By 1789, the company had spent a total of £152,400, raised through shares and by mortgages. Income for the year was £8,320, and after interest payments had been met, that left a net profit of £2,780, enabling them to make their first dividend payment of one per cent. 74,312 tons of traffic were carried that year, of which 42,380 tons were coal, with the rest consisting of lead, iron, stone, corn, lime, timber and sundries. Dividends had risen to five per cent by 1795, were eight per cent the following year, and were six or seven percent until at least 1836. There were several suggestions for links to the River Don Navigation or the Sheffield Canal, the first in 1792 as part of the scheme to build a canal to Sheffield, and subsequently in 1824, as part of the Grand Commercial Canal, and in 1852, when a Sheffield and Chesterfield Junction Canal was proposed, but none of them moved past the planning stage.