On this day … 24 July 1834

A public meeting was held at Preston town hall to promote ‘The Preston and Lytham Ship Canal Company’, inspired by the example of the Forth and Clyde Canal opened in 1790.

The promoters were seeking £105,000 in £50 shares to build the canal to carry large vessels from Lytham to Preston Marsh, avoiding the tortuous and shifting course of the Ribble itself. The support was enlisted of the engineer who had built the Gloucester Ship Canal.

But they were unsuccessful and investors instead continued to put their money in the Ribble Navigation Company, although their vision does represent a fascinating historic ‘might have been’. At the end of the century, Preston got a dock and Manchester got a ship canal.

Edward Baines, the newspaper editor and MP, born in Walton-le-Dale and educated at Preston Grammar School, writing in his History of Lancashire published two years later in 1836, commented, ‘the project languishes, and the time does not seem to have arrived for its completion’. He was perhaps disappointed, for, a shrewd businessman, he was unimpressed by the attempts being made to tame the Ribble.

He wrote:

‘In the year 1806, an act of parliament was passed … by “the company of proprietors of the undertaking for the improvement of the navigation of the river Ribble,” but nothing has been done towards the improvement of the navigation, except the fixing of a few buoys at the entrance of the channel, elevating a wooden perch about ten feet high, and setting up a pole near the mill at Lytham, upon which an oil-lamp is occasionally hoisted.’

He saw what was needed, and thought the project could be made to turn a profit:

‘It requires little skill in nautical affairs, or in modern engineering, to see that this river is capable of great improvement, and that, by the combined efforts of the steam dredging-machine, and a judicious system of embankment, the channel might be confined and deepened, so as to admit vessels capable of navigating the Atlantic ocean up to the quay at Preston Marsh.’

But responsibility for its execution was in the wrong hands:

‘Had the execution of the measure for improving the navigation been confided to the commercial men with whom the design originated, great public benefit would have been the result; but it unfortunately passed into the hands of the principal land-owners on the opposite sides of the river, who employ themselves in throwing out wears and embankments at various places between Penwortham-bridge and the Naze Point, and thus puzzle their own heads, and those of their farming stewards, by torturing the poor unfortunate river, which occasionally revenges itself by sweeping away some acres of their fine alluvial soil.

‘And thus it must proceed, till some practical engineer of comprehensive mind be called in, to lay down an uniform and consistent plan, the expense of which would readily be advanced by the merchants of Preston, if they were allowed to undertake the execution of the works. The example of the Clyde is before them; and it is not improbable that Preston, Freckleton, and Lytham, might be made to rival Glasgow, Port Glasgow, and Grenock, as they are similarly situated with respect to each other.’

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Source
Volume 4 of Baines’ History of Lancashire