A Treatise On The Principles And Practice Of Dock Engineering

DOCK ADMINISTRATION. 7 Hence there must inevitably be undue economy and even parsimony in management, and a reluctance to undertake fresh expenditure on works, however beneficial or necessary. Railway Companies derive a considerable amount of indirect benefit by the proprietorship of docks in touch with their respective systems, quite apart from any specific receipts locally. The facilities for the direct transfer of goods from rail to ship, and vice versâ, are greatly increased without any corresponding augmentation of staff and without friction of negotiation. The diversion of traffic to their lines is often sufficient to compensate a company for the otherwise unremunerative working of their docks. Municipal Councils, nominally the controlling authorities, generally delegate their powers of dock management to a sub-committee, with results that have not been uniformly successful. Town Councillors are elected on a variety of grounds, sometimes personal, but mainly political, and often without the remotest bearing on shipping matters. Now, however versed in the direction of purely urban affairs a councillor may be, it is obvious that, without some active participation in maritime affairs, he will lack the requisite technical knowledge to enable him to deal satisfactorily with important questions affecting the mercantile marine. Hence in such a committee the likelihood of uncertain counsels, sometimes unduly timorous, sometimes the reverse. Public Trusts, specially elected from the classes most intimately associated with the use and exploitation of docks, constitute perhaps the most satisfactory of all forms of government. On a body of this kind would be proper representatives, chosen by an electorate of shipbuilders, ship- owners, merchants, and traders; of all, in fact, who were connected with the shipment of goods, the qualification being the payment of dock or port dues. Ihe particulai ’knowledge possessed by sucli a body would be, and is eminently calculated, to develop the efficiency and prosperity of a port, the efforts of the members being stimulated by a certain amount of self-interest. It must not be overlooked that the welfare of the port involves the welfare of the town, and that the two suffer or flourish together. Hence the necessity for specialist management in both cases. Control by a Government Department, which would naturally involve the inclusion of all ports within one national jurisdiction, cannot be considered a desideratum. Speaking generally, it is admitted that there is a lack of initiative and a diffusion of authority in governmental departments which are not adapted to the successful carrying on of commercial undertakings. Ihe almost inevitable resuit of this system would be the stilling of private t nterprise, and the abandonment of that local patriotism which constitutes the best guarantee of the vitality and energy of a port, at the same time that it affords the best augury for its continued prosperity. We now pass on to a brief resumé of the more prominent historical facts connected with the development of some of the most important ports of the woild. It would be difficult to assign to them any satisfactory order of