Part 1: Roman Times to World War II

Southampton is my favourite port of call and always has been for the last sixty years since my first visit in 1955. The glories of heath and forest in the New Forest were combined with harbour cruises around the port to see the giant Cunard ‘Queens’, the sharp bow of the fast ‘Blue Riband’ record breaker United States, and many more famous liners. The great advantage of Southampton over many other enclosed British docks is the ease of getting good vantage points e.g. Mayflower Park, Town Quay, Western Esplanade to see giant cruise and container ships sailing in and out at close proximity. I can remember walking along the lovely royal Pier, with every ship movement in and out posted daily on the windows of the Pier gatehouse, with wonderful additional information such as SSTQ (Starboard Side to Quay) or PSTQ (Port Side to Quay) for every ship arrival.

Southampton Water is a deep, wide and drowned ria, blessed with a double tide that gives it plenty of room of manoeuvre for very large ships. This enables seafarers to guide the largest ships in the world into and out of port while working up speed or slowing down. The New Forest is an area of outstanding natural beauty, shaped by human use over many thousands of years. It was designated a National Park in 2005 and has an area of 224 square miles. This area that we have today in public perpetuity is mostly due to William I, who designated it as a royal hunting preserve in 1079. Marchwood Military Port, Hythe Pier and the huge Fawley oil refinery all come within the eastern flank of the New Forest.

The fame of Southampton has been made by its Docks, with the double tides caused by the Isle of Wight giving prolonged high water. The Southampton Maritime Museum, now part of the Sea City Museum near the Civic Centre, tells of the great liners and the last fateful voyage of the doomed Titanic. Southampton was badly hit by aerial bombing during World War ii, with the now bombed out Church of the Holy rood dedicated to the merchant seafarers of the city, and includes a memorial fountain to the five hundred local crew members who were drowned two hours after Titanic hit an enormous iceberg at twenty knots at 2340 hours on 14th April 1912.

History of the Port

The roman invasions of England by Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC used Dover and Richborough as the principal landing sites from the Boulogne area. They settled near Southampton at fortified Clausentum around 70 AD, and used Southampton Water heavily for supplies to both Winchester and Salisbury. Other busy roman ports included the roman fort of Arbeia at South Shields with direct supplies from the Rhine for the many legions guarding Hadrian’s Wall. Arbeia and Clausentum were abandoned in 407 AD when the Romans left Britain. As replacements, the Saxons founded many towns including Hamtun on the opposite bank of the Itchen from Clausentum around 700 AD with a population of only five thousand souls. The prefix ‘South’ was later added to ‘Hamtun’ to give the town name of Southampton.

King Canute was crowned King of England at Southampton in 1016, and reigned peaceably for twenty years. The port floating crane with a 150 tonne lift was later christened Canute in 1925 after this famous king; this crane was replaced in 1985 by a new floating crane of 200 tonnes lift. Southampton Castle was built shortly after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, with the Kings of England and their courts residing here enroute to France. After gradually falling into disrepair the castle was rebuilt in 1805 but demolished ten years later. The ‘French raid’ of 1338 of French pirates ruthlessly attacked the lower part of Southampton, killing many citizens including those that had sought sanctuary in St. Michael’s Church.

The Town Quay dates from the 15th century with wool for export stored in the Wool House on the quayside, now a delightful bar and restaurant. The archers of Henry v embarked ships at Town Quay and West Quay for France and the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. In 1476, Italian ships tied up at Town Quay to unload wines, dried fruit, spices and silks from the Mediterranean, with these seafarers entering the town through Watergate. Southampton was a walled town in medieval times, entered by gates such as Bar gate, West gate, East gate, York gate, Friary gate, Watergate and others. Flood gate Bar and god’s House Tower were the southeast gate to the mediaeval town and one of the earliest artillery fortifications in Europe. A ditch ran alongside the tower until the 1850s to trap the excess flood seawater from high flood tides. Centuries later, Town Quay had been enlarged and was the heart of maritime heritage in Southampton. During the last hundred years, Town Quay has served as the principal departure and arrival point for the ferries to the Isle of Wight and Hythe, a flying boat base, and with a nearby huge Floating Dock for repair of transatlantic liners.

In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers, a group of Puritans originally from the Nottingham area, called in at the Town Quay from Holland in their ships Mayflower and Speedwell, seeking a new land in North America for their people and faith. The pair of ships sailed from Southampton, but Speedwell was probably sabotaged by her crew and put into Dartmouth and Plymouth for repairs. She was still too leaky and unreliable after repairs were made, so her stores and personnel were transferred to Mayflower, which completed the voyage alone.

Southampton became a spa town in 1740 thanks to the discovery of a spring of Chalybeate water. A century later, the population of the town had reached 25,000, with the Southampton Dock Company established in May 1836 by an act of Parliament to build new docks. The authorised capital was £350,000 and some 216 acres of mudflats adjoining the Town Quay was purchased at a cost of £5,000 for this purpose. The Southampton Docks foundation stone was laid on 12th October 1838 by Sir Locus Curtis. In 1843, the outer Dock was constructed with Parliamentary approval, and the inner Dock in 1851. The first clients of these two docks were the P. & o. Steam Navigation Co. Ltd. and royal Mail Line. The first phase of the Itchen Quays was begun in 1873 with completion three years later. The famous Woolston floating chain ferries enabled foot passengers and a few cars to cross the Itchen between 1836 and 1977. The chain ferry was later replaced by the high span of a concrete structure bridge after 1977.

