Wednesday 6 January 2010

RIVER RIBBLE NAVIGATION and PRESTON DOCK


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The Ribble Navigation was for years a very busy shipping lane right from the days of smaller wooden craft which carried coal round via the Douglas from Wigan to power the mills and factories,and Bricks from Hesketh Bank.In the age of steam bigger and bigger vessels neccessitated the building of Preston Dock,a massive project involving redirecting the course of the river to a more navigable walled channel we see today at the Penwortham Bridge.The Dock is situated where the original bend of the river was.Roll on Roll off ships to and from Ireland,Banana boats and all manner of others were all loaded and offloaded at this second biggest dock in the UK at the time.
There are some films made by a docker in the 1960s showing life at Preston Dock

See Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71lfXFm5fZs

Although the dock closed to freight traffic in 1982,the dock complex now serves as a marina and as a large retail estate with leisure area.The Ribble navigation is today increasingly used by canal and sea-going pleasure craft since the opening of the the Ribble Link to the Lancaster Canal;once isolated boaters have started uprating their equipment and crossing the estuary from the River Douglas and Leeds-Liverpool Canal at Tarleton.As the tidal entrance to the link(also called Savick Navigation)is limited to tide times,if a slot is missed the boat makes for Preston and catches a later appointment to enter.
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