Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, August 10, 1902, Page 27

Deep Sea Harbor of Interior English City (Copyright, 1902, by Frank G. Carpenter.) ANCHESTER, England, July 81.— (Special Correspondence of The Bee.)—I have come here to give you the latest and newest infor- mation about the Manchester ship «canal. It is rumored that Plerpont Morgan and his associates have bought a controlling interest in it, and that they will shortly put on a new line of steamers to trade between Manchester and the United States. There is no doubt but that Morgan's Lon- don bank owns a large amount of the shares. It took them when the canal was begun and has held them ever since. It will soon be the chief route for the entrance of our goods into this busiest part of the United Kingdom, and Manchester will be- come a headquarters of the American in- vasion. Indeed, the city already receives steamers from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Galveston and New Orleans. Hundreds of thousands of cotton bales from .our southern states are here brought via the canal, to be transferred to the mills; an enormous grain elevator has sprung up for the storage of American wheat, and 1 find that the warehouses along the Man- «chester docks are already filled with all sorty of American goods. Seaport of England’s Heart. But first let me tell you something about this great port, which the’ English have created in the very heart of their country. Manchester is far back from the sea. It is one of the busiest citles of the world, and the country surrounding it is a vast bee- hive of work. In passing over the rail- roads to and from it in every direction you ride through groves of smokestacks and it is impossible to get away from the dense smoke which pours forth from the foun- dries, factories and mills which dot the landscape. Inclu:l.ng its sister city, Salford, the place has now about 800,000 population and the manufacturing towns nearby are 8o close together that 2,000,000 people ve within carting distance of the Manchester docks. This means that goods brought here on the canal can be carried by horses to the homes and factories of these 2,000,000 ople. Nearby are other industrial centers which make all sorts of products for home trade and export. Sheffield, with its cutlery, gua works and furnaces for making iron and :steel, is but an hour away by train and ithe woolen center of Leeds is almost as near. Altogether Manchester forms the nearest port for a population of about 18,000,000 and its people estimate that they can land ordinary goods by means of tnel! canal at a saving of $1 per ton on the inland transport over the same goods landed at Liverpool. The canal people have prepared estimates of the actual cost of distributing goods throughout this part .of England and it will pay American shippers to in- vestigate the advantages of sending thelr exports by the canal almost direct to the tactories. Manchester’'s Mighty Waterway. I have spent some days in going over the canal and in looking through the vast ware- houses and buildings which have grown up about it. It is oue of the wonders of modern engineering and as a long-time in- vestment it will probably be a success, although the present generation and per- haps the next cannot expect to have divi- dends out of it. The cost of the under- taking has been enormous. At the start it was thought that the canal could be con- structed for $40,000,000, but when com- pleted it was found to have cost $75,000,000, Before it was built Manchester was on the down grade. Its factories and warehouses Wwere falling and some of the greatest of its industrial institutions were transferring their plants and business to Glasgow, where they could have better shipping faclities. Liverpool was steadily galning and Man chester steadily declining. The former city what tolls it pleased on goods Passing through to the Manchester region SWINGING AQUEDUCT OF THE BRIDGE WATER CANAL. IN ONE OF THE LOCKS OF THE MANCHESTER CANAL. ELEVATOR FOR STORAGE OF AMERICAN GRAIN—THE SHIP IS FROM PIILAD ELPHIA. and the rallroads collected enormous freight rates. How the Canal Was Bulilt. As & result the Manchester manufacturers saw ruln staring them in the face. They came together, planned this ship canal and raised the money to bulld it. They got the city corporation of Manchester to back them to the extent of $25,000,000; they put their hands into tkeir own pockets and gave miilions more, and within a short time they bhad an army of laborers at work larger than that which Xenophon led on his march to the sea. When in full swing their army consisted of 17,000 men divided into eight companies, officered by picked experts, each digging at a section about four miles in length. This army had its camps in each section. Its tents were wooden houses made from lumber brought from the United States, and, as many of the workmen had their wives and families, there was a busy town along the whole line of the canal. No one