The Later Development
of Dover Harbour
The French Threat 1793-1836
The outbreak of war with France in 1793 focused attention
on coastal defence and upon the strategic importance of Dover Harbour.
Before the war Dover had been a thriving port with over
thirty vessels employed in the channel passage. Despite both this and
Dover's thriving shipbuilding business, the problem of shingle blocking
the harbour entrance had not been solved.
Radical plans to improve the harbour submitted by the
military engineer Thomas Hyde Page and by civil engineers Rennie and Walker,
were rejected in favour of a series of works by James Moon, the resident
engineer and harbour master, and Sir Henry Oxenden, a harbour commissioner.
The improvements begun by Moon and Oxenden involved over
eighteen years work and saw the building of wet and dry docks in the tidal
harbour and a new cross wall with clock and compass towers. The stone
quays of the Pent were begun and North and South Piers rebuilt.
The widening of South Pier included the installation
of water jets in its head supplied by pipes in from the wet dock, and
intended to clear the harbour mouth of shingle.
Despite all the work shingle remained a problem and another
was created when the building of the wet and dry docks in the tidal harbour
made it too small for the number of ships which used it.
Parliament Wades In 1834-46
In 1834 Thomas Telford, the famous engineer, submitted
plans to improve the sluices and the jets in the south pier. By increasing
the volume of water available with a tunnel between the Basin and the
wet dock, and by increasing the diameter of the pipe supplying the jets,
he maintained that the harbour mouth could be cleared of shingle. Despite
Telford's death his plans were continued by James Walker and these improvements,
completed in 1838, went a long way towards solving the problem of shingle
in the harbour mouth.
In the meantime the townspeople had become tired of the
delays and pressed the Harbour Board for action, which in fact the Harbour
Board had already begun. In 1836 the Board were refused further financial
powers by Parliament and a parliamentary enquiry established.
This enquiry and the Royal Commission of 1840 laid the
ground for the modern harbour with the recommendation in 1846 that Dover
become a harbour of refuge 'capable of receiving any class of vessels
under all circumstances of the wind and tide'.
Whilst the Royal Commission deliberated, work went on
in Dover and the tidal harbour doubled in size in 1844 with the demolition
of Amherst's Battery and the excavation of the land on which it stood.
At the same time, construction of a new bridge and gate to the Pent and
new quays within it were undertaken.
Admiralty Pier 1847-93
In 1847 work began on the western arm of the Harbour
of Refuge designed by James Walker and commissioned by the Admiralty.
By 1851 the pier had reached a sufficient length to solve the problem
of shingle in the harbour mouth and cross channel steamers were able to
berth alongside.
The South Eastern Railway reached Dover via Folkestone
in 1844 and the plans for the pier were altered to provide a station which
could deliver passengers and goods directly to the gang-planks of the
channel boats. Traffic increased with the arrival of the London, Chatham
& Dover Railway line in 1861 which was connected to the pier in 1864.
The first phase of the pier was completed in 1854, and
the second in 1864, but the third phase was delayed by discussion as how
it should finish at the seaward end. It was finally decided that a fort
with two powerful 80 ton guns be placed there but it was not until 1880
that the first structure was complete and 1885 before the guns were first
fired. It became known as the Admiralty Pier Gun Turret.
The eastern arm of the Harbour of Refuge was never begun
and to meet the demand of cross channel trade plans were made to build
a smaller commercial harbour. The eastern arm of this - Prince of Wales
Pier was not begun until 1893.
Refuge at Last 1894-1914
It was not until 1897 that the contract for Dover's Harbour
of Refuge, first considered in 1836, was finally let. Work had already
begun on Dover Harbour Board's commercial harbour scheme with the construction
of Prince of Wales Pier and the plans for this were therefore amended.
The plans for the harbour included a 2,000 feet extension
of Admiralty Pier, an Eastern Arm of 2,900 feet and a breakwater of 4,200
feet. This entirely enclosed the bay leaving an Admiralty harbour of 610
acres and a commercial harbour of 68 acres. The plans for Admiralty Pier
were amended in 1906 to allow the building of a station for the South
Eastern and Chatham Railway.
Despite problems with currents caused by the initial
building of Prince of Wales Pier beyond the length of the incomplete Admiralty
Pier, Dover flourished and in 1904 transatlantic liners began to use the
port. This proved very short lived with the Hamburg Amerika Line moving
to Southampton in 1906 after a series of collisions in the harbour mouth
and with the other liner companies following suit over the next two years.
The problems with the entrance were solved when the piers
and breakwaters were finished, but too late to save the liner traffic.
Only in 1996 have liners returned with the opening of a new cruise terminal.
The completed harbour was opened on 14 October 1909 by
H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, the future King George V.
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