Shipping Throughout the Years

Shipping Throughout the Years. . Situated at the mouth of the River Derwent, Workington has a wealth of evidence of sailing vessels being loaded with coal for shipment to Ireland as far back as the 1700s. The earliest facilities have been found in the area known as Merchants Quay where sailing ships would bring in cargos such as tobacco or general groceries and depart loaded with coal., The growth of iron manufacturing in the 1850s led to the construction of a wet dock in the 1860s named the Lonsdale Dock. Opened in 1865 the new dock was able to accommodate vessels weighing up to 2000 tons. The dock was located at the landward end of what we now know as Workington Dock and entry was directly from the River Derwent at 90 degrees to the open sea. Cargo handling facilities at this time were totally steam powered with steam rail mounted cranes painstakingly loading and unloading rail wagons hauled around by small saddle tank locomotives., Expansion of the Dock , We the growth in steel production brought about by the arrival of the Bessemer steel plant it was clear that an expansion of the dock would be needed to keep up with the ever increasing size of ships required to export the finished products from the steelworks and the growing import market of raw materials to feed the hungry blast furnaces. As a result, the dock was extended to accommodate vessels up to 10,000 tons, the combined weight of the vessel and cargo Opening in 1927, the Prince of Wales Dock became the main hub of shipping through Workington, a role of which it still performs today. With the opening of the new dock came an improvement in cargo handling facilities with the introduction of electric dock side cranes which were constructed at the Cowans Sheldon and Co Cranemakers in Carlisle, each with a capacity of a 5 ton lift. Most of these 1926 built cranes were superseded in the 1950s 60s by larger 7 or 10 ton capacity cranes although one of the 1926 built examples remained in action until the early 1980s., The Railway Network , Imports of iron ore and exports of steel railway sleepers made up most of the docks business in the mid 1900s. Cargos were moved around the docks by a vast railway network hauled by a mix of venerable steam locos. Diesel locos started to appear from 1956 with the arrival of two Yorkshire engine built 0-4-0 shunters. These worked alongside the steam locos until 1969 when three Fowler built 0-4-0 diesel shunters, displaced by the closure of the Millom ironworks, came onto the scene. The Prince of Wales Dock was operated by a subsidiary of British Steel until 1975 when ownership transferred to Cumbria County Council. This change of ownership came about at a time when the Bessemer plant had closed. Importing iron ore ceased and cold steel was arriving from Redcar Steelworks due to the opening of a deep water berth at Redcar which permitted the use of much larger vessels., Imports and Exports , Finished steel products were exported right up to the end of rail production in 2006. However the port had diversified in the years prior to this with imports of mouton sulphur (Marchon Products at Whitehaven), fuel oils (BP and Shell), timber (local paper mill) and exports of scrap metal making up for the loss of imported iron ore in the 1980s a large coal handing plant was constructed to export locally mined open cast coal. Loading at a maximum of 2000 tons per hour the plant replaced the antiquated faces at Whitehaven. More recently imported gypsum for the plaster board factory at Kirkby Thore made an appearance but nowadays the docks mainly handle raw materials for the ever expanding local paper mill.