Printed and Published at the Dover Express Works. 1916.

TO BE FORMATTED

ANNALS OF DOVER.
SECTION TWO.
THE PORT OF DOVER
XVII. THE NEW CONSTITUTION.

The year 1861 brought about the third form of control
under which the Port of Dover has been managed. From
the earliest days down to 1606 the Town and Port, including
the Harbour and the Passage, were controlled by the Corpor-
ation, subject only to the supreme authority of the sovereign.
From 1606 it has been controlled by charter under the
Warden and Assistants; and since 1861 by a representative
Harbour Board constituted by Act of Parliament. These
three forms of control differed widely. The democratic char-
acter of the first placed the harbour absolutely in the hands
of the pe(jple except on rare occasions, when for grave reasons
of State, the Sovereign had to intervene. The second control
took the Harbour completely out of the hands of the people
of Dover, with the exception that the Mayor during his year
of office had a seat at the Board — a form of representation
which never allowed a Dover man to be on the Board long
enough to exercise effective influence. The third form of
control now existing was given in response to a strong appeal
for a representative Board that would be amenable to public
opinion and more especially to Dover public opinion. The
new constitution was a great cause of disappointment. The
reconstruction was hastily carried out by the President of
the Board of Trade in conference with two or three Dover
men without the town's people being consulted. The new
Harbour Board had the semblance of being representative,
but it gave representation to those who ought not to have had
it while those who ought to have been represented were
ignored. The new Board con.sisted of seven members of
which one was the Lord Warden, one nominated by the
First Lord of the Admiralty, one nominated by the
Board of Trade, two burgesses of Dover elected by the Dover
Town Council, one member nominated by the South Eastern
Railway Company, and one nominated by the London,
Chatham and Dover Railway Company. This Board was
immediately regarded with disapproval, the local feeling
being that there ought to have been more members and some
of them of a different character. The five first named were



THE PORT OF DOVER 1 35

acceptable, but beyond those representations of public bodies
it was felt that other members should have been elected by
those who paid harbour dues and rents, and that the rail-
ways should only have had representation in proportion to
their contribution in harbour dues. Since the settlement
of 1 86 1 the balance of power at the Harbour Board has been
altered. By Act of Parliament, the Lord Warden, who
was a strong and steadying influence, has been removed, and
an extra member has been given to ttie railway companies,
and as those companies are under a working agreement they
praciically control the Board. As far as the representation
of the burgesses of Dover is concerned the last state of Har-
bour control is much worse than the first, and very little better
than the second.

In 1886, the Town Council of Dover introduced a Bill
in Parliament to restore the ancient union between the Town
and Port, and to have the Harbour affairs entrusted to a
Managing Committee of the Town Council with the repre-
sentatives of other interests co-opted, but owing to con-
cessions made to those who opposed on behalf of vested
interests the Bill was found to be essentially different from the
one that had been approved by the Town Council and the
ratepayers, and according to standing orders it had to be
withdrawn.

The Harbour Board formed in 1861 commenced
operations with a largely reduced revenue, owing to the
Passing Tolls, which had regularly provided ^^i 0,000 a year
being then abolished. The remaining income, derived from
harbour dues and ground rents, was barely sufficient to meet
the annual repayment and interest on the debt that had been
incurred during the last ten years of the Warden and
Assistants administration. Expenses were cut down ; the
property which Mr. Henry Matson had bequeathed for the
upkeep of the Harbour in 1720, was sold, and by avoiding
all new works in the course of a few years the finances were
placed on a fairly satisfactory ba.sis. In the course of five
years the Board re-built the bridge and dock-gate at Union
Street, and it was called Palmerston Bridge after Lord
Palmerston, the Lord Warden. They also built warehouses
on the Clarence Quay and the short boundary jetty opposite
Guilford Battery. The Pier Heads were repaired, groynes
were re-constructed in the Bay, and more quay space was
obtained by the removal of useless old buildings.



