On this day … 28 September 1866

A Glasgow firm of civil engineers produced a damning report about work carried out to tame the shifting course of the Ribble estuary and develop the port of Preston. The report was more optimistic about the port’s future prospects.

James Barron, who was chief engineer at Preston Dock in the last century and who wrote the definitive history of the Ribble Navigation, summarised their findings as follows:

‘When the rapidly increasing dimensions of ships, the vast development of the shipping and commerce of the country, and the great improvements in accommodation made of late years at various ports were taken into account, Preston might, for all her considerable improvements, be regarded as almost stationary compared with other navigations.

‘The port was practically closed against the entrance of vessels at or near neap tides, and only a comparatively small size of vessel could come up to Preston Quays at springs, so that the port was inaccessible for a great part of the year in the aggregate to the general class of vessels which frequented it.

‘The depth of water was always sufficient at the lower part of the channel to get vessels up to Lytham, but as there were no local pilots, and the two steam tugs were not of a sea-going character fit to go below Lytham, vessels had in adverse winds to beat up the sea channels as best they could, often incurring considerable danger and the loss of the tide to take them up to Preston. This confined the trade to those intimately acquainted with the navigation of the estuary and deterred others who might in altered circumstances have come to the port.’

The civil engineers went on to itemise the defects at Preston Quays, which included:

Everything to do with loading and cargo had to be done by hand since there was no steam power available (this in a town that was pioneering the use of steam power in its cotton mills)

Four of the coal tippers at the port had been abandoned, the others were so badly positioned that coal was dropped into the vessels from such a height that the coal was broken and seriously reduced in value. The Preston tippers could each load just 40 tons of coal a day, whereas each tipper at a neighbouring port managed 1,000 tons.

Despite all these defects and deficiencies, they concluded that, ‘… the conditions were highly favourable to the development of Preston into a port of first-rate character and fitted for the reception of almost any class of shipping.’

They proposed:

‘… that the river should be deepened to keep pace with the increasing size of vessels and to give admission to those classes which form the largest and most profitable part of the trade of the country, and that as a first stage it should, as soon as possible, be made navigable for sailing ships up to 500 tons register and steamships of a correspondingly large size; and, after this had been attained, that a continuous and gradual further deepening should be carried out according as the trade increased.’

The recommendation that was to prove key to the development of Preston as a port over the coming years was the diversion of the Ribble at Preston and the building of docks. This, of course, involved digging a big hole. And as the years progressed, the proposed hole kept getting bigger and bigger. The resulting Preston Dock was a really big hole, into which ratepayers’ money continued to drain until its closure.

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Source
James Barron’s History of the Ribble Navigation