Thames and Medway Canal

The Thames and Medway Canal is a disused canal in Kent, south east England, also known as the Gravesend and Rochester Canal. It was originally some 11 km long and cut across the neck of the Hoo peninsula, linking the River Thames at Gravesend with the River Medway at Strood. The canal was first mooted in 1778 as a shortcut for military craft from Deptford and Woolwich Dockyards on the Thames to Chatham Dockyard on the Medway, avoiding the 74 km journey round the peninsula and through the Thames estuary. The canal was also intended to take commercial traffic between the two rivers.

The first practical attempt to build the canal began in 1799, when an engineer named Ralph Dodd published a pamphlet and began to solicit investment for the scheme. Dodd's plan was for a six-mile canal with locks and basins, taking two years to build and costing £24,576, part of the cost to be defrayed by selling the excavated chalk as agricultural lime. Dodd was confident that the canal would be useful to the government but would also attract commercial vessels.

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