Canals are man-made waterways, usually connecting existing lakes, rivers, or oceans. There are two main types of canal: irrigation canals for the delivery of water and transportation canals for passage of goods and people. Some rivers have also been 'channelised' to make them navigable.
Smaller transportation canals can carry barges or narrowboats, while ship canals can accommodate sea-going ships and may connect one ocean to another.
Canals are so deeply identified with Venice that many canal cities have been nicknamed "the Venice of..." The city is built on marshy islands, with wooden piles supporting the buildings, so that here it is not so much the waterways which are man-made, as the land. The islands have a long history of settlement, and by the 12th century Venice was a powerful city state.
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Industrial revolution
In Europe and then in the young United States, inland canals preceded the development of railroads during the earliest phase of the Industrial Revolution; some canals were later drained and used as railroad rights-of-way. Navigable canals reached into previously isolated areas and brought them in touch with the world economy. The Erie Canal, for instance, opened up a connection from the populated Northeast to the fertile Great Plains.
The oldest canal built for industrial purposes in North America is Mother Brook in Dedham, MA. It was constructed in 1639 to provide water power for mills. Lowell, Massachusetts, considered to be "The Cradle of the American Industrial Revolution," has 6 miles of canals that provided waterpower and a means of transportation for the city.
Competition from the railroad network made many canals obsolete for commercial transportation, and many fell into decay.
A movement that began in Britain and France to use the picturesque early industrial canals for pleasure boats has spurred rehabilitation of stretches of historic canals.
National Canal Museum Contains many resources related to navigable waterways of the Eastern United States, based outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The River Wey and Wey Navigations Community Site — a non-commercial site of over 120,000 words all about the Wey Navigations and includes information and images related to canals, narrowboats and lock operation
"Canal".
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