His work with Daniel Adamson and others led to the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal, completed in 1894.

Stevens was born on 18 April 1852 in Plymouth, England, the eldest child of four sons and two daughters of shipowner and coal merchant Sanders Stevens (1826 – 1910) and Emma Ruth (1832 – 1899; née Marshall).

On 1 January 1897, Stevens resigned from the canal company to become general manager of Trafford Park Estates, a company set up by Ernest Terah Hooley to develop Trafford Park, the ancestral home of the de Trafford family, into what became the first and largest planned industrial estate in the world.

[1] Stevens died on 12 August 1936 in Devonport, Devon and was buried in St Catherine Church, Barton-upon-Irwell.

A 22-ton block of Welsh granite with a bronze portrait medallion and inscription was designed and made by Ashton upon Mersey sculptor, Arthur Sherwood Edwards.