Newspaper Extract
Bursting of Canal - near Sheffield
20th February, 1854The Sheffield and Tinsley Canal, a distance of about 4 miles, where it joins the River Dun Company’s navigation, suddenly burst, within half a mile of its Sheffield Terminus on Thursday night, and caused great damage by the inundation of the extensive warehouse and works of Messrs. Turton & sons, the manufactory of Messrs. Eyre Ward & Ward and Co., a number of cottages and a public house lying between the canal bank and the River Don. Messrs. Turton & sons works covers about 3 acres of land and employs 800 workmen in the manufacture of steel, railway springs, files, edge tools and cutlery.
On Thursday night the night foreman, Mr. Steel, was in the act of changing one of the furnaces with ingots of steel to be heated ready for being passed through the rollers and formed into bars, when the square pitching stones which form the floor of the mill were suddenly thrown up several feet and water spouted forth from the opening with such force it was evident that the place would be flooded within minutes. He raised the alarm and the workmen escaped from the mill.
It was surmised that the inundation was connected with some casualty at the canal. The banks were however, found entire, but a whirlpool in the centre down which the water was gushing with force, showed that the source of the problem was the giving away of the base of the canal.
The water had passed underground through an old culvert or colliery working for a distance of about 30 yards, where it had forced its way to the surface inside Messrs. Turton’s works. In less than an hour the whole of the machinery within the rolling mill and tilt was under water, the furnace fires extinguished and the warehouses, file and edge tool workshops on the ground floor were flooded several feet deep.
A large body of police were speedily on the spot and their efforts were directed to providing for the escape of water, by making a number of holes through the stone boundary wall, and through these the water rushed with such force that it tore up the pavements in the street and crossed directly to the houses of Mr. Ward and some adjoining belonging to Mr. Hancock of Peacroft. Here the water was retained by walls at the back of the houses. The houses were soon five feet deep in water and the occupants were mainly asleep in their beds.
In the meantime efforts were made to stop the leakage in the canal. Mr. Codrington, secretary of the River Dun Company, to whom the canal belonged had mustered a large force of men who tried in vain to fill the hole with stones, sacks of earth, straw, clay etc. all without effect. A flat bottomed boat was also sunk over the aperture . All these failed in their objective. The canal at the Sheffield end runs for about two and a half miles without a single lock. It was impossible to check the progress of the water. By noon on the Friday the canal had been reduced from 8 feet in depth to a few inches of the bottom.
Business was suspended at Messrs Turtons and damage estimated at £2000 to £3000.
