MODERNISATION OF DOCKS

Chronicle (Levin), 4 March 1946, Page 3

MODERNISATION OF DOCKS

OVER £8,000,000 TO BE SPENT AT LIVERPOOL More thas £8-million is to be spent in modernising the docks at Liverpool, Britain's second largest port. The London Evening Standard reports that the work has already been begun by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board and will cost £4-million in wages alone. Important features of the scheme are the new river entrances which will enable ships to enter and leave the docks at almost any time, whatever the state of the tide. Hitherto the tides have interfered with the comings and goings of ships at certain times; at the height of the spring tides Liverpool has to contend with a rise and fall of nearly 30 feet.

The first step will be to repair the vital water link between the big Gladstone Dock and the other docks. To repair this link, which was damaged by a German bomb, it will mean more than a thousand hours underwaterwork by divers. Sixty-foot steel piles have been assembled and pile-driving engines are ready to start hammering them home. A complete dam will be built in four months. The whole dock system, with its seven and a-half mile frontage, will remain fully occupied whilst improve ments are made. The most ambitious part of the modernisation scheme concerns a direct cut through to the river which will eliminate the two existing locks and allow passage of big ships whatever the state of the tide. Known as the Canada Dock Scheme, this work, which will transform the northern end dock system, will cost about £7-mil-lion