Liverpools lost dock

[John Arton]

Caught a little bit of Tony Robsons time team special on Liverpools lost dock, really interesting.
During digging for redevelopement in the Nova Scotia area of Liverpool (does that area still exist) they came across the foundations of the first ever dock in Liverpool built in the 1700's. Seemed to be quite away from present docks but did not catch exactly where. The program was on sky documentaries but cannot remember which channel, possibly Nat Geo or History.
The original ledger book recording the city elders (handwritten) showed that they raised £6000 to build it by mortaging the land where it was built and then later on mortaging the whole of the cities (at that time) land for a further £10000 in order to build more docks. With the advent of the slave trade the city really took off and most of the docks were built in that time.
The strange thing was that the original ledger book containing all these minutes was, I think, held by the University of Southampton, though I may be mistaken and it was just a researcher from there going through it with Tony Robson. If the actual book is held in Southampton then Liverpool should be up in arms and get that book back and place it in, say, the Maritime museum, as it is Liverpools history and how it became one of the largest and busiest ports in the world.
Have a search on Sky documentaries and see if you can find it or maybe the Time Team specials are on the internet?. would have loved to have seen it all but she who must be obeyed had other plans for my time this pm so was only able to watch a snippet of it.
rgds
Capt. John Arton

[Chris Allman]

During digging for redevelopement in the Nova Scotia area of Liverpool (does that area still exist)

I have certainly never heard of it and I live near and visit Liverpool at least one a week. However I have done some research and found out the following from a librarian for the Liverpool History Society :-

Mann Island near Liverpool`s Pierhead was once known as 'Nova Scotia'.

This was due to the off-loading of lumber laden ships from Canada's east coast. This lumber was to feed the Mersey shipbuilders which were located, at that time, on the Liverpool side of the River where the South Docks are now located. It was because of the value of docking space that the shipbuilders moved over the water to the Wirral.

Also the Canadians began to build the ships themselves, sail them in ballast to Liverpool where they were sold to the shipping companies. The famous Black Ball Line clipper MARCO POLO was one of those ships. Built in St. John, New Brunswick of softwood, she made the fastest west to east crossing of the North Atlantic of any ship before her and subsequently, under the command of Capt. Bully Forbes, became the fastest ship on the sea.

Her regular route was from Liverpool to Geelong and Melbourne and return. Captain Forbes is buried in Smithdown Road cemetery and the inscription on his headstone reads "Master of the MARCO POLO".

I never knew this and have learnt something today, thanks John.

Chris

[John Albert Evans]

Captain,

I read about the Nova Scotia Area on a site on here but for the life of me i cannt remember the name of it. (The link)
It was very interesting because the Nova Scotia area was where the Shipping Federation Offices at Mann Island was situated. All Liverpool seamen knew where that place was.
It was called the Nova Scotia area because thats where the timber ships from Nova Scotia landed.
I might suggest that you fiddle about on Google with a combination of the above names and I'm sure you will find it.
Good hunting

John Albert Evans

[Gulliver]

I'd never watched it,and tried Channel 4 On Demand-it's been deleted.However....it's here on YOUTUBE Hooray ! Yeh Yeh!.gifGogglebox.gif

[Jim Brady]

I have seen that show and when it came to build on this site they decided it was a site of historic interest so it was preserved.If you come to Liverpool and go to what is known as Liverpool 1 which is now a big shopping area there is an inspection hole in the ground covered in glass of course where you can inspect this old dock.Many on here have walked over this site without knowing it.
Regards.
Jim.B.

[John Arton]

Gulliver
I Looked back later and it was on channel 4, pity it has been deleted from their look up service. I don't know if it was a repeat or a new episode. Hopefully if it was a new one it will be repeated sometime later or appear on one of the discovery channels. Certainly hope so as the little bits I saw looked very interesting.
I watched the Liverpool 1 centre being built whilst running up to the MSC with Stolts but none of the pilots I used to chat with (I had quite a few mates in the Liverpool Pilots ) ever said anything about the fact that it was being built on the site of the very first dock ever built. Again I would say that the original minutes book shown in the show, if it is indeed down at Southampton UNI should be returned to Liverpool and put on display there so all the citizens can get a true look at the history of their city. One other thing I remember from the program was that apparentley a river or stream used to run into the Mersey along the line of what is now one of the major streets in the city centre, wonder what happened to that?
rgds
JA

[Gulliver]

[QUOTE=John Arton;98090]Gulliver
I Looked back later and it was on channel 4, pity it has been deleted from their look up service. I don't know if it was a repeat or a new episode. Hopefully if it was a new one it will be repeated sometime later or appear on one of the discovery channels. Certainly hope so as the little bits I saw looked very interesting.[QUOTE]

??

I don't know if you have missed it,John,but I put a link to the video in my post #4!

Gulliver

[John Arton]

Gulliver
Thanks, saw the link to utube but have not had time to view it yet, also utube runs very slowly on my puter with loads of buffering due to my broadband speed. Hopefully we will shortly be getting an upgrade from BT so may be able to watch it peacefully.
rgds
JA

[Tony Morcom]

I have just watched this on YouTube. It was a fantastic feat not only to construct it in the first place, but to excavate it all now and piece together the history of Liverpool. I also added this to our video section. Thanks to John and Gulliver for bringing it to our attention.