BRINDLEY, James, a man celebrated for mechanical inventions, and particularly skilful in planning and conducting inland navigation, was born in 1716, at Tunsted in Derbyshire. Through the mismanagement of his father, his education was totally neglected; and, at seventeen, he bound himself apprentice to a mill-wright, near Macclesfield, in Cheshire. He served his apprenticeship, and afterwards setting up for himself, by inventions and contrivances of his own advanced the mill-wright business to a degree of perfection which it had not attained before. The consequence was, that his fame as an ingenious mechanic spreading widely, his genius was no longer confined to the business of his profession. In 1752 he erected a very extraordinary water-engine at Clifton, in Lancashire, for the purpose of draining coal mines; and, in 1755, he was employed to execute the larger wheels for a new silk mill at Congleton, in Cheshire. The potteries of Staffordshire were also about this time indebted to him for several valuable additions to the mills used by them for grinding flint-stones. In 1756 he undertook to erect a steam-engine near Newcastle-under-Line, upon a new plan; and it is believed that he would have brought this engine to a great degree of perfection, if some interested engineers had not opposed him.

His attention, however, was soon afterwards called off to another object, which in its consequences has proved of high importance to trade and commerce; namely, the projecting and executing of inland navigations. By these navigations the expense of carriage is lessened; a communication is opened from one part of the kingdom to another, and from each of these parts to the sea; and hence products and manufactures are afforded at a moderate price. The Duke of Bridgewater having at Worsley, about seven miles from Manchester, a large estate abounding with coal, which had hitherto lain useless because of the expense of land-carriage, and being desirous to work these mines, perceived the necessity of constructing[7:5:289] a canal from Worsley to Manchester; upon which occasion Brindley was consulted, and having declared the scheme practicable, an act for this purpose was obtained in 1758 and 1759. But as it was afterwards discovered that the navigation would be more beneficial if carried over the river Irwell to Manchester, another act was obtained to vary the course of the canal ^agreeably to the new plan, and likewise to extend a side-branch to Longford Bridge in Stretford. Brindley, in the mean time, had begun these great works, being the first of the kind ever attempted in England with navigable subterraneous tunnels and elevated aqueducts; and, in order to preserve the level of the water, and free it from the usual obstructions of locks, he carried the canal over rivers and many large and deep valleys. When it was completed as far as Barton, where the Irwell is navigable for large vessels, he proposed to carry it over that river by an aqueduct of thirty-nine feet above the surface of the water; and though this project was treated as wild and chimerical, yet, supported by his noble patron, he began his work in September 1760, and the first boat sailed over it in July 1761. The duke afterwards extended his ideas to Liverpool, and obtained, in 1762, an act for branching his canal to the tideway in the Mersey; this ramification of the work being carried over the rivers Mersey and Bolland, and over many wide and deep valleys.

The success of the Duke of Bridgewater’s undertakings encouraged a number of gentlemen and manufacturers in Staffordshire to revive the idea of a canal navigation through that county, and Brindley was therefore engaged to make a survey from the Trent to the Mersey. This canal was begun in 1766, conducted under Brindley’s direction as long as he lived, and finished after his death by his brother-in-law Mr Flemshall in May 1777. The proprietors called it the Canal from the Trent to the Mersey; but the engineer, more emphatically, the Grand Trunk Navigation, on account of the numerous branches, which, as he justly supposed, would be every way extended from it. It is ninety-three miles in length, and, besides a large number of bridges over it, has seventy-six locks and five tunnels. The most remarkable of the tunnels is the subterraneous passage of Harecastle, being 2880 yards in length, and more than seventy yards below the surface of the earth. The scheme of this inland navigation had employed the thoughts of the ingenious part of the kingdom for upwards of twenty years before, and some surveys had been made; but Harecastle Hill, through which the tunnel is constructed, could neither be avoided nor overcome by any expedient which the most able engineers could devise. It was Brindley alone who surmounted this, and other similar difficulties arising from the variety of strata and quicksands, which no one but himself would have attempted to conquer.

Brindley was engaged in many other similar undertakings; for a fuller account of which the reader is referred to the Biographia Britannica, and to a curious and valuable pamphlet, published many years since, entitled The History of Inland Navigations, particularly that of the Duke of Bridgewater. Brindley died at Turnhurst in Staffordshire on the 27th September 1772, in his fifty-sixth year, being supposed to have shortened his days by too intense application, and to have brought on a hectic fever, which continued in his system for some years before it consumed him. He never indulged or relaxed himself in the common diversions of life, not having the least relish for them; and though once prevailed on to see a play in London, yet he declared that he would on no account be present at another, because it so disturbed his ideas for several days after as to render him unfit for business. When any extraordinary difficulty occurred to him in the execution of his works, he generally retired to bed, and lay there one, two, or three days, till he had surmounted it. He then got up and executed his design without any drawing or model; for he had a prodigious memory, and carried every thing in his head.

As his station in life was low, and his education totally neglected, so his exterior accomplishments were suitable to them. He could indeed read and write, but very indifferently; and he was perhaps as thoroughly abnormis sapiens, “of mother-wit, and wise without the schools,” as any man that ever lived. “He is as plain a looking man,” says a writer of the time, describing him, “as one of the boors in the Peak, or his own carters; but when he speaks, all ears listen; and every mind is filled with wonder at the things he pronounces to be practicable.” The same author adds, “Being great in himself, he harbours no contracted notions, no jealousy of rivals; he conceals not his method of proceeding, nor asks patents to secure the sole use of the machines which he invents and exposes to public view. Sensible that he must one day cease to be, he selects men of genius, teaches them the power of mechanics, and employs them in carrying on the various undertakings in which he is engaged. It is not to the Duke of Bridgewater only that his services are confined; he is of public utility, and employs his talents in rectifying the mistakes of despairing workmen and artizans. His powers shine most in the midst of difficulties; when rivers and mountains seem to thwart his designs, then appears his vast capacity, by which he makes them subservient to his will.” Happening on one occasion to be examined before a committee of the House of Commons, and to express a decided preference for artificial navigation as a means of internal communication, a member asked him, “For what purpose, then, do you think rivers were created ?” “To furnish water for navigable canals,” replied Brindley after a moment’s hesitation.