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The Huddersfield Canal Company was formally established shortly
after the Act of 1794 received the Royal Assent. The General
Assembly of share-holders then elected a Management Committee
of local businessmen, weavers, farmers and gentlemen, none
apparently with any experience of managing a civil engineering
project.
From the beginning, however, they set about their tasks
with confidence and gusto, first by appointing key personnel,
including George Worthington of Altrincham, solicitor, as
Clerk to the Company, bankers, treasurers and valuers and,
most important, Benjamin Outram of Butterley Hall, Ripley,
as an engineer.
Outram, then twenty nine years of age, was one of Britain's
promising young civil engineers who was already managing partner
of an important ironworks in Derbyshire. His salary was fixed
at three guineas per day whilst on the canal, plus ten guineas
expenses for each journey. His half yearly fees amounted to
between £150 and £175, which suggests that he
would work four or five days on site each month and then attend
on the committee. Remuneration was not large bearing in mind
that many hours spent off the job planning and preparing designs
and reports, in correspondence and when visiting companies
to examine the machinery and materials on behalf of his clients.
Outram's tasks were exacting but, as a young member of his
profession, he does not seem to have acquired an entourage
of well-tried resident engineers and contractors, who could
be called on to execute works under his control. Instead he
had to rely heavily on local appointees, notably the resident
engineer Nicholas Brown, a youthful and inexperienced surveyor
from Saddleworth, selected mainly through the patronage of
friends among the proprietors.
Brown's annual salary was £315, from which he was expected
to pay the wages of a book-keeper, besides personal expenses
in supervising nearly twenty miles of canal construction across
some difficult, mountainous country. The project was obviously
under-staffed from the outset. It called for at least three
assistant resident engineers and, although Brown was allotted
some overlookers as work progressed, initially he had all
the work to do himself.
The conditions of his appointment discouraged him from spending
too freely on assistants and on extensive travel about the
line. It is hardly surprising that Brown proved an ineffective
manager and, although the company minutes are uncritical of
him, the signs of inadequate supervision are all too plain.
There were serious mistakes in setting out the works and
some structures were even built in the wrong places! Moreover,
there were frequent claims by riparian landowners, for real,
as well as imagined, damages and trespass, and substantial
sums were paid out by the Committee on the flimsiest of evidence.
A competent resident engineer would have stopped such practices
by issuing clear instructions and firm personal control of
the works. The inexperienced Brown was unable to cope with
such problems and this eventually led the committee to appoint
a group of proprietors to set out accommodation and other
works.
By such means, construction muddled along until, finally,
the committee lost patience with Brown after an unnecessary
culvert was built. He was given notice to quit and was replaced
by William Bailiffe of Marsden who, although fairly successfully,
resigned in 1801.
To some extent, Outram must be blamed for tolerating this
state of affairs, but it did not help matters when he was
forced through illness to absent himself for long periods
during the critical years of 1795 and 1796.
After 1801 John Rooth of Manchester was appointed Superintendent.
A dominant personality, he remained with the company with
fair, but not outstanding success until six years after the
completion of the canal.
By 1801 Outram had withdrawn as Engineer when work had all
but ceased through lack of funds. The Company managed without
specialist engineering advice until Thomas Telford, the famous
Scottish engineer, visited late in 1806 to report on the state
of the works and to prepare plans and estimates for the completion
of the undertaking.
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