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In 1755, the scheme to make the river navigable was revived by a clothier (cloth manufacturer) called John Dallaway, who was a veteran of the original 1729 proposals.
Once again there were objections from mill-owners. To avoid the need for locks, an ingenious compromise was proposed involving an early form of containerisation, which Samuel Rudder described:
'in 1759, a scheme offered to obviate all objections respecting the mills, by which it was proposed that all loading should be laid in square chests to be placed in boats, two of which to ply on the river between every two mills, and that at each mill a crane should be erected to shift the chests of loading from one boat to another, through the whole navigation. This scheme was tried for a small part of the way, but it did not succeed'.
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