InfrastructureEast India Company rule
First segment of the Buckingham Canal opens
In 1806 a saltwater canal linking Madras with Ennore was finished; it would later form part of the Buckingham Canal.
Completed in 1806, a navigable saltwater channel roughly 18 km long joined Madras to Ennore and was the earliest stretch of the future Buckingham Canal. Its official name honoured the Governor, Lord Clive's Canal, yet most people knew it as Cochrane's Canal, since Basil Cochrane had paid for and built it. Over the nineteenth century the waterway was lengthened step by step along the Coromandel coast. Boats used it to bring firewood, salt, grain and other goods into Madras, making it a valuable supply line.
