Buckingham Canal back in the limelight

Running along the east coast of India for about 450 km (250 km in Andhra Pradesh and 200 km in Tamil Nadu), the Buckingham Canal, taken together with the Krishna and Godavari irrigation canal systems, was once a continuous, navigable stretch of about 650 km

Updated - August 26, 2026 06:18 pm IST

A view of the Buckingham Canal, near the extension of the Thoraipakkam-Pallavaram Radial Road | Photo Credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam

The restoration of the Buckingham Canal and other water courses of Chennai has yet again occupied the attention of the authorities after the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK)-led government came to power in Tamil Nadu nearly three and a half months ago. Sections of the media have reported that the State government is examining a ₹876.35-crore plan to make a 7.2-km-long stretch of the central portion of the Buckingham Canal — from Napier Bridge over the beach road to the Adyar river over Greenways Road in R.A. Puram — navigable again, with passenger boats, floating restaurants, and cargo movement.

Originally constructed in 1806 by Basil Cochrane and privately owned and operated by him, the waterway was then called Cochrane Canal. Initially, the length of the waterway was a little less than 18 km, with the Canal cutting through strips of land and shallow backwaters from Chennai to the Ennore estuary. Subsequently, it was extended to Pulicat Lake, opening up navigation for small craft over a distance of 40 km north of Chennai. Taken over by the government in 1837, the waterway was named the East Coast Canal and extended in 1857 to Dugarajapatnam (in Tirupati district of Andhra Pradesh, around 135 km north of Chennai). In 1878, it acquired the present name, Buckingham Canal, after the Governor of Madras, the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.

A large number of boats brought firewood, paddy, and other merchandise from Andhra till the 1960s through the Canal | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

Running along the coast for about 450 km (250 km in Andhra Pradesh and 200 km in Tamil Nadu), the Buckingham Canal, taken together with the Krishna and Godavari irrigation canal systems, was once a continuous, navigable stretch of about 650 km. Connecting the Marakkanam backwaters in the erstwhile South Arcot (Villupuram) district (115 km south of Chennai), the waterway had been popular as a cheap means of transportation, though the revenue derived from the traffic had never been commensurate with the expenditure involved in keeping it fit for navigation all year round, The Hindu reported on May 3, 1978. In fact, veteran Tamil poet Bharathidasan, in one of his works, mentioned the boat ride he took from Chennai to Mamallapuram along with his friends in 1934. The waterway helped connect Chennai with places such as Kakinada, Rajamahendravaram, Eluru, Vijayawada, Machilipatnam, Ongole, and Nellore.

The Buckingham Canal once had 28 locks, of which 21 were in the northern section of the canal and the rest in the south. Each of the locks had dimensions of 45.5 metres by six metres. “A draught of one metre is available in the northern canal and less in the southern canal,” said this newspaper in 1978. When the erstwhile Madras Presidency was in existence (in 1952-53), about 2.11 lakh tonnes of goods, valued at ₹3.75 crore, were moved on the Canal. Nine years later, 1.47 lakh tonnes of goods were transported along the stretch running through Tamil Nadu. Gradually, passenger traffic along the waterway went down, with other modes of transport gaining popularity.

Poisonous foam from factory effluences mixed with sewage water flowing into the Buckingham Canal near Neelankarai in July 2008 | Photo Credit: M. Karunakaran

Considering the importance of the waterway, there was nothing surprising about the preoccupation of the establishment and intelligentsia with the renovation of the Buckingham Canal even 75 years ago. On February 18, 1951, The Hindu, in its editorial, had this to say: “At present, the Canal is a convenient receptacle for the drainage of Madras: with a determined effort at improvement, it can be very much more useful, helping to carry very much larger cargoes than at present, of grains, salt, fish, firewood, chunam shells and charcoal to the City of Madras. Provided its smell disappears, even passengers may use it more and more; even now, from Madras southward, the boats do carry passengers.”

Over these years, a number of studies have been carried out on ways to make the Canal and other watercourses clean and free of pollution, and, if possible, navigable. The issue of bad odour has persisted throughout, even in the 1950s, when Chennai was beginning to expand southwards more than northwards. N. Ranga Reddi, Minister for Public Works, told the Legislative Council on March 19, 1953, that “in regard to the odour nuisance, the sources of pollution have been located and a programme of remedial measures has been fixed by the Superintending Engineer of the Madras Circle [of the Public Works Department] and the Sanitary Engineer.” He added that, apart from “a number of improvements” made in recent years to the Canal, a proposal to increase its width and depth was under consideration by the government.