The Importance of Water Carriage

By means of water carriage a more extensive market is opened to every sort of industry than what land carriage alone can afford. A broad-wield wagon, attended by two men and drawn by eight horses, in about six weeks time, carries and brings back nearly four tonne weight of goods. Six or eight men therefore, by the help of water carriage, can carry and bring back in the same time, the same quantity of goods between London and Edinburgh. Upon two hundred tons of goods carried by the cheapest land carriage from London to Edinburgh, there must be charged the maintenance of a hundred men for three weeks.