The Manchester Ship Canal is a 36-mile-long (58 km) inland waterway in the Northwest of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the Mersey Estuary at Eastham, near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, it generally follows the original routes of the rivers Mersey and Irwell through the historic counties of Cheshire and Lancashire. Several sets of locks lift vessels about 60 ft (18 m) to the canal’s terminus in Manchester. Landmarks along its route include the Barton Swing Aqueduct, the world’s only swing aqueduct, and Trafford Park, the world’s first planned industrial estate and one of the largest in Europe. Construction took six years, beginning in 1887, and cost just over £15 million (equivalent to £2,107,000,000 in 2023). When the ship canal opened in January 1894 (12 years after the first meeting of the Manchester Ship Canal company) it was the largest river navigation canal in the world and enabled the new Port of Manchester to become Britain’s third-busiest port despite being about 40 mi (64 km) inland. WSe celebrate this feat of engineering with an A1 image of the canal …