Port of Liverpool Building
The
Port of Liverpool is the name for the enclosed 7.5
mile dock system that runs from
Herculaneum
Dock
to Seaforth
Dock
, in the city of Liverpool
, England
, on the east
side of the River
Mersey
. It is combined with the dock facilities built
around the Great
Float
of the Wirral Peninsula
, located on the west side of the
river.
The
working docks are operated by Mersey Docks and Harbour
Company, the docks to the south of the Pier Head
are operated by British Waterways.
Connections
At one point the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company railway totalled
104 miles (166 km) of line, with connections to many other
railways. A section of the line ran, unsegregated from other road
traffic, along the dock road. Today only the
Canada Dock Branch is used.
For
passengers disembarking from the new cruise liner terminal, city
centre circular buses call at the terminal directly, while Moorfields
and James
Street
are the nearest Merseyrail stations.
History
The interconnected dock system, entailing ship movements within the
dock system 24 hours a day, isolated from the high River Mersey
tides, were the most advanced port system in the world. Parts of
the system are now a
World Heritage
Site.
Both
White Star Line and
Cunard Line were based at the port.
It was also the home
port of many great ships, including RMS Baltic and the ill starred
Tayleur, MV Derbyshire, HMHS Britannic, RMS Lusitania
and the RMS Titanic
.
In 1971 what would be the last transatlantic liner for over 30
years sailed from Liverpool. Cruise liners returned to Liverpool in
2008, where they dock at the new cruise liner terminal.
Ships that
have called at Liverpool include RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2)
[Grand Princess| from Bermuda
and the
"Queen Mary 2", along with a number of large Royal Navy
ships. As well as being a calling point, cruises also set
out from Liverpool. Liverpool is one of the few cities in the world
where ocean going liners can berth in the city centre, providing a
spectacular addition to the waterfront skyline.
The
Liverpool Dockers'
Strike in 1995 was a pivotal point for the Port of Liverpool.
The dispute ended in 1998.
Recent activity
In 2007 Liverpool was the United Kingdom's seventh largest port by
tonnage handled.
| Product |
2004 |
2003 |
2002 |
2001 |
| Grain |
2,289,000 tonnes |
2,377,000 tonnes |
2,360,000 tonnes |
2,455,000 tonnes |
| Timber |
295,000 tonnes |
391,000 tonnes |
406,000 tonnes |
452,000 tonnes |
| Bulk Liquids |
774,000 tonnes |
727,000 tonnes |
788,000 tonnes |
707,000 tonnes |
| Bulk Cargo |
6,051,000 tonnes |
6,296,000 tonnes |
5,572,000 tonnes |
5,026,000 tonnes |
| Oil Terminal |
11,406,000 tonnes |
11,406,000 tonnes |
11,604,000 tonnes |
11,236,000 tonnes |
| General Cargo |
374,000 tonnes |
556,000 tonnes |
468,000 tonnes |
514,000 tonnes |
| Total |
32,171,000 tonnes |
31,753,000 tonnes |
30,564,000 tonnes |
30,501,000 tonnes |
| Passengers |
720,000 |
734,000 |
716,000 |
654,000 |
| Containers |
616,000 |
578,000 |
535,000 |
524,000 |
| RoRo |
513,000 |
476,000 |
502,000 |
533,000 |
Quotes about Liverpool docks
'For more than six weeks, the ship Highlander lay in Prince's Dock;
and during that time, besides making observations upon things
immediately around me, I made sundry excursions to the neighboring
docks, for I never tired of admiring them.
Previous to this, having only seen the miserable wooden wharves,
and slip-shod, shambling piers of New York, the sight of these
mighty docks filled my young mind with wonder and delight...
[I]n Liverpool, I beheld long China walls of masonry; vast piers of
stone; and a succession of granite-rimmed docks, completely
inclosed, and many of them communicating, which almost recalled to
mind the great American chain of lakes: Ontario, Erie, St. Clair,
Huron, Michigan, and Superior. The extent and solidity of these
structures, seemed equal to what I had read of the old Pyramids of
Egypt...
For miles you may walk along that river-side, passing dock after
dock, like a chain of immense fortresses:—Prince's, George's,
Salt-House, Clarence, Brunswick, Trafalgar, King's, Queen's, and
many more.'
Herman Melville,
Redburn - his first voyage, 1849
'It is a region, this seven-mile sequence of granite-lipped
lagoons, which is invested ... with some conspicuous properties of
romance; and yet its romance is never of just that quality one
might perhaps expect ... Neither of the land nor of the sea, but
possessing both the stability of the one and the constant flux of
the other—too immense, too filled with the vastness of the outer,
to carry any sense of human handicraft—this strange territory of
the Docks seems, indeed, to form a kind of fifth element, a place
charged with daemonic issues and daemonic silences, where men move
like puzzled slaves, fretting under orders they cannot understand,
fumbling with great forces that have long passed out of their
control ...' Walter Dixon Scott,
Liverpool 1907,
1907
'...Liverpool is the biggest port ... there was something to see
from Dingle up to Bootle, and as far again as Birkenhead on the
other side. Yellow water, bellowing steam ferries, white
trans-atlantic liners, towers, cranes, stevedores, skiffs,
shipyards, trains, smoke, chaos, hooting, ringing, hammering,
puffing, the ruptured bellies of the ships, the stench of horses,
the sweat, urine, and waste from all the continents of the world
... And if I heaped up words for another half an hour, I wouldn't
achieve the full number, confusion and expanse which is called
Liverpool.'
Karel Capek,
Letters
from England, 1924
Gallery
File:Dkbkpl26.jpg
File:Dkbkpl27.jpgFile:Dkbkpl28.jpg
File:Dkbkpl29.jpgFile:Dkbkpl30.jpgFile:Queens Dock,
Liverpool.jpgFile:Wapping Dock buildings 1.jpg
File:Canning Half Tide Dock.jpgFile:Ship in Dukes Dock.jpg|Dukes
dockFile:Albert Dock3.JPG
File:Boat in Victoria Dock.jpg
File:Liverpool DUKW Splashdown.jpgFile:Princes dock,
Liverpool.jpgFile:Clarence Graving Dock's Enterance .jpg|Clarence
graving dock entrance
File:Dock Clock Tower.jpgFile:Nelson Dock sign.jpg
File:Wellington Dock sign.jpgFile:Waterloo dock
gates.jpgFile:Liverpool - Wellington Dock and the Tall Ships -
geograph.org.uk - 472478.jpg
File:Bramley Dock Dock sign.jpg
File:Sandon Dock sign.jpg
File:Sandon Dock Gate sign.jpg
File:Collingwood Dock sign.jpg
File:HornbyDock.jpg
File:Stanley Dock sign.jpg
File:Stanley Dock 2.jpgFile:Dock in Port of Liverpool
2.jpgFile:GladstoneLock.jpgFile:GladstoneDocks-June2009.jpg
See also
References
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