can appreciate the extent of the work without golng over the canal. It is thirty-five aad a half miles long, twenty- six feet deep and at the bottom 120 feet wide. If you can imagine a cellar so deep that you could drop a two-story house within it and have the roof below the sur- face, so wide that the average city lot could be laid crosswise across the bottom and so long that it would take a rallroad traln at # good speed an hour to run from one end of it te the other, you may have some idea of this enormous ditch which the Man- chester people have dug from their city to the sea. A part of the canal was along the course of the little river Irwell, but much of it had to be dug out of the solid rock. The excavation necessary was half as great as that required for the Suez canal and most of it much more difficult. Eight miles of embankments and sea walls had to be erected along the foreshore of the Mersey, and upon the wbole canal 70,000,000 bricks and 220,000,000 cuble yards of masonr) were constructed. Five sets of locks were put in, each big enough to admit an Atlantic liner, and these. by means of great sluice gates, ralse and lower the ships to the height or depth of sixty feet. There are, in short, from Man- chester to the sea, five mighty steps, each twelve feet higi, which the ships have to climb in coming up the canal. I was surprised at the extent of the Man- chester docks. It seems strange to see all the surr.undings of one of the largest sca- ports right in the heart of a rich manufac- iuring and agricultural country. The docks are vats of water walled with masonry and surrounded with great warehouses, which are equipped with the finest of modern ma- chinery. The water space within them covers 266 acres and the total length of the quays about them is more than five milez. In one of the docxs three Atlantic liners have been berthed simultaneously at the same quay, and during my visit yesterday I saw a ship from Bombay, one from Aus- tralia and one from Galveston loading and unloading goods almost side by side. Along the docks railways run and the company has 100 miles of track connected with the canal, and there are more than forty trains daily, carrying goods in and out the docks. It was in the canal company’'s steam launch that I was taken from dock to dock and from warehouse to warehouse, and it was with a canal official that I later on took a trip down the canal from Menchester to the sea on the Duke of Lelinster, bound for Ireland. Our captain of the Leinster was a jolly old sea dog who trembled like a leaf as we were photographed standing on deck going down the canal. I am surprised at the trafic which this port already has with the United States. In every warehouse I found American goods, and in one especially, known as the New York warehouse, I saw thousands of bales of cotton, which had just come from Gal- veston, great boxes of machinery for the Westinghouse Electric works, crates of American desks and great cases of hams, bacon and lard. On the top of another ware- house, four stories high, I took photographs of a thousand odd barrels of resin which has just come from the pine lands of Georgla and South Carolina, and at the grain ele vator I saw a ship unloading wheat fro.a Philadelphia, Chicago Men Made It. This elevator Is of American construc- tion, having been built by Messrs. John 8 Metcalf & Co. of Chicago. It has a storage capacity of 40,000 tons of grain or 1,600,900 bushels of wheat, and in it there are 226 bins or pits, the largest of which holds us much as 300 tons. The elevator is right cn the canal, and the graln is taken directly from the ship through a marine leg, which works by revolving buckets on an endless chain, lifts the grain up into the tower beside the boat and drops it upon a wide india rubber belt, which carries it into the elevator and up into the bins. There are also pipes which do the same work by means of suction, so that a shipload of wheat can be discharged within a few hours. The machinery will take 500 tons from the steamer hold into the elevator in one hour. It weighs the grain at the water’'s edge, and later on weighs it again when it i3 In the sacks ready to be loaded upon the carts or barges by which it is taken over the country. During my visit to the elevator, and, in- deed, throughout the trip, I was accom- panied by Mr. A. Joynscn of the Manches- ter Canal company. He tells me that the grain Imports have steadily Increased since this elevator was fin'shed, and that they now amount to about 150,000 tons annually. During the first six months of this year 85,000 tons of grain have been received into the elevator, and the most of this came from the United States. He tells me that the shipping from the United States is steadily increasing. Reg- ular steamers have been run here for years from New York, Savannah, New Orleans and Galveston, and there have been occa- sional sail'ngs from Baltimore, Newport News, Charleston, Brunswick, Mobile and Pensacola. Cittle are