By this canal Liverpool has water communication with the important town of Leeds, and thence, by the Aire and Calder Canal, with Hull and the other ports on the Humber. By the Shropshire Union Canals the Mersey is connected with the network of canals in the Midland Counties and with the River Severn.
In Camden’s time Liverpool must have been a very obscure place. The author of ‘Britannia’ dismisses it almost in a sentence, observing that “from Warrington, the River Mersey, spreading abroad, and straightwaies drawing in himselfe again, with a wide and open outlet, very commodious for merchandise, entereth into the Irish Sea, where Litherpoole, called in the elder ages Lipen-poole, common Lirpoole, is seated, so named, as it is thought, of the water spreading itself in manner of a poole.”
With the exception of the Thames—which it rivals, and with which for a number of years past it has run a neck-to-neck race—the Mersey is, so far as its volume of business is concerned, the most important river in the world. This, however, is an attainment of comparative modern origin. The first wet dock was constructed at Liverpool, in 1708-9, on the site now occupied by the Custom House. In the latter part of the same century several other docks were constructed. The dock estate has now an area of 1078 acres, the whole of which is appropriated to basins, docks, quays, and premises worked in connection therewith.
The history of the navigation of the river Weaver, which adjoins the Mersey in Cheshire, supplies a notable example of what may be made of an originally insignificant and tortuous stream in order to adapt it for the requirements of commerce. The river has been canalised between Northwich and Chester, twenty miles of the navigation being artificial navigation, and the other thirty miles being river proper.
In 1721 three Cheshire gentlemen obtained the first Act of Parliament for making the river Weaver navigable. The depth then provided for was only 4 feet 6 inches, and boats of more than 40 to 50 tons could not enter.
About the year 1760, the navigation was carried down so as to enable vessels to enter at nearly all tides, and in 1810 the river was further improved by the Weston Canal, which is four miles long, enabling vessels of much deeper draught to enter without navigating a dangerous part of the old river. This canal forms a junction with the Bridgwater Docks at Weston Point, and a dock was formed in connection with it so as to enable vessels to wait for the tide.