3-028-807 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Water spanned by water: the Bridgewater Canal crossing the Manchester Ship Canal, 1909. 'The Manchester Ship Canal, a remarkable feat of engineering, presents, perhaps, no more curious feature than the Barton Aqueduct, which is here illustrated. By means of this the old Bridgewater Canal is carried across the more modern Ship Canal. The aqueduct, which weighs fourteen thousand tons, has a water-tight gate at either end. These gates are closed when it is necessary to make way for a vessel on the canal below, and the aqueduct is swung aside on a pivot, the water on its top being held, as it were, in a tank, two walls of which are formed by the watertight gates. The Manchester Ship Canal, which gives access for sea-going vessels, was begun in 1887, and was opened on the first day of 1894. It starts at Eastham, on the left bank of the Mersey estuary, some four miles above Birkenhead. It has a breadth of 172 feet at the surface and 120 feet at the bottom, and a depth of 26 feet. That is being increased by two feet'. From "Illustrated London News", 1909.