now brought here from Philadelphia, and In the near future there will be a direct steamship line from Chicago to Manchester by way of the St. Lawrence, the Welland canal and the Great Lakes. These ships will bring cargoes of lumber and provisions, and a regular serv- ice will probably be maintained. Canada and the West Indies, Canada already has a line of large steam- ers to Manchester, which make regular trips during the summer. These ships bring both lumber and cattle. Some of them are of over 8,000 tens, hav'ng ac- commecdation for 700 live beeves. There is a good prespect for a fruit trade between Manchester and the West Indles. Within the last few months bananas have been brought here from Jamaica and a regular banana service is to be instituted which will supply the Midlands with this fruit, and this service may in the future be extended to Porto Rico and Cuba. The fruit companies here have bought three steamers from the Chesapeake & Ohlo Rall- way company and will run them to Jamaica. Bach boat will bring 40,000 bunches of bananas. Among the recent arrivals are two ships from the Black sea with 7,000 tons of Indlan corn, the sailing vessel Miltiades from San Francisco with 11,000 quarters of barley and wheat and Ciampa of Tacoma with 2,600 tons of wheat from our great north- west, The traffic of the canal is steadily grow- ing. Within the last six months the reve- nue has increased (o the amount of $125,000 and there has been a steady growth in the business since the beginning. The traffic of the present year will probably exceed 8,000,000 tons and will be greater than that of any year of the past. In my ride up the canal I passed cotton ships from America and from Egypt. The American imports up to the middle of last April were almost 400,000 bales and the Egyptian about one-fourth that number. At the lumber docks I saw a ship from Mobile unloading a cargo of pitch pine and at the same wharf was one simlilarly loaded from Pensacola. There were great tank steamers from the Russian oil fields at the Russian oil tanks on the right bank of the canal and on the left other tank steamers dls- charging American petroleum. 1 passed the freezing works where the New Zealand ships land their frozen mutton in my sail cn the Duke of Leinster and also the great cattle sheds and abattoirs belonging to the Manchester corperation, of which 1 may speak further (n another letter. Some Wonders of the Canal, The ride down the canal was one of great- est interest. The canal company owns much of the land along the way and this is of such a nature that there could be an al- most ccntinuocus dock from one end of it to the other. Leaving Manchester you sall by the great warehouses and factories on the canal’s bank. Now you are passing through fields as rich as any in old England, They are bounded by hedges and upon the green grass fat cattle are feeding. Cheshire county on you: left is one of the richest dairy coun- ties of the United Kingdom, and Lancashire on your right is the busiest manufacturing county of the whole world. We saw large manufacturing towns at every few miles and often passed other steamers coming up to the ecity. The locks were easily and quickly gone through; the sluice gates open and shut automatlically and the steamer drops twelve feet within less than half as many minutes. We steamed under great railroad bridges so high above the canal that the masts of the ships do not touch them as they pass on below. These bridges were erected at an immense cost by the canal company. The rallroad companies were opposed to the en- terprise, as they thought it would cut down their traffic between Liverpool and Man- chaster, so they forced the canal people to not only bulld the bridges, but to raise the raliroads for several miles on each side of the canal, so that the slope of the road crossing the canal might not be steep. The most surprising bridge on the canal, however, is one where th: Bridgewater canal crosses the Munchester ship canal. The Bridgewater canal has for years done a large business between Manchester and Liverpool. It was bought by the Manchester company at the time they began the ship canal and it was then making a profit of something Ilke $100,000 a year. It is still in use and it carries considerable freight. The line of this canal was right across the route necessary to the Manchester ship canal, and at first it seemed as though the construction of the latter would necessitate its destruction. This was cbjected to, and the engineers solved the problem by making a swingiug aqueduct bridge at the crossing, This bridge can be clesed with the water, and even with the boets in it, and by machinery 80 moved around to the side that the ships can pass through in the greater canal below. When they have pacsed the bridge moves back Into place and the water flows on un- disturbed. The aqueduct, with the water in it, welghs 1,400 tone, and it is moved as easily as though it weighed less than four- (Continued cn Eighth Page.)