty tons.14 Adam Smith observed the success of the canal system and urged its expansion. Josiah Wedgewood believed that Smith was correct, and he as well joined the canal building craze. Previously Wedgewood had employed pack horses to bring in raw materials to his potteries and to transport the fragile finished product.
The canal provided a cheaper and more reliable mode of transportation. In less than a decade, between the years 1764 and 1772, private enterprises pooled capital and financed the construction of canals linking Great Britain’s major rivers. In 1790 alone nearly three million pounds was spent on canals. By the 1830s the investment had swelled to twenty million pounds. In 1800 some forty-two canals consisting of 1400 miles of waterways crisscrossed Great Britain. The result was a boost in employment opportunities for the working classes. Josiah Wedgewood’s potteries, for example, flourished with the construction of the canals and increased his work force from 7,000 in 1760 to more than 21,000 in 1786. As canal building increased, older canals were enhanced through tunneling and improved embanking to straighten the routes. By 1858 Great Britain had constructed 4250 miles of canals. Napoleon’s campaigns forced the British to pour resources into military channels and resulted in an interruption of canal building. At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, railroad construction was set to commence, a sign that the canal age was ending.15
Road building also garnered additional interest in the late 18th century. However, this endeavor had to overcome significant obstacles. Overland transportation was extremely difficult, as road arteries had improved only slightly over Roman times. Much of the year roads were streams of mud and frequently impassable for wheeled traffic. The resources for road building and improvement differed from the canals. The effort was initially sporadic and uneven because local areas had the responsibility for construction and upkeep. In the first half of the 18th century, Parliament passed an average of eight turnpike acts a year. However, the growing demand placed on transportation infrastructure to keep pace with the nation’s economic growth soon led to further road developments. These efforts were boosted with the creation of turnpike trusts that were joint enterprises of landowners and entrepreneurs who could pool their capital for infrastructure improvements. The initial efforts were small but steady and gained momentum with the efforts of several men who changed the actual complexion of the roadbeds. The Scotsman Thomas Telford (see Biographies) developed a heavy foundation roadbed using seven inches of crushed stone over a sublayer of soft soil and covering it with a two-inch layer of gravel. As wheeled vehicles traveled over the road they solidified the base layer so that the road became even more viable over time. His most important road project was the 300-mile thoroughfare linking London and Holyhead, Wales, which lessened the travel time between the two cities by 32% from 41 to 28 days.
However, Telford’s approach proved more expensive than some turnpike trusts could afford. Thus, the next major enhancement in Great Britain’s roads occurred with the work of another Scotsman, John L. McAdam, whose approach was simpler and less expensive than Telford’s heavy foundation. McAdam, working in conjunction with his three sons, devised a method to ensure that the subsoil drained readily so that the surface would remain dry and firm and thus eliminate the need for Telford’s deep foundation. He placed a thin layer of fine gravel over a carefully surveyed and well-drained foundation. The elastic surface became tightly packed as vehicles passed over it and did not deteriorate or have potholes or ruts appear as quickly as the Telford model. It is estimated that by the early 1820s several thousand miles of roads had been constructed according to the macadam method. The improved road standards in the 18th and 19th centuries reduced travel time significantly. In 1745 the trip from London to Edinburgh took almost two weeks. Fifty years later that same journey had been reduced to less than three days. By 1830 it had been trimmed almost in half again. The journey from London to Bristol, formerly two days by coach, was only 19 hours by the 1780s. In 1756 only one stagecoach a day made the journey from London to Brighton. By 1811 that number had increased to eleven. And, in 1820, 1500 stagecoaches departed London daily pointed in all directions in the country. The replication of these “macadamized” roads eventually became the goal of all European nations and the United States.16
Safety in travel also improved, and more frequent and comfortable inn accommodations sprang up along Great Britain’s growing road network. More people were on the move and doing so more frequently. However, the cost of transporting people and goods overland by roads remained an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. Mule trains continued to be the principal means for moving cargo and were a common sight in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The real revolution came with the appearance of the railroads.
Although the railroads were a 19th-century innovation, in some respects they were not new. The Romans had used grooves or ruts in their roads to fit a common wheelbase, and the Chinese had employed a similar technique in the 3rd century BC. By the 16th century the mining industry in Great Britain and areas on the continent such as Transylvania had developed wooden tramways over which trucks pulled by horses would haul ore. Wood quickly rotted. By the 18th century iron rails, some covering distance up to ten miles, had appeared at several mining areas in Great Britain. By the early 19th century Richard Trevithick (see Biographies) had developed a device or locomotive powered by steam to carry passengers or cargo at a pace of five miles per hour. Several independent efforts began to appear simultaneously, but it took the work of George Stephenson (see Biographies) to bring the railroad into the forefront of British transportation. Stephenson’s improvements included strengthening the tracks, adopting the latest developments in steam power for his locomotive, and establishing a standard gauge for the tracks. After his successful Stockton to Darlington run in 1825 and win over the competition in 1829 for the rights to the Liverpool to Manchester railway line (see Document 2), passenger and freight service began on a regular basis, marking the onset of the railroad age in
Great Britain.1 Mainline construction began immediately in the 1830s. By 1847 a quarter of a million navies were employed in railroad construction, and more than 2400 miles of railway were in operation carrying 30 million passengers at a dizzying pace of 60 miles per hour across the country. That mileage had climbed to 6,800 miles in 1851. The railroads required constant attention to ensure that proper signaling devices and safety regulations kept pace with more efficient and powerful locomotives. Professional organizations for mechanical and civil engineers appeared, and constant training in maintenance and railroad operations became essential for all employees. This model was adopted later by other transportation industries such as automobile and airplane manufacturing. The appetite for railroad expansion was insatiable. The railways not only moved people but also reduced transport time for goods, thereby lowering transport costs and thus stimulating investment. Other benefits arose from the railway age. Postal service received a real stimulus. In addition, reduced travel time compressed the nation and changed the concept of time and turned people’s attention from being exclusively local to an understanding and appreciation for larger national concerns. As more and more railway lines crisscrossed the nation, the old concept of local time evaporated. The development of strict timetables and regularly scheduled service by the railroads led to successful lobbying of Parliament to abolish local times and establish a national concept of time in 1845. In 1851 a large percentage of the nearly 6 million people who visited the Great Exhibition traveled to the event by rail. Queen Victoria first traveled by train in June 1841 and was a frequent passenger on the railroad. It not only provided a fast and efficient means to travel but also provided additional opportunities for the royal family to be seen by the British people. Between the years 1861 and 1868 mileage increased more than 80% and passenger traffic moved 180%.18 The railway age also resulted in more people taking excursions and the concept of the vacation, heretofore an impossible thought in the lives of ordinary folk, became a reality for millions. The first holiday package offered by a railroad occurred in 1841. The initial fear of railway travel soon became a thing of the past. Statistics for the years 1870 to 1873 indicate that 397 million journeys were taken in Great Britain. The total number of railway accidents from all causes in that period was 59, with an annual fatality rate of 35 or one death per every 11 million trips.19 Henry Booth perhaps captured the spirit of this dramatic change best: ‘‘What was slow is now quick; what was distant is now near; and this change in our ideas pervades society at large.’’20
World History
