Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Manchester Ship Canal is a 36-mile (58 km) long river navigation in North West England. Designed to give the city of Manchester direct access to the sea, it was built between 1887 and 1894 at a cost of about Pds. 15 million ( Pds. 1.27 billion as of 2010), and in its day was the largest navigation canal in the world.