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Abstract
Bridport is an interesting case study of a port created in an unlikely place to meet local industrial demand. A protected harbour only from the 1740s, it was successful enough to be consolidated and expanded in the 1820s. It enjoyed a 30-year heyday before railway competition started to bite into its trade. Traditional exports of rope, nets, twine and sailcloth, especially for the Newfoundland fishery, then began to give way to gravel for construction. By the early twentieth century, coal and culm were beginning to be replaced as the main inward cargoes by timber, oilcake, and, later in a declining overall trade, cement and fertilizer. A sailing-ship port until the early 1920s, Bridport continued to function thereafter for another 65 years despite the hazards of a difficult entrance. Having dwindled further after the Second World War, commercial traffic came to an end in the 1980s, at much the same time, and for many of the same reasons, as it did at a number of other West Country ports.
Notes
1 Sims, Rope, Net, and Twine, 21.
2 The background to the Newfoundland trade is well set out in Greenhill, The Merchant Schooners.
3 The first major vessel built at the yard was launched in 1779, the last exactly a hundred years later. The largest, at 1,002 tons, was built in 1853 for the Australian trade. Gosling, Bridport Past, 65. The yard remained open for repair work until 1885. Greenhill, The Merchant Schooners, 156–8. Cocksedge, Bridport Harbour: Ships built 1769–1879.
4 Payne, Dorset Harbours, 112.
6 The aim was to provide a depth between the piers of 11 ft. at spring tides to enable vessels of 100 tons burthen to enter the port – see Symonds, ‘Bridport Harbour Through Seven Centuries’, 187. By 1794 this ‘sluice’ had been replaced by sluice gates on the northern side of the harbour more like those in use today. But clearing the un-navigable sand bar that built up with a strong southerly wind could, even in the 1920s take several days. Uglow, Sailorman, 84 and Bagshaw, Coasting Sailorman, 51. Both authors visited Bridport as masters of Thames sailing barges.
7 Daniell, A Voyage Round Great Britain, vol. 8, 6.
8 Symonds, ‘Bridport Harbour Through Seven Centuries’, 193. The population of Bridport increased by a fifth between 1801 and 1821.
9 Dorset History Centre (hereafter DHC), ‘Imports and Exports at Bridport Harbour 1743–1808’, showing figures compiled for the harbour trustees at the end of the period. Whereas coal shipments over the whole period increased ten-fold from 480 to 4,600 tons, ‘other cargoes’ only just more than doubled from 1,242 to 2,642 tons.
10 DHC, ‘Shipping and Trade in Bridport and Lyme Regis 1786–1823’. Between 1783 and 1790 annual hemp imports averaged 337 tons, flax imports 293 tons. By 1805 local production of hemp and flax had been overtaken by imports. Sims, Rope, Net, and Twine, 26 and 13. Outward freights, however, although increasing four-fold between the periods 1753–63 and 1793–1803, were always much less than inward ‘other cargoes’ alone.
11 Matthews, A Descriptive and Historical Account of West Bay, 32.
12 DHC, ‘Shipping and Trade in Bridport and Lyme Regis’.
13 Matthews, A Descriptive and Historical Account of West Bay, 41 and 45. Of the 240 ships entering the port, typically about 40 would have arrived from foreign or colonial (including Channel Island) ports. In 1845 there were as many as 255 arrivals carrying cargoes totalling just under 20,000 tons.
14 Symonds, ‘Bridport Harbour Through Seven Centuries’, 195.
15 Sims, Rope, Net, and Twine, 27.
16 Payne, Dorset Harbours, 76.
17 Bridport Local History Centre (hereafter BLHC), arrivals and departures 1863–1900.
18 Bridport News 7 Oct. 1881 and 30 Dec. 1881.
19 Sims, Rope, Net, and Twine, 31.
20 Atterbury, Just a Line from West Bay, 11.
21 The outward timber trade came to an end in 1898. BLHC, arrivals and departures, 1863–1900.
22 Sims, Rope, Net, and Twine, 32.
23 BLHC, arrivals and departures 1900–54.
24 BLHC, Bridport Harbour Order 1921. Decided upon at a council meeting in Aug. 1920 (Bridport News 13 Aug. 1920), the transfer was given the Royal Assent in Jul. 1921 and took effect on 1 Jan. 1922.
25 The background was best summed up at a meeting six months after the council's decision to go ahead: a councillor stated that the commissioners had not asked for the take-over, but had asked to borrow money from the council which they had refused saying that they (the council) wished ‘to have it (the port) in their own hands’. Bridport News 18 Feb. 1921.
26 See, for example, Bridport News 29 Jul. 1921 and 16 Sep. 1921.
27 BLHC, Pilotage Order for the Bridport District and General Bye-laws (for ‘outport pilotage districts’). The orders took effect on 12 Jun. 1921. Trinity House oversaw pilotage at thirty eight such districts around small ports in England and Wales.
28 See Mead, Trinity House, 138, and Martin, Sea and River Pilots, 61, for details of compulsory pilotage.
29 That would be consistent with the destinations of gravel cargoes for the period, almost all of which were northern ports. It might also explain why traffic through the port increased in the 1930s when economic activity nationally fell.
30 BLHC, arrivals and departures 1900–54
31 BLHC, arrivals and departures 1954–89. The only countervailing trend was that in the second half of the period more of the ships were in the 200–250 registered ton range, rather than conforming to the earlier norm of around 150 tons.
32 Gravel shipments continued at a low level until 1985, the last few consigned to Vannersborg in Sweden. Thereafter extraction licences were no longer renewed by Dorset County Council. That in turn is the reason why, in the last three years of the port's operation, there was the occasional inward cargo of grit from Alderney.
33 BLHC, arrivals and departures 1954–89.
34 Atterbury, Just a Line from West Bay, 6.
35 The gap between the piers was never more than 50 feet, and with cladding added to them in later years a little less. Until the cavities between them were filled with rubble and stone in 1866, the supports were no more than wooden piles.
36 Matthews, A Descriptive and Historical Account of West Bay, 8.
37 Channel Pilot, 1908 and 1920 editions. Interestingly both references state that the buoy was for warping vessels both out from and in to the harbour. Presumably a line to the buoy when entering would have been used to check the ship's stern in fluky winds. There is good photograph of a schooner hauling out of the harbour in 1913 in Bouquet, West Country Sail, 12.
38 Dorset Within Living Memory, 29, citing a contributor's memories of the harbour in the late 1920s. The 1931 edition of the Channel Pilot makes no mention of the warping buoy.
39 See photograph and report in Bridport News 18 May 1923.