The royal Pier was opened on 8th July 1833 by the Duchess of Kent and Princess (later Queen) Victoria at a cost of £25,000. The pier head was widened in 1871 with railway lines added to connect with the many ferries that operated from the pier. The distinctive onion domes of the pavilion were added in the late 1920s, the gatehouse entry charge being one penny, and for this modest sum one could dance the night away. A new white gatehouse was added in 1937, but the pier suffered bad bomb damage during World War II. The pavilion reopened in 1947 and was extended in 1963, but after almost 150 years of service the 900 feet long pier was closed on 2nd January 1980. The gatehouse was converted into a restaurant, and the area behind the gatehouse was used as a car park. Unfortunately, on 4th June 1987 a serious fire destroyed the pavilion ballroom and seriously weakened the strength of the pier. The pier was then ‘totally unsafe and beyond repair’, and has now been largely demolished. A very sad end for a much loved and useful pier and which had also played a big part in the social life of Southampton.

Southampton Harbour Board

In 1803, the newly formed Harbour Commissioners demolished Watergate and began to build a new quay on the site. A new Customs House was built in 1847 and six years later the first modern jetty was built on Town Quay. This jetty was later extended to provide nine berths. The railway line reached the royal Pier and Town Quay in 1871, having been extended from Terminus railway station, the latter station being closed in 1966. Southampton was unusual in having two statutory bodies managing its maritime affairs. Southampton Harbour Board looked after the buoys, leading mark lights, and depth of the navigation channels as well as Town Quay and royal Pier. However, the docks were owned by the Southampton Dock Company until 1st November 1892 when they were purchased by the London and South Western railway Company for £1.36 million. The Harbour Board of Management members were drawn from the local Southampton Borough Council, whereas the directors of the Southampton Dock Company and the railway company were elected by the shareholders. This disparate set of interests called for very good communication between the two bodies when new docks were being constructed.

The foundation stone of a new and impressive head office of the Southampton Harbour Board was laid on 8th May 1924 at the entrance to Town Quay. This imposing two storey red and white stone building was surmounted by an enormous stone clock tower with a weathervane, a model ship and a globe above. The building was officially opened by Lord Jellicoe, admiral of the Fleet, on 8th September 1925, and for the next 43 years the Harbour Board managed its own affairs for which it owned buoy tenders and fast motor launches.

However, the Southampton Harbour Board amalgamated with the British Transport Docks Board (BTDB) on 1st august 1968, and this resulted in the closure of this grand office, which was later turned into a casino. The buoy tender S.H.B. Seahorse of 156 grt completed in 1958 by the J. Pollock yard at Faversham, and two fast launches, S.H.B. Mayflower and S.H.B. Triton, were taken over by the BTDB. When associated British Ports (ABP) took over control of the port in late 1982 from the BTDB, its large fleet of twenty grab and suction dredgers that mostly operated out of Bristol Channel, Humber and Irish Sea ports, began to appear in Southampton Docks, Southampton Water and the Solent on dredging duties. S.H.B. Seahorse is still engaged on her buoy lifting duties today in Southampton Water.

Empress Dock and White Star Dock

In the 1880s, one quarter of a million pounds was borrowed by the Southampton Dock Company from the London and South Western railway Company to begin excavation of a large dock to make Southampton the only British port at which vessels of the deepest draft could enter or leave at any state of the tide. Work began immediately, and was completed in 1890 to provide an extra 3,800 feet of wharves in the port. H. M. Queen Victoria opened the ‘Empress’ Dock on 26th July 1890 amid great jubilation, and further financial liquidity for expansion of Southampton Docks came two years later when the London and South Western railway Company purchased the docks from the Southampton Dock Company. Southampton thus became a railway owned port, and in 1923 passed to the Southern railway Company when the grouping of three major railway companies including the London and South Western railway was announced.

In January 1907, White Star Line announced it was transferring its express passenger service from Liverpool to the port. Liverpool had been its home base since the line was founded on 6th September 1869 as the oceanic Steam Navigation Company with a registered capital of £400,000. The liners oceanic, Majestic and Teutonic would now sail instead from Southampton on an express service to New York, while Baltic, Cedric, Celtic and Arabic operated on a slower service from Liverpool. However, it was Celtic that made the first White Star Line sailing from Southampton on 4th May 1907 while on charter to American Line. Adriatic left Liverpool on her maiden voyage on 8th May 1907 to New York, and on her return she sailed into Southampton. She departed for New York on 5th June 1907 to mark the official inauguration of the Southampton service of the White Star Line.

The giant liner Olympic made her maiden voyage from Southampton on 14th June 1911 to begin a fast Transatlantic service to New York by three large White Star Line passenger vessels. The passenger tender of White Star Line at Southampton was Atalanta of 577 grt built in 1907 by Gourlay Brothers at Dundee, but she was actually owned by the London and South Western railway Company whose colours were the same. The extant White Star Line passenger tender Nomadic of 1,273 grt was completed by Harland & Wolff Ltd. at Belfast in 1911, and carried the passengers out to the Titanic at Cherbourg on her fateful last voyage at 1900 hours on 10th April 1912. A huge fundraising effort by the Nomadic Preservation Society to return Nomadic to her pristine condition of 1911 was successful, and in august 2009 the vessel was placed in the Hamilton graving Dock at Belfast for preservation at a cost of £2 million. The passenger tender was stripped down to a bare hull, and then beautifully restored with a black hull, white upperworks, yellow White Star Line funnel with a black top by 2013. The original luxurