Great Lakes these waterways is heavy. Pleasure boats can also enter or exit the Great Lakes by way of the Erie Canal and Hudson River in New York. The Erie Canal connects to the Great Lakes at the east end of Lake Erie (at Buffalo, New York) and at the south side of Lake Ontario (at Oswego, New York). In 2009, the lakes contained 84% of the surface freshwater of North America; if the water were evenly distributed over the entire continent's land area, it would reach a depth of 1.5 meters (5 feet). The source of water levels in the lakes
History of the British canal system not where a river happened to be. The claim for the first pure canal in Great Britain is debated between "Sankey" and "Bridgewater" supporters. The first true canal in the United Kingdom was the Newry Canal in Northern Ireland constructed by Thomas Steers in 1741. The Sankey Brook Navigation, which connected St Helens with the River Mersey, is often claimed as the first modern "purely artificial" canal, because although it was originally a scheme to make the Sankey Brook navigable, it included an entirely new artificial channel that was effectively a canal along the Sankey Brook valley. However, "Bridgewater" supporters