Priestley incorporates a number of inaccuracies into his description: he has taken the number of locks from the authorising Act; in fact there were twenty-four. There was a wharf at Sandplace (Sand Place) but it was immediately adjacent to the main line of the canal; Messenger points out that a quay was dug into the river bank at Sandplace to serve a kiln, and Priestley was misled into thinking that this was a branch of the canal; actually it was the main river. The vertical interval he quotes may be due to the definition of "sea level" at the time; in any case the lower end of the canal joined the river some distance above the sea.