|
THE natural advantages of the
Port of Swansea, from its position at the entrance of the Bristol Channel,
with an excellent roadstead at the Mumbles, and in close contiguity to the
great coal fields of South Wales, could not fail to recommend it as a port
capable of very extensive development as soon as the exigencies of trade
might demand it, and the Harbour Trustees in the year 1849, of whom Mr.
Pascoe St. Leger Grenfell was chairman, realized the necessity for providing
further and better accommodation for the steadily increasing trade of the
Port, and applied to Mr. Abernethy, whom they had consulted two years before
with respect to prospective improvements, to make a report and to prepare a
design, and appointed him their Engineer-in-Chief for the contemplated works
in May of that year. Being at the time resident in Aberdeen, the additional
appointment at Swansea necessitated frequent long journeys by coach via
Edinburgh, Newcastle, Birmingham, and Gloucester, a distance of over five
hundred miles. Swansea at that date—1849 —contained but thirty thousand
inhabitants, and the only harbour works in existence were a few quays built
along the banks of the River Tawe, alongside of which vessels floated or lay
dry, as the tide flowed or ebbed, but the bed of the river was very uneven,
and vessels as they grounded were unable to be strained. Finding such to be
the condition of the harbour in 1849, the Engineer recommended the Harbour
Trustees to construct a floating basin in the bed of the River Tawe on a
plan similar to that previously adopted at Bristol and “The Pent,” at Dover,
a somewhat favourite scheme during the first half of the present century. A
bend of the Tawe was cut off and converted into the North Dock, or Town
Float, this being really a portion of the old river bed locked and floated,
the fresh water from the interior being carried to the sea by a side cut.
This North Dock, which the accompanying illustration shows to be situated on
the left or western side of the River, and the furthest dock from the R'ver
mouth, has an area of ten and a quarter acres, and a half-tide basin of two
and a half acres. It was completed in 1852, and its beneficial effect,
jointly with the extension of the railway to the docks in 1853 was
manifested by the rise of the tonnage entering the port from
270.000 tons in 1851 to
332,000 tons in 1853. It was during the construction of the lock at the
entrance of this North Dock that Mr. Abernethy first suggested to the
Harbour Trustees the desirability of working the gates by hydraulic power
instead of by the usual hand gear. Sir William Armstrong was applied to,
and, as the result of an interview with the Trustees, designed the
machinery. The increase of trade continued steady and rapid, and in 1858
amounted in round numbers to 500,000 tons. Of this, the increase in the
foreign trade alone was from 60,000 tons to 262.000 tons.
The chief export trade from
Swansea is, of course, coal, of which 267,430 tons were shipped in 1858, and
an additional quantity coastways of 185.712 tons. There was also at that
date a large export of patent fuel—a manufacture for many years peculiar to
Swansea —to all quarters of the world, and a large importation of copper ore
from Cornwall, South America, Cuba, and Australia, the copper smelting
business carried on then representing nearly nine-tenths of the copper
smelting business of the world.
Such a thriving trade as this
promised speedily to outgrow the accommodation provided in 1852, and it
became necessary to look for some means of extending the harbour. Before the
formation of the River Float in 1852, a project had been started for
building new docks on the west side of the river near its entrance, and
nearly at right angles to the North Dock, and a Company was formed for that
purpose. An Act also was obtained for its construction, and operations were
commenced, but for some reason or other the Harbour Trustees did not
associate themselves with the scheme, but preferred to persevere with the
Floating Basin, which they finished with their own funds. If their refusal
was grounded on a suspicion that the Company would not be able to perform
their programme, they were justified by the event, for after a few years
funds became scarce, the works languished, and at last after an expenditure
of £100,000 came to a standstill. In this condition they remained for three
years, until the Trustees came to terms with the insolvent Company, and took
the unfinished works off their hands, again deputing Mr. Abernethy to act as
their engineer, who placed Mr. William Neill there as Resident Engineer, the
Contractor being Mr. William Tredwell.
In making this dock, one of
the first operations was the formation of an embankment for the purpose of
excluding the sea; timber groynes were constructed at intervals of 1500 feet
to the full extent of the proposed embankment- The rough boulder gravel
found immediately under the sand and the made ground was then tipped between
the groynes at the seaward end, the lighter material being deposited within
and towards the landward end. The action of the sea and the tide removed the
lighter portion of the gravel, and carried it to the westward, leaving the
heavier portion and the boulder stones to gradually form a beach and serve
as a facework to the embankment, and this proved an effective barrier to the
encroachment of the sea.
