On the 1st of January, 1875, a number of gentlemen, denominated the Fleetwood Estate Company, Limited, and consisting of Sir Jno. Hawkshaw, knt., of Westminster; Thos. H. Carr, J. M. Jameson, C.E., and Philip Turner, esqrs., of Fleetwood; Capt. Henry Turner and Sturges Meek, esq., C.E., of Manchester; Thomas Barnes, esq., of Farnworth; James Whitehead, esq., of Preston; Joshua Radcliffe, esq., of Rochdale; Samuel Burgess, esq., of Altringham; William Barber Buddicom, esq., C.E., of Penbedw, Mold; and Samuel Fielden, esq., of Todmorden; purchased the lands, buildings, manorial rights and privileges (including wreckage, market-tolls, and advowson of the church), of the late Sir P. H. Fleetwood, in and near this town, from the trustees of his property, for £120,000, subscribed in equal shares. Although negotiations were satisfactorily concluded in 1874, it was not until the month just stated that the actual transfer was effected, and the gentlemen enumerated became lords of the soil. We must not omit to name that a portion of the Fleetwood estate, amounting to about 600 acres, lying between the old and present railway embankments, had been acquired in a similar manner, for £25,000, in 1871, by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company. Under the new proprietorship leases for building purposes are sold or let, as formerly, for terms of 999 years.
In closing this account of Fleetwood as a watering-place and town, and before delineating its career as a seaport, it should be stated that the census of the inhabitants taken in 1871 yielded a total of 4,428 persons, of whom 2,310 were males, and 2,118 females; but in the limited period which has elapsed since that result was obtained the population has grown considerably, and the increase during a similar interval after any of the previous official returns cannot be taken as a criterion of the present numerical strength of the residents.
Fleetwood was started in 1839 as a distinct port with customs established by an order of the Treasury; subsequently in 1844 it was reduced to a creek under Preston; then two years later elevated to a sub-port; and finally in 1849 reinstated in its first position of independence. The iron wharf was completed in 1841, and is constructed of iron piles, each of which weighs two and three quarter tons, driven seventeen feet below low water mark, and faced with plates of the same metal, seven or eight inches thick, which are rivetted to the flanges of the piles, and filled in at the back with concrete. The wooden pier, about 400 feet in length, and abutting on the north extremity of this massive structure, was finished in 1845, and roofed over shortly afterwards. On the 22nd of July in the ensuing year, the last stone of the wharf wall, erected by Mr. Julian A. Tarner, of Fleetwood, and extending fourteen hundred feet from the south end of the iron wharf in the direction of the railway, was laid; and at the same time the coal-shoots connected with the new portion of the quay were approaching completion.
The improvement of the harbour was entrusted to Captain Denham, R.N., F.R.S., under whose superintendence the seaward channel of the river was buoyed and beaconed, being rendered safe for night navigation by the erection of a marine lighthouse, in 1840, at the foot of Wyre, nearly two miles from the mouth of the river at Fleetwood. This lighthouse was the first one erected on Mitchell’s screw-pile principle. The house in which the lightkeepers lived was hexagonal in form, and measured 22 feet in diameter, from angle to angle, and nine feet in height. It was furnished with an outside door and three windows; and divided within into two compartments, one of which was supplied with a fireplace and other necessaries, whilst the second was used purely as a dormitory. The lantern was twelve-sided, 10 feet in diameter and 8 feet in height to the top of the window, the illumination it produced being raised about 31 feet above the level of the highest spring-tide, and 44½ feet above that of half-tide. A few years since, in 1870, this lighthouse was carried away by a vessel, and for some time a light-ship occupied the station, but subsequently another edifice, similar in appearance and construction to the original one, was raised about two hundred yards south of the same site.
