Printed and Published at the Dover Express Works. 1916.

TO BE FORMATTED

ANNALS OF DOVER.
SECTION TWO.
THE PORT OF DOVER
XI. THE GUILFORD ADMINISTRATION.

I,ord North (who later succeeded his father as the Earl
of Ciuilford), being a Kentisli nobleman, ought to ha\e
been specially fitted to handle the team of Kentish gentlemen
who were the Harbour Commissioners when he held the
oiifice of Lord Warden. He started very well. Like most
of his predecessors, he attempted to solve the problem of
the Harbour bar ; and eventually the Board decided, as
previous Boards had done, that they must call in some
experienced engineer to give them advice. Mr. Nickalls,
an engineer of some note, was asked to give his advice.
He prepared a report, which he presented in 1783,
pointing out that, apart from the bar, which occasionally
obstructed the Harbour entrance, the Port, as a place for
receiving large vessels and ships of war, was defective owing
to there being but 10 feet 6 inches of water on the apron
in front of the basin entrance at neap tides, and that, in
effect, was reduced to nine feet l)y the sill of the basin
gates being laid ci;,diteen inches higher than it should have
been. This shallowness of the Harbour also rendered the
quantity of backwater so small that, after allowing for much
that leaked through the works, there was not enough to
remove the bar and keep the entrance between the pier-
heads clear. He also said that the Pent was so narrow at
the upper end and so .shallow that it did not contain, when
fully charged, more than 47,100 tons of water, which, when
united with that in the basin, was totally inadequate to
remove the bar at neap tides. To remedy these defects,
Mr. Nickalls proposed increasing the area of the Great Pent
to thirteen and a half acres, adding about four feet to its
depth, and deepening the basin, giving, in the latter, from
seventeen feet to twenty-four feet of water. He proposed
to extend the pier-heads two hundred feet further to sea,
which he expected would prevent the shingle entering the
Harbour ; but. to provide for the worst, he proposed to
have canals and sluices in the South Pier-head to operate
directly on the bar. as well as sluice-gates, and sluicing canals
to cleanse every part of the Harbour, the Pent, the basin,



Il6 ANNALS OF DOVER

and the tidal harbour, so as to avoid the very heavy expense
that had to be occasionally iiuurred to remove by manual
laljour the mud that was brought into the Harbour by the
river. He was of opinion that if the various parts of the
Harbour were deepened, as he suggested, the backwater
would be sufficient to keep the Harbour clear at all times.
This scheme, in its entirety, was estimated to cost ;^6o,ooo;
but, although there was not suflicicnt money available to
carry it out, Mr. Xirkalls was cmjjloyed to do some portion
of the work. He re-faced the lower Cros.swall on both
sides with stone, making stone sluices in it ; and he rebuilt
about a hundred feet of the basin wharves with .stone,
carrying the walls down eight feet below liie bottom with
a view to deepening the basin as he proposed. He, however,
was n(3t permitted to go so far as that, but he removed a
great c|uantity of mud from the basin and wideiied the gates
into the Pent as well as lowering the sill so as to admit
larger vessels. He was not permitted to carry his imi)rove-
ments any further, because he is said to have always
exi:eeded his estimates of the cost and of the time required
to carry out works, for which reasons the Commissioners
dispensed with his services after he had been employed about
eight years.



THE PORT OF DOVER II7