Boat lift

A boat lift, ship lift, or lift lock is a machine for transporting boats between water at two different elevations, and is an alternative to the canal lock and the canal inclined plane.

This article is about machines transporting boats between different bodies of water. For shipyard device to replace a dry dock, or Boat Lifts for pleasure craft storage, see Ship lift. For other uses, see Boat lift (disambiguation).
Strépy-Thieu boat lift (Belgium, Wallonia)
The Falkirk Wheel (Scotland)
Peterborough Lift Lock (Canada)

It may be either vertically moving, like the ship lifts in Germany, Belgium, the lift at "Les Fontinettes" in France or the Anderton boat lift in England, or rotational, like the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland.

History

A precursor to the canal boat lift, able to move full-sized canal boats, was the tub boat lift used in mining, able to raise and lower the 2.5 ton tub boats then in use. An experimental system was in use on the Churprinz mining canal in Halsbrücke near Dresden. It lifted boats 7 m (23 ft) using a moveable hoist rather than caissons. The lift operated between 1789 and 1868,[1] and for a period of time after its opening engineer James Green reporting that five had been built between 1796 and 1830. He credited the invention to Dr James Anderson of Edinburgh.[2]

The idea of a boat lift for canals can be traced back to a design based on balanced water-filled caissons in Erasmus Darwin's Commonplace Book (page 58-59) dated 1777–1778[3]

In 1796 an experimental balance lock was designed by James Fussell and constructed at Mells on the Dorset and Somerset Canal, though this project was never completed.[2] A similar design was used for lifts on the tub boat section of the Grand Western Canal entered into operation in 1835 becoming the first non experimental boat lifts in Britain.[4] and pre-dating the Anderton Boat Lift by 40 years.

In 1904 the Peterborough Lift Lock designed by Richard Birdsall Rogers opened in Canada. This 19.8-metre (65 ft) high lift system is operated by gravity alone, with the upper bay of the two bay system loaded with an additional 30 cm (12 in) of water as to give it greater weight.

Before the construction of the Three Gorges Dam Ship Lift, the highest boat lift, with a 73.15-metre (240.0 ft) height difference and European Class IV (1350 tonne) capacity, was the Strépy-Thieu boat lift in Belgium opened in 2002.

The ship lift at the Three Gorges Dam, completed in January 2016, is 113 m (371 ft) high and able to lift vessels of up to 3,000 tons displacement.

The boat lift at Longtan is reported to be even higher in total with a maximum vertical lift of 179 m (587 ft) in two stages when completed.[5]

Selected lift locks
Notable lift locks — ordered by size
NameLocationOpenedDisplacementDimensionsVertical liftCycle timeNotes
Three Gorges dam ship lift China20163000 tons 280 by 35 by 5 metres
919 by 115 by 16 feet		 113 metres
371 feet		30–40 minutes
Krasnoyarsk Dam ship liftRussia19821500 tons 90 m × 18 m × 2.2 m
295 ft × 59 ft × 7 ft		 104 m
341 ft		90 minutes
Ronquières inclined plane liftBelgium19681350 tons 91 m × 12 m × 3.7 m
299 ft × 39 ft × 12 ft		 67.73 m
222 ft		22 minutes[6]
Strépy-Thieu boat liftBelgium20021350 tons 112 m × 12 m × 3.35 m
367 ft × 39 ft × 11 ft		 73.15 m
240 ft		7 minutes
Scharnebeck twin ship liftGermany19741350 tons 105.4 m × 15.8 m × 3.4 m
346 ft × 52 ft × 11 ft		 38 m
125 ft		3 minutes
Niederfinow boat liftGermany1934 85 m × 12 m × 2.5 m
279 ft × 39 ft × 8 ft		 36 m
118 ft		20 minutes
Peterborough lift lockCanada19041300 tons 42.7 m × 10.1 m × 2.1 m
140 ft × 33 ft × 7 ft		 19.8 m
65 ft		10 minutes
Kirkfield Lift LockCanada19071300 tons 42.7 m × 10.1 m × 2.1 m
140 ft × 33 ft × 7 ft		 14.9 m
49 ft		10 minutes
Rothensee boat liftGermany19381000 tons 85 m × 12.2 m
279 ft × 40 ft		 16 m
52 ft		20 minutes
Falkirk WheelScotland2002600 tons 21.33 m × 6 m × 1.37 m
70 ft × 20 ft × 4 ft		 24 m
79 fts		4 minutes
Henrichenburg boat liftGermany1962600 tons 67 m × 8.2 m × 2 m
220 ft × 27 ft × 7 ft		 14 m
46 ft		25 minutes
Danjiangkou DamChina1973450 tons
Geheyan Dam ship liftChina1987300 tons
Longtan Dam ship liftChina2009?250 tons 40 m × 10.8 m × 1.8 m
131 ft × 35 ft × 6 ft		 68.5 m
225 ft		claimed to be the "fastest ship-lift in the world"
Canal du Centre boat liftsBelgium1888–1917360 tons/350 tons 40.1 m × 5.06 m × 2 m
132 ft × 17 ft × 7 ft		 16.93–15.4 m
56–51 ft		three lifts each 16.93 m high plus one 15.4 m high
Fontinettes boat liftFrance1881–88300 tons 39 m × 5.2 m × 2 m
128 ft × 17 ft × 7 ft		 13.13 m
43 ft		5 minutes
Anderton boat liftUK1875250 tons 22.9 m × 4.7 m × 2.9 m
75 ft × 15 ft × 10 ft		 15.25 m
50 ft

See also

References
  1. Charles Hadfield World Canals: Inland Navigation Past and Present Page 71 ISBN 0-7153-8555-0
  2. The Canals of Southwest England Charles Hadfield Page 104 ISBN 0-7153-8645-X
  3. "revolutionaryplayers.org.uk". Archived from the original on 2 April 2012. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  4. The Canals of Southwest England Charles Hadfield Page 109 ISBN 0-7153-8645-X
  5. "Long Tan Hydroelectric Dam". 2007. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
  6. "The inclined plane of Ronquières". Archived from the original on 11 June 2008. Retrieved 1 September 2016.

Further reading
  • Tew, David (1984). Canal Inclines and Lifts. Sutton Books. ISBN 0-86299-031-9.
  • Uhlemann, Hans-Joachim (2002). Canal lifts and inclines of the world (English Translation ed.). Internat. ISBN 0-9543181-1-0.
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