A Treatise On The Principles And Practice Of Harbour Engineering

6 HARBOUR ENGINEERING certain points works of a protective nature, which will enable imperilled shipping to survive the disastrous effects of sudden tempests. So far the matter incontrovertibly affects the national welfare. Next, as regards interests which are open to the charge of being purely, or mainly, local. In regard to ports which have grown up entirely on a commercial basis associated with markets and industries in the immediate vieinity, the same requisition for state interference is not so apparent, and while conditions are favourable and trade prosperous, there is little desire or need to raise the point for discussion. So long as local rates and charges are sufficient to meet all demands entailed in the upkeep of such commercial ports, it is difficult to see why they should not be allowed and encouraged to retain their own independence and work out their own programmes of development. It occasionally happens, however, that a commercial port falls behind the times ; it may be from various causes—possibly from indifferent administration, mismanagement, culpable malversation, and so on, but generally and ultimately from lack of funds to carry out improvements which have become necessary by reason of the continually rising standards of ship- building. In such cases more than temporary stagnation is threatened. Maritime engineering works, having once become obsolete, cease to be utilisable at all in any practical sense, and there is no prospect before them of anything but a speedy decline of their trade. Now the state can hardly regard with equanimity the extinction of any one of its centres of commercial activity. Therefore it becomes a question—and the plea has been urged in at least one prominent instance of late—whether the State is not bound to step in with the necessary financial assistance or guarantorship, on the ground that by so doing she is favouring the interests of the community at large. In a general sense the contention is legitimate, but the application of such a principle must necessarily be governed very largely by the special conditions of each particular case, since there may be ciroumstances under which a grant would be injudicious as well as unjustifiable.1 Lastly, in regard to the great majority of harbours—small, almost iusignificant havens, many of them—fringing the coasts of every civilised country, where a hardy race of fishermen wring a strenuous and ofttimes scanty harvest from the sea. The districts in many cases are poor, and the calling could hardly be classified as lucrative. Yet there are many thousands of people in this country alone dependent on it for sustenance, either directly or indirectly. Where local resources are so utterly inadequate to cope with 1 “ It may be urged that the expenditure involved in keeping ahead of the developments of shipping is greater than port authorities should be called upon to incur from their own resources, and there is doubtless, in some cases, something to be said in favour of that view, although I hold that such expenditure is reproductive in a variety of ways beyond the mere income arising from the exaction of dues. In my opinion, however, when port authorities, who have striven to provide and have provided certain facilities, are unable to incur the necessary expenditure for further development, it is desirable that the state should come to their assistance and thereby aid these authorities in developing ports on national rather than on local lines.”—The Rt. Hon. Lord Pirrie on Harbour and Dock Requirements, Engineering Conference, 1907.