The Duke eventually surmounted his financial difficulties by borrowing, altogether, £25,000 from Messrs. Child, the {172}London bankers, and the new canal was partly opened for traffic in 1767, although the Runcorn locks were not completed till 1773. The total amount spent by the Duke on his two canals was £220,000. In 1772 the Duke added to the usefulness of his Manchester-to-Runcorn canal by establishing passenger boats which could accommodate sixty passengers, and on which they were carried twenty miles for a shilling. He afterwards had larger boats, holding from 80 to 120 passengers, the fares on these being 1s., 1s. 6d. and 2s. 6d. per twenty miles, according to class. Each of these boats, says Macpherson, in his "Annals of Commerce," was "provided with a coffee house kept by the master; wherein his wife serves the company with wine and other refreshments." The effect of the new canal on the trade and commerce of Manchester and Liverpool was considerable. It diverted to Liverpool the stream of export traffic which had previously gone from Manchester via Bridgnorth and the Severn to Bristol; it enabled Manchester manufacturers to obtain raw materials more readily from Liverpool, to supplement the cheaper supplies of coal they were already obtaining from Worsley; and it opened up the port of Liverpool to a wider stretch of country than could otherwise benefit from the facilities thereof, to the advantage both of Liverpool itself and of industrial Lancashire, though other canal schemes, leading to like results, were to follow. Even before the Manchester and Runcorn Canal was opened for traffic, Brindley had started on a much bolder project. The new scheme was one for a canal connecting the Mersey with the Trent, and, also, with the Severn, thus opening up direct inland water communication between Liverpool, Hull and Bristol, and affording an alternative to road transport not only for the Potteries, but, by means of branch canals, for the industrial centres of Staffordshire and Worcestershire, then, as it were, more or less landlocked. In the same year (1755) in which the Bill for the construction of the Sankey Canal was obtained, the Corporation of Liverpool already had under consideration a scheme for a canal from the Mersey to the Trent; but no definite action was then taken, and it was left for private enterprise to carry {173}out the idea. The chief promoters were Earl Gower (ancestor of the Duke of Sutherland), the Duke of Bridgewater, the Earl of Stamford, Josiah Wedgwood, and various other landowners and manufacturers. Parliamentary powers were obtained in 1766, and the work of construction, as planned by Brindley, was begun at once. The name of "Grand Trunk" was given to the undertaking, the idea being that the waterway would form the main line of a system of canals radiating from it in various directions, and linking up the greater part of the country south of the Trent with the three ports mentioned.