Captain Denham, having accomplished his survey of the river and harbour, issued the following report in 1840:—
“The river Wyre assumes a river character near Bleasdale Forest, in Lancashire, and after crossing the line of road between Preston and Lancaster, at Garstang, descends as a tortuous stream for five miles westward; then, in another five mile reach of one-third of a mile wide, north-westward, sweeping the light of Skippool, near Poulton-le-Fylde, on its way, and bursting forth from the narrows at Wardleys, upon a north trend, into the tidal estuary which embraces an area of three miles by two, producing a combined reflux of back-water, equal to fifty million cubical yards, and dipping with such a powerful under-scour during the first half-ebb, as to preserve a natural basin just within its coast-line orifice, capable of riding ships of eighteen or twenty feet draft, at low water spring tides; perfectly sheltered from all winds, and within a cable’s length of the railway terminus, nineteen miles from Preston, and in connection with Manchester, Lancaster, Liverpool, and London. It is on the western margin of this natural dock that the town, wharfs, and warehouses are rising into notice, under the privilege of a distinct port, and abreast of which, the shores aptly narrow the back-water escape into a bottle-neck strait of but one-sixth the width of the estuary, so impelling it down a two-mile channel as scarcely to permit diminishment of its three and four-mile velocity until actually blended with the cross-set of the Lune and Morecambe Bay ebb waters. Thus, the original short course of Wyre to the open sea, is freed from the usual river deposit, its silting matter being kept in suspension until transferred and hurried forth at right angles by the ocean stream. It is, therefore, the peculiar feature and fortune of Wyre that, instead of a bar intervening between its bed or exit trough and the open sea, a precipitous river shelf, equal to a fall of forty-seven feet in one-third of a mile, exists.”
The first steam dredger, of 20 horse power, was launched on the 21st of January, 1840, and the important work of deepening and clearing the channel at once commenced.
At a meeting of the Tidal Harbour Commissioners held at the port on the 21st October, 1845, it was stated that the harbour dues were—for coasting vessels, 1d. per ton, and for foreign ships, 3d. per ton; whilst the light charges were in all cases 3d. per ton. At the same time it was observed that the whole of the dues amounted in 1835 to £36 2s. 0d., and in 1845 to £528 9s. 5d. (In 1855 the dues on similar accounts reached £1,520; and in 1875, £2,427.) The Walney light was reported to be a great tax on vessels coming to Fleetwood, as they were charged 3d. a ton per year, commencing on the 1st of January; so that if a vessel arrived at the port on the 28th of December, a charge was made for the year just closing, and a further sum demanded from the craft on going out in the month of January. This was not the case with regard to similar taxes in other localities, where one payment exempted a ship for twelve months; and consequently the regulation acted in some degree as a deterrent to traders, who might under a more liberal arrangement have been induced to have availed themselves in larger numbers of the facilities offered by the new haven. The total length of useful wharfage in 1845 extended over 1,000 feet, being well supplied with posts and rings, and possessing no less than sixteen hand cranes, thirteen of which were for the purpose of unloading vessels at the quay. There was a depth of five feet at low-water spring tides from the marine lighthouse, at the foot of Wyre, to the wharf, and it was proposed to dredge until ten feet had been obtained.
On examining the state of the shipping trade of the harbour during the year 1845, it is discovered that the imports and exports of foreign produce and home manufacture, respectively, far outstripped those of any of the few preceding years. There had been vessels laden with guano from Ichaboe, sugar from the West Indies, flax from Russia, and timber from both the Baltic and Canada, making in all twenty-three ships of large tonnage, only two of which returned with cargoes, in far from complete stages of fulness, from the warehouses of Manchester, Preston, or other adjacent commercial towns. The coasting trade had also given earnest of its progressive tendencies by a remarkable increase in the number of discharges and loadings over those of the previous twelve months, and notwithstanding the four hundred feet of extra wharfage, forming the wooden pier, just opened, the demands for quay berths could not always be supplied.
New bonding warehouses were erected towards the close of 1845 at the corner of Adelaide and Dock Streets, the temporary ones previously in use being abandoned, and comprised three stories capable of providing accommodation for 400 hogsheads of sugar at one time, as well as spacious vaults and other conveniences for duty-bearing articles. The goods allowed to be warehoused were wine, spirits, tea, tobacco, East India goods, and goods in general.