The successful application of
hydraulic machinery for working the lock of the North Dock and Newport Dock
(page 166), where the gates were much heavier, induced the engineer to adopt
a similar system for the entrance to this new dock, and Sir William
Armstrong & Co. again supplied all the requisite machinery for opening and
shutting the gates, bridges, and sluices, as well as for turning the
capstans. Hydraulic coal hoists which had shortly before proved a great
success at Newport were also supplied by the same firm of mechanical
engineers and erected upon the quay.
The new dock taken in hand on
the west side of the entrance of the river was called the South Dock,
consisting of an outer basin of thirteen acres, with 4,800 feet of quay
wall, and an inner basin of four acres with a quay wall of 1,600 feet, these
two basins communicating with each other by means of a lock 300 feet by 60
feet.
SWANSEA DOCKS.
The old high water mark ran
through the centre of the dock and lock, so that one half of the area
enclosed was reclaimed from the sea, and by this reclamation the once
fashionable Swansea Sands disappeared, but Mr. Clark Russell has well
expressed the view entertained by the inhabitants with regard to such a
change when he wrote of Swansea in 1882:—“One must not think of the
beautiful, but of the useful, with a capital U. Nobody talks of sea views or
mountains here, but of how many ships were cleared last week, and what the
export and import returns were and the like.”
After the completion of the
South Dock, which was opened by Miss Talbot, daughter of the Lord Lieutenant
of the County of Glamorgan, in 1858, at a cost of £169,073, the export and
import trades continued to grow apace, and in 1872 the then Mayor, Mr. James
Livingstone, advocated the construction of a third dock on the east side of
the river Tawe. The Act for this large addition to the Port was obtained in
1874, and in March, 1880. Sir II. Vivian, afterwards Lord Swansea, laid the
central stone of the lock amid demonstrations of great enthusiasm. The work
involved the removal of 2,000,000 cubic yards of earth and the building of
80,000 cubic feet of masonry, at a cost of half a million sterling. The dock
area is twenty-three acres, the depth on the outer sill of the lock being
thirty-two feet at ordinary tides, and that over the inner sill twenty-seven
feet, while the Tidal Basin by which it is approached has an area of four
and a half acres.
It will be remembered that in
the account of the life and work at Aberdeen at page 70, mention was made of
Mr. Abernethy having been deputed to superintend the arrangements for the
disembarkation of Her Majesty the Queen on the occasion of her first visit
to Scotland in September, 1848, and it is a coincidence worthy of mention
that on the occasion of the first visit of H.R.H. the Prince and Princess of
Wales to South Wales thirty-three years afterwards to open the Prince of
Wales’ Dock he was again appointed to receive and conduct the Royal Party to
inspect the gates and masonry of the lock, prior to requesting the Prince to
touch the lever which was to open the gates, and the Princess to sever the
white boon by which act the suspended bottle of champagne fell and
christened the dock, The Prince of Wales’ Dock. The Daily News of October
19th, 1881, gives His Royal Highness’s speech at the banquet, part of which
runs thus:—“It has long been the wish of the Princess and myself to have
some public occasion of visiting the Principality, from which we are proud
to derive our title, and we are particularly glad that our first visit to
South Wales should be connected with the opening of these docks at Swansea.”
In concluding his speech, His
Royal Highness complimented Mr. Abernethy, President of the Institution of
Civil Engineers, upon the successful termination of his professional labours
as the engineer.
The late Mr. T. A. Walker,
who afterwards made the Severn Tunnel, acted as contractor and completed the
work in the remarkably short space of two-and-a-half years.
The population of Swansea had
increased in 1881 from 10,000 in 1852 to 100,000, and the town become the
metallurgical centre of the world, the district abounding in large and busy
works, at which some 20,000 hands were employed in the production in
marketable form of iron, patent fuel, copper, tin plates, steel spelter,
silver, lead, zinc, nickel, sulphate of ammonia, oxalic acid, cobalt,
ultramarine, &c., and the gross income from imports had reached 67 per
cent., and from exports 64 per cent.
In the year 1885 the tonnage
in the Prince of Wales’ Dock amounted to 623,280 tons, and the revenue from
it till June of that year £39,227, while the working expenses and
maintenance amounted to but 37 per cent., while the gross income of the
Harbour Trustees had risen from £5,000 in 1851 to £100,000 in 1886. It is a
circumstance worth noticing that no grant of public money has ever been made
in respect of improving the Port of Swansea. In addition to the construction
of the Prince of Wales’ Dock, the West Pier was lengthened from 600 feet to
1,000 feet, an East Pier built, and the approach channel deepened to 28 feet
at high water ordinary tides.
In 1893 he again prepared
plans for a new dock at Swansea, completing thereby a professional
association with the port of forty-six years duration. |
