By Jennifer Snell

Published at 08:38, Friday, 20 February 2009

Ulverston Canal around 1857

Heralded as the "shortest, straightest and broadest" in England when opened in 1796, Ulverston Canal was never the great money-earner that the subscribers hoped for.

Dogged by shallow sea approaches, a lack of water to sustain levels and the Napoleonic Wars, the canal survived as a growing concern for 120 years. The final coaster - named 'Clarrie' - bringing flour from Silloth to the warehouse in the Middle Basin, left in July 1916.

In Victorian years the canal was quite busy with coastal schooners bringing in cargoes of cotton, coal and commodities. And thousands of tons of iron ore, copper ore and local goods were exported.

In 1846, 944 vessels used the canal. But thereafter it slowly declined and was superceded by the new port of Barrow-in-Furness.

By 1846 shipbuilding was in full swing alongside the canal and included the businesses Petty and Postlethwaite, Ashburners, Brocklebanks, Charnleys, William and John White and Edward Schollick.

Most of them built sturdy, smart schooners suitable for the iron ore trade. Fate immortalised some of these vessels, in particular the 'Coniston' which was lost on the Duddon Bar in 1917.

The 'Annie McLester' was lost with all hands on her way to Ardrossan with iron ore in 1891, and the old 'Delight, sank near Chapel Island in 1848.

In 1856 the canal was cut in two by the Ulverstone and Lancaster Railway which crossed the Waterway by a series of six elegant arches known locally as the Six Bridges.

The structure blocked the way to the main basin at Canal Head so the middle basin was built and furnished with a crane, warehouse and adjacent railway tracks.

Published by http://www.ulverstonlocal.co.uk