The Tradesman Volume 5 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1810 Excerpt: ...to be cut through; in particular, ihe hill of Harecastle, whxu was only to be passed by a tunuel of great length, bond through slrata of different consistency, and some of thero mere quicksand, proved to be a most difficult as well as an expensive ob- stacle, which, however, he completely surmounted. While this was carrying on a branch from the Grand Trunk, to join the Severn, near Bcwdley, was committed to hit management, and was finished in 1772. lie also executed a canal from Droitwich to the Severn, and he planned the Coventry canal, and for some time superintended its execution, hut on account of some difference in opinion be resigned that office. The Chesterfield canal was the last undertaking of the kind which he conducted, but he only lived to finish some miles of it. There was, however, scarcely any design of canal navigation set on foot in the kingdom during the latter years of his life in which he was not consulted, and the plan of which he did not either entirely form or revise and improve. All these it is needless to enumerate; but as an instance of the vastness of his ideas, it may be: mentioned, that, on planning a canal from Liverpool to join that of the Duke of Bridgewater's at Runcorn, it was part of his intention to carry it by an aqueduct bridge across the Mersey at Runcorn gap, a place where a tide, sometimes rising fourteen feet, rushes with great rapidity through a siid u contraction of the channel. As a mechanic and engineer he was likewise consulted on other occasions; as with respect to the draining of the low lands in different parts of Lincolnshire and the Isle of Ely, and to the cleansing of the docks of Liverpool from mud. He pointed out a methud, which has been successfully practised, of building sea-walls without mortar;...