Boat lift

 ( Vertical Transport Devices ) 

A boat lift, ship lift, or lift lock is a machine for transporting boats between water at two different elevations, and is an alternative to the canal lock.

It may be vertically moving, like the Anderton boat lift in England, rotational, like the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland, or operate on an inclined plane, like the Ronquières inclined plane in Belgium.

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History A precursor to the canal boat lift, able to move full-sized canal boats, was the tub boat lift used in mining, able to raise and lower the 2.5 ton then in use. An experimental system was in use on the Churprinz mining canal in Halsbrücke near Dresden. It lifted boats using a moveable hoist rather than caisson lock. The lift operated between 1789 and 1868,Charles Hadfield World Canals: Inland Navigation Past and Present, p. 71, and for a period of time after its opening engineer James Green reporting that five had been built between 1796 and 1830. He credited the invention to Dr James Anderson of Edinburgh.The Canals of Southwest England Charles Hadfield, p. 104,

The idea of a boat lift for canals can be traced back to a design based on balanced water-filled caissons in Erasmus Darwin's Commonplace Book (pp. 58–59) dated 1777–1778

In 1796 an experimental balance lock was designed by James Fussell and constructed at Mells on the Dorset and Somerset Canal, though this project was never completed. A similar design was used for lifts on the tub boat section of the Grand Western Canal entered into operation in 1835 becoming the first non-experimental boat lifts in BritainThe Canals of Southwest England Charles Hadfield, p. 109, and pre-dating the Anderton Boat Lift by 40 years.

In 1904 the Peterborough Lift Lock designed by Richard Birdsall Rogers opened in Canada. This high lift system is operated by gravity alone, with the upper bay of the two bay system loaded with an additional of water as to give it greater weight.

Before the construction of the Three Gorges Dam Ship Lift, the highest boat lift, with a height difference and European Class IV (1350 tonne) capacity, was the Strépy-Thieu boat lift in Belgium opened in 2002.

The ship lift at the Three Gorges Dam, completed in January 2016, is high and able to lift vessels of up to 3,000 tons displacement.

The boat lift at Longtan Dam is reported to be even higher, with a maximum vertical lift of at the second level when completed.

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Selected lift locks

+ Notable lift locks — ordered by size
2021	Vertical caisson	500 tons		Tallest boat lift in the world.
Goupitan ship-lifting system (first lift)	Guizhou, China	2021	Vertical caisson	500 tons
2016	Vertical caisson	3000 tons
1982	1500 tons
1968	1350 tons
2002	1350 tons		Tallest boat lift in Europe.
1974	1350 tons
1934
2022	2100 tonnes
1904	1300 tons
1907	1300 tons
1938	1000 tons
2002	600 tons		The only rotating boat lift in the world.
1962	600 tons
1987
2020	500 tons
Longtan Dam (second lift)	Hechi, Guangxi Autonomous Region, China	2020	Vertical caisson	500 tons
1888–1917	360 tons/350 tons		Three lifts each 16.93 m high plus one 15.4 m high.
1881–88	300 tons		Replaced by a single lock in 1967.
1875	250 tons
Montech water slope	Montech, Tarn-et-Garonne, France	1974	Water slope				6 minutes	Oldest water slope.
Fonserannes Water Slope	Hérault, France	1980–83	Water slope
Big Chute Marine Railway	Ontario, Canada	1917–78	Patent slip

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See also

• List of boat lifts
• Lock (water transport)
• Balance lock
• Canal inclined plane – another technique for lifting boats.
• Caisson lock: a submerged boat lift.
• Shiplift – used for raising vessels in shipyards
• Marine railway inclined plane for shipyards
• Water slope
• Saint-Louis-Arzviller boat lift, France – which is actually a canal inclined plane
• Portable boat lift
• Patent slip

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Further reading

• David Tew (1984). 9780862990312, Sutton Books. ISBN 9780862990312
• Hans-Joachim Uhlemann (2026). 9780954318116, Internat. ISBN 9780954318116

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External links

• Source mentions its own sources
• The International Canal Monuments List
• Three Gorges Dam
• Big Chute, Ontario – in fact an inclined plane
• Twin Ship Elevator Lüneburg – Technical data of the Scharnebeck twin ship lift near Lüneburg, Germany
• Dutch boat lift page

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