Queen Victoria officially opens the Manchester Ship Canal in England to traffic, on May 21, 1894. The 36-mile waterway, linking Manchester to the Irish Sea, became the largest navigation canal in the world and transformed Manchester into a major port.
It was a monumental feat of civil engineering, taking six years to construct and costing £15 million. The Canal had started to allow commercial traffic almost 6 months earlier on January 1, 1894.
