Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation along with the Sheffield Canal, the River Don Navigation, and the Stainforth and Keadby Canal. Decline The Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation Company intended to upgrade the system to take 300 or 400 ton boats, and to allow compartment boats to be used. Coal from the collieries on the canal would transferred from the compartment boats to larger vessels at a new coal handling plant to be located at Keadby. However, the company failed to raise the finance to purchase the canals from the railway company outright, and so struggled to make significant improvements. The Dearne and Dove was the least profitable part of the system, with high maintenance costs as a result of subsidence from the coal mining. As early as 1884, a stretch of the Worsbrough branch had collapsed due to subsidence, which had taken 6 months and cost £19,000 to repair. In 1906 the branch to Worsbrough closed due to the increasing cost of maintenance, although it was retained as a water feeder. The depth of water at the top end of the canal could only be maintained at , rather than , and in 1909, the company agreed to allow mining beneath the canal. The Elsecar branch was the next to close in 1928, also due to subsidence. The last boat traversed the central section of the main line in 1934, although an abandonment order for the canal was not obtained, as the company expected opposition to such a bill. After this date water levels were not maintained: this allowed the maintenance necessary to combat the ever-present mining subsidence to be reduced; only a mile or so of each end of the canal attracted traffic and was properly maintained. In 1942 traffic at the Barnsley end ceased. Traffic from the Manvers Main colliery ended in 1952, and despite vigorous campaigning for the reinstatement of the canal by the Inland Waterways Association and the Inland Waterways Protection Society in the late 1950s, the canal was finally closed in 1961, under the terms of the British Transport Commission Act. Only the half mile (0.8 km) to the glassworks in Swinton was retained. This included four locks which were supplied with water by pumps. The last boat called at the glassworks in 1977; since then the lower portion of the remaining canal has been incorporated into a boatyard, while the upper portion remains in