It is thus incontestable that the Sankey Brook Canal both started the Canal Era and formed the connecting link between the river improvement schemes of the preceding 100 {167}years and the canal schemes which, themselves a great advance thereon, were to be substituted for them, only to be supplanted in turn by the still further development in inland communication brought about by the locomotive. All the same, it was the canals of Francis, Duke of Bridgewater, as constructed by James Brindley, a remarkable genius and a great engineer, which gave the main incentive to the canal movement. The chief purpose of the Bridgewater canals was to meet the deficiencies of the Mersey and Irwell navigation by providing new waterways, cut through the dry land, and carried across valleys and even over rivers without any connection with streams already navigable or capable of being rendered navigable,--an advance on the precedent established by the Sankey Canal. The Duke's first artificial waterway was from his collieries at Worsley to the suburbs of Manchester. His coal beds at Worsley were especially rich and valuable; but, although they were only about seven miles from Manchester, and although Manchester was greatly in need of a better coal supply for industrial and domestic purposes, it was practically impossible to get the coal carried thither from Worsley at reasonable cost. The seven-mile journey by bad roads was not to be thought of. The alternative was transport by the Mersey and Irwell navigation, which was, in fact, within convenient reach of the collieries. But the company of proprietors would not abate their full charge of 3s. 6d. per ton for every ton of coal taken along the navigation even in the Duke's own boats, and in 1759 the Duke obtained powers to construct an independent canal. Possessing no technical skill himself (though he is said to have been greatly impressed by what he had seen, in his travels, of the grand canal of Languedoc, in the south of France), he called in James Brindley to undertake the carrying out of his plans.