Building Britain's Canals: How the UK Powered Up for the Pre-Railroad Industrial Revolution

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[MinimalList]

We’ve just spent more than 4 years cruising the entire navigable canal system of England (and part of Wales)… it’s an incredible (and incredibly slow) way to see the canals!! So glad Megaprojects has finally done a video on our watery home!

[mikevale]

I write from Australia, but I've had a wonderful holiday for 7 nights on the Lancaster canal. Start at Preston, end up at Tewitville and return. Simply wonderful to round a bend and find a village with an English pub right on the canal and in Summertime when the blackberries are ripe along the towpath, to pick those plump sweet berries to have with pancakes made on board for breakfast...wonderful!

[noyopacific]

The rebirth of the British canals has essentially resulted in long narrow parks traversing the country. The towpaths are quite popular with pedestrians and cyclists. There may be more traffic on the towpaths than in the canals. I can't think of a better use for the canal system today.

[Tacko]

Here in the Dutchies we’re promoting haulage by boat. Every boatride means at least ten trucks not stuck in traffic, so… Apart from perishables, canals are still very much a viable economic option

[SpencerJ]

I’d like to see an episode of Mega Projects about the building of the Simon Whistler YouTube empire.

[laurenmp]

Of all the British topics I've wanted to see covered, this is the one I've wanted to see most of all! There's something deeply British in something made for commerce being saved by someone deciding they want some leisure.

[twocvbloke]

I used to live near the Leeds-Liverpool canal, and loved to have walks along it (one insanely long one from Colne to Skipton, cos I took a wrong turn!!!), and the irony is, that stretch I frequented out-lived the railway between the two mentioned towns, which were cut off during the Beeching axe, so the canals did beat the rails in some ways... :)

[TestingPyros]

Canals were created to help everything evolve and build faster, but now are a fun way to slow down. Rather ironic! ;)

[rogerpenske]

Chicago has an old Canal called the Illinois and Michigan canal, which was for mule and a horse pulled barges, then almost immediately went out of use when the Illinois sanitary and ship Canal, much wider and a little deeper, was built to accommodate self-propelled vehicles. The large canal is still in used to this day, And it’s purpose was to link the great lakes with the Mississippi River. They are still enormous grain barges running the waterways to this day

[neilevenden]

Great Video! In Canada a similar thing happened. Two canals were constructed to haul goods, and bypass areas close to the USA. The Trent-Severn Canal is 386km (240 miles) and the Rideau Canal is 202 km (126 miles) long. Both are now very active recreational canals.

Canada does still have one set of canals that are still active for commercial use. The St. Lawrence Seaway, the Welland Canal and the Sault Ste. Marie lock allows ocean going ships to travel into the interior of the continent. The Sault Ste. Marie lock can take lakers of over 1000 ft in length. Maybe a future story, if you haven't done it already.

[awg]

"Yall ever be just chillin in the rain..."

HAHAHAHA OMFG HE DID USE THAT CLIP

[ElicBehexan]

In 1968 my folks decided that we needed to go to Europe. We spent a week in London. One of the things we did was take a trip on a canal boat. I mean, anytime the folks could get us kids on a boat it seemed they did so. We also took a boat ride to Greenwich. So, this old lady in Texas has fond memories of a canal in England...

[dazsmith]

Wedgewood used canals to transport their pottery well into the 20th Century. They claimed to suffer less breakages on the calm canals.

[joseybryant]

This channel covers lots of very well designed things: ships, buildings, canals and railways. It'd be interesting to cover things that were not well designed at all. Like the Russian ship the Novgorod. That spun when it fired one of its guns.

[Archangelm]

08:00 - I forget which ship it was, but there's great photos of the construction of an early US battleship with mules carrying stuff up and down onto the half-finished hull.

[Strongbadathlon]

There was an American canal boom that began in the early 1800s, probably following the British boom, and most of those canals are in complete ruin today, with the notable exception of the Erie Canal. Interestingly, though, with the advent of railroads and automobiles (the former, like in Britain, decimating canal commerce), many of the Midwestern canals became railroad or automobile highway beds.

[ignitionfrn]

4:00 - Chapter 1 - The oldest canals
5:30 - Chapter 2 - Industrial revolution
6:55 - Chapter 3 - The sankey canl
9:50 - Chapter 4 - The bridgewater canal
12:55 - Chapter 5 - Canal mania begins
15:05 - Chapter 6 - A rival emerges
16:10 - Chapter 7 - Decline
17:45 - Chapter 8 - Rebirth on the modern era

[Beryllahawk]

This was really I learned not only a bunch of neat stuff about just how Britain got things done before rail was a thing (but after coal was a big deal)... I also learned the meaning of a word I had heard and not understood (didn't know what a "navvy" was), and I got a much better idea of just what a real, working canal system would look like and how it would function! I had read about a canal system similar to this, in a fantasy novel ("Mistborn" by Brandon Sanderson if anyone wanted to know), but when I read that book I had absolutely no idea how awesome canals actually are. None!

Oh, and as for "navvy" - one of my favorite Gaelic Storm songs ("Don't Go for the One") has a line saying that someone's wife has "arms like a navvy" - so now I can enjoy that a little bit more than before hahaha!

[librasgirl]

The view from the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is amazing. A friend lived nearby in Acrefair so we often went to the aqueduct and enjoy the area. And Llangollen with the horseshoe waterfall is lovely as well. Love the area.

[toxicara]

I remember visiting my uncle on his barge when I was about 8 years old... this has brought back many memories, thank you!