Thomas Steers was thought to have been born in 1672 in Kent and died in 1750. He was England's first major civil engineer and built many canals, the world's first commercial wet dock, the Old Dock at Liverpool, and a theatre. He designed Salthouse Dock in Liverpool, which was completed by Henry Berry after Steers' death.
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He learned about hydraulics as a soldier for William of Orange in the Netherlands, and fought at the Battle of the Boyne. In 1717 he built several docks at Liverpool, as well as St George's Church on the site of the Liverpool Castle, the Old Ropery Theatre, a dry dock, pier, and several others.
He was mayor of Liverpool from 1739-1740. He was responsible for the fortification of Liverpool during the Jacobite rebellion in 1745.
There was also a Thomas Steers, lime burner of Greenwich (probably the owner and/or digger of "Jack Cade's Cavern" and of a nearby sand mine) who was born about this time and in the right area, but who was probably not the same person. Other Steers were involved in pottery. This hints at an extended Steers family with interests in kilns and building mortar.
Steers surveyed the rivers Irwell and Mersey from Bank Quay at Warrington to Manchester in 1712. An Act of Parliament authorizing an improvement was passed in 1721 and the work, which included eight locks in a distance of 15 miles (24 km) to overcome a rise of 52 feet (16 m), was completed about 1725. It is generally believed he was the engineer.[1]
In 1720, Steers was responsible for the Douglas Navigation which connected the Ribble estuary to Wigan. He built a lock and a bridge, straightened a section of the river, and started the construction of a tidal lock, but his partner William Squire, who was raising finance for the scheme in London, became involved in the South Sea Bubble, and appears to have lost most of the money he raised.[2] With the money gone, Steers moved on. The navigation was eventually completed in 1742, and carried coal from Wigan to Liverpool and onwards to Ireland by ship.
His most significant navigation achievement was the Newry Canal, in Ireland, which was the first summit-level canal in the British Isles. The promoters asked him to act as engineer for the scheme in 1729, but then declined to pay him the fees he requested, and so the initial construction work was overseen by Edward Lovett Pearce. Pearce died in 1734, and his assistant Richard Castle took over the role. Steers returned to the project in 1736, when he conducted a survey of the existing work. Castle was sacked in December 1736, and Steers then supervised construction until 1741, working on a part-time basis. The 18 miles (29 km) of canal included 14 locks,[2] and ran from Newry, Carlingford Lough to Lough Neagh. It was built to transport coal from the Tyrone collieries to Dublin.
In order to build locks with a larger fall than was possible with conventional gate paddles, Steers built two of the locks with sluices and ground paddles, which fed water into the bottom of the lock through the side walls. Water supply for the summit level was taken from local streams, supplemented by water from Lough Shark, which was used as a reservoir. As a whole, the work was not well executed, and the innovative locks had to be rebuilt soon after 1750.[2] After 1741, Steers was replaced by Acheson Johnson and the canal was finally completed in 1745. Steers' assistant was Henry Berry who later was engineer on the Sankey Canal, the first English canal.
| Preceded by |
Engineer to Mersey Docks and Harbour Board 1710-1750 |
Succeeded by Henry Berry |