Life on the Canal

For centuries it was far more efficient to move goods by water than by road. The end of the 18th century saw 2,000 miles of canal built in Britain: the Canal Age had begun.

Constructing the canals consisted of a great deal of hard work and manual labour, headlines by individual names but mostly done by tens of thousands of men across Britain called navvies. Initially much like carting on roads, boating on canals grew as canal systems expanded across the country, but still required long hours...