Ti6 ANNALS OF DOVER



'S



In T<S69 ilie Board once more approached the task of
deepening the tidal harbour, and Mr. Hawkshaw, who was
consulted, presented a report and plan for deepening the
Pent, the Basin and the Tidal Harbour at a total cost of
^166,000. Mr. R. S. France, Railway Contractor, of
Shrewsbury, who was to have deepened the tidal harbour by
means of his patent explosives under water, made a successful
trial, but it was eventually decided to postpone the deepening
of the tidal harbour " until there was a corresponding
improvement in the French harbours on the opposite coast."
The deepening of the Basin was commenced in March, 1871,
a depth of five feet of solid chalk was removed from the
bottom and, at the west corner near Trinity Church, where
there was a slope up to the quay level, the deepening was
more. Quay walls of great strength and thickness were built,
and on the side next the Pent a continuous quay wall was
built in place of the opening which had up to that time
been spanned by the Palmerstone Bridge, \.hich now, although
it had existed but a dozen years, was deeuied to be no longer
necessary. More room was provided on the Crosswall Quay
by the removal of the clock and compass towers erected
there in 1830 by Mr. Moon. A new clock tower was built
at the bottom of the Esplanade, and the clock from
the Crosswall was erected there in May, 1877. In
the Crosswall opening, immediately facing the harbour
mouth, were placed a pair of new gates, the sill being
lowered to admit vessels drawing twenty feet at spring
tides and sixteen feet at neap tides. The basin, which
was then named the Granville Dock, was re-opened on July
6th, 1874, by the Lord Warden, Earl Granville. The whole
of the works which formed a continuous series from 1871 to
1879 cost ;£74,4i6. In 1888 the Wellington Dock gates
were widened ten feet to accommodate the new Channel
steamers the " Victoria " the " Empress " and others of that
class which then came on the station, and new coal stores
for the convenience of local coal-merchants were built on the
Northampton Quay. When these improvements were com-
pleted in 1889, the present Harbour Board had been in
existence 28 years and their annual revenue had increased
from ;^5,225 to ;^i6,ooo. For the next twenty-five years
nothing further was done in connection with the interior of
the Harbour with the exception of placing railway lines round
some of the quays.



THE PORT OF DOVER T37

In 1890 the question was again raised of providing a
deep water harbour outside the old pier-heads. The docks
within those heads could offer room for a greater number
of fair-sized ships, and the existing quays would have been
sufficiently spacious to deal with their cargoes, but accom-
modation for larger vessels, more especially for cross-Channel
and liner passenger traffic, was needed. It was argued that
a port that could not afford such accommodation by admitting
such vessels at all states of the tide was virtually closed to
the commerce of the world. For a long time the Govern-
ment had been dallying with the question of building a
harbour for the Navy in Dover Bay, but for some years
before 1S90 the subject had dropped, so the Dover Harbour
Board decided to obtain Parliamentary powers to enable
them to construct a new harbour out.side the old piers,
enclosing a net area of 56 acres, with a depth varying from
40 feet to 15 feet at low water spring tides. This harbour,
as at first designed by Messrs. Coode, Son and Matthews,
was to be bounded on the western side by the existing
Admiralty Pier with an addition to it of 560 feet; on the
eastern side it was decided to build an arm 2,760 feet
seaward, starting in a southerly direction and curving towards
the south-west, giving an entrance 450 feet wide towards
the east, sheltered by an overlap of the extended Western
Arm. The estimate for the work was ;,f^6oo,ooo to raise
which Parliament granted power to the Harbour Board to
levy a tax of one shilling each on Channel passengers. Thus
empowered, the work was commenced in the Autumn of
1892, and the memorial stone was laid by H.R.H. the Prince
of Wales (the late King Edward VII.) on the 20th July,
189^, and the work then commenced was called the " Prince
of Wales Pier." By an agreement with the Government,
the Admiralty Pier had been leased to the Dover Harbour
Board for 99 years, to form a part of the new deep water
harbour; but in May, 1895, when the Prince of Wales Pier
of this new local harbour had been advanced to about three-
quarters of its length by Sir John Jackson, the contractor,
news came that the Government had decided to build a great
Admiralty Harbour at Dover, enclosing the whole Bay. To
adapt the local harbour to the greater Naval work, the
extremity of the Prince of Wales Pier was turned less to the
south-west than had been at first intended, and carried
forward further than the original contract. As finished,



138 ANNALS OF DOVER

the Pier is 2.910 feet long. The other two parts of
this local harbour — the extension of the Admiralty Pier
and the construction of proposed landing jetties — have not
been undertaken, because the Admiralty Pier was extended
still further as a part of the Admiralty Harbour, and the
plan for the Continental landing-place was altered. It was
proposed to make a railway communication to the Prince
of Wales Pier, and to have the landing stage for Continental
passengers on the west side ; while there was on the eastern
side a landing stage which was used for Atlantic liner
pas.sengers. The railway communication was made, but it
was subsequently agreed to surrender the Prince of Wales
Pier for the use of the Admiralty Harbour and to widen the
Admiralty Pier and build thereon a Marine Station for the
Continental packets, as well as a landing place for liner
passengers. The widening carried out by ^Iessrs. Pearson
and Son for the Harbour Board was completed in April,
1 913, and the South Eastern and London Chatham Railway
Companies, who had obtained a lease of the widened pier
at a nominal rent of ^"10 a year for 99 years, built the
New Marine Station thereon.



THE PORT OF DOVER I39