However, although Brindley and his assistants surveyed the whole potential system – from the start, he had asserted his view of the Trent and Mersey as the "Grand Trunk Canal", the Grand Cross of waterways across the country – he did not live to see it completed. The Harecastle Tunnel finally opened in 1777 and coal was finally transported from the Midlands to the Thames at Oxford in January 1790, some 18 years after Brindley's death. Development of the network, therefore, had to be left to other engineers, such as Thomas Telford.