About the same time Watt prepared plans of docks and piers at Port Glasgow, and of a new harbour at Ayr. The Port Glasgow works were carried out, but those at Ayr were postponed. When Rennie came to examine the design for the improvement of the Ayr navigation, of which the new harbour formed part, he took objections to it, principally because of the parallelism of the piers, and another plan was eventually adopted. His principal engineering job, and the last of the kind on which Watt was engaged in Scotland, was a survey of the Caledonian Canal, long afterwards carried out by Telford. The survey was made in the autumn of 1773, through a country without roads. “An incessant rain,” said he, “kept me for three days as wet as water could make me; I could hardly preserve my journal book.” In the midst of this dreary work, Watt was summoned to Glasgow by the intelligence which reached him of the illness of his wife; and when he reached home he found that she had died in childbed.[94] Of all the heavy blows he had suffered, this he felt to be the worst. His wife had struggled with him through poverty; she had often cheered his fainting spirit when borne down by doubt, perplexity, and disappointment; and now she was gone, without being able to share in his good fortune as she had done in his adversity. For some time after, when about to enter his humble dwelling, he would pause on the threshold, unable to summon courage to enter the room where he was never more to meet “the comfort of his life.” “Yet this misfortune,” he wrote to Small, “might have fallen upon me when I had less ability to bear it, and my poor children might have been left suppliants to the mercy of the wide world.” [94] The child was stillborn. Of four other children who were the fruit of this marriage, two died young. A son and daughter survived; the son, James, succeeded his father, and died unmarried, at Aston Hall, near Birmingham, in 1848. The daughter married Mr. Miller, of Glasgow, whose grandson, the present J. W. Gibson Watt, Esq., succeeded to the Watt property. Watt tried to forget his sorrow, as was his custom, in increased application to work, though the recovery of the elasticity of his mind was in a measure beyond the power of his will. There were, at that time, very few bright spots in his life. A combination of unfortunate circumstances threatened to overwhelm him. No further progress had yet been made with his steam-engine, which he almost cursed as the cause of his misfortunes. Dr. Roebuck’s embarrassments had reached their climax. He had fought against the water which drowned his coal until he could fight no more, and he was at last delivered into the hands of his creditors a ruined man. “My heart bleeds for him,” said Watt, “but I can do nothing to help him. I have stuck by him, indeed, till I have hurt myself.”