|
|
|
|
Centuries
of Civil Engineering
|
|
Report of the Commissioners of the
Caledonian Canal.
London, 1804-1870.
|
 |
|
|
There were excellent reasons for building a canal across
Scotland in 1800. The declining economy needed the boost a canal promised,
and English ships needed a safe passage from one side of Britain to the
other without being chased by Napoleon's ships. The English civil engineer
Thomas Telford, renowned for his elegant and graceful engineering
projects, was at the height of his fame. Not surprisingly, his report on
the practicality of the canal was well received by the Commissioners in
1802. The ambitious scheme was massive in scale, calling for a ship canal,
not a narrow barge canal, through the Scottish Highlands and incorporating
the famous Loch Ness. The scale of the enterprise – the machinery, the
work force, the quantity of rock and earth to move – made the Caledonian
Canal a remarkable engineering feat by any standard. The canal includes 29
locks that were built as proposed, but little else went as planned. When
it was completed in 1822, the cost was over three times the estimate and
it could not take the larger ships that were expected to bolster the
Scottish economy. In the Highland Mountain passage, the canal became a
wind tunnel that held ships up for days, so that it was often easier to
sail around the coast of Scotland than to take a chance in the canal.
Still, the canal was and is considered an engineering triumph.
|
|
