BRITAIN’S CLAIM AS CHIEF SEA HOSTESS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18889, 12 October 1929, Page 24 (Supplement)

BRITAIN’S CLAIM AS CHIEF SEA HOSTESS.

WORK OF PORT EXPANSION AT THE SOUTHAMPTON DOCKS.

BRITAIN —so long the mistress of flie seas—is now busily at work strengthening her claim to he the supreme hostess of the seas. Liverpool, at a cost of many millions of pounds sterling, has her fine new Gladstone Dock, while Bristol and the Tyne, among others, have recently added to and improved their port facilities, says a writer in the "London Daily Chronicle.”

It is at Southampton and Tilbury, however, where enterprise is taking its strongest stranglehold of difficulties. At both k places engineers are altering the map. so fashioning useless mudlands and marshes that the great game of competing for the ocean liner traffic can be carried on the better.

Southampton’s -plans—which are primarily those of the Southern Railway, owner of the docks for nearly forty years—are cited as part'cularly striking. Although a comparatively small seaport, Southampton is the premier passenger port of Britain. It has only four miles of quay, compared with thirty miles in London and thirtyseven miles in Liverpool. That position it is determined to strengthen, and the ultimate effect of the Southern Railway scheme, which, if carried out in its entirety, would cost about £13,000.000, will be that twenty vessels of the size of the Aquitania can be accommodated at one time at 6600 feet of additional berth space. At present the scheme is divided into three stages. Looking Ahead.

Looking ahead, Southampton' has determined that whatever bulk and corpulence the Atlantic yrevhound of the future develops there si all be ample room for her. In the Southampton of 1939 the 407 acres of mudlan.i in the bay of the River Test, two miles long and extending from the Royal P:er to | Mil brook Point, will have been reclaimed. Already under the first section of the scheme, which is making good progress, eighteen acres have 1 een secured, and an expanse over which pleasure craft sailed a little over a year ago is now a contractor’s yard. When the scheme is completed the face of the reclaimed land will, for the greater part, be a deep water quay wall 7400 feet long. Cargo sheds, rail tracks and vehicular roads will appear and on a great portion ol what was once mudland it is confidently expected that new industries will lse. In about two /ears’ time 3500 feet of quay, with a dredged depth of 4o fe't at low tide, will be available This will con e as a w elcome relief in Southi ampton’s ‘‘rush hours for pressure Jon the resources of the pert is t.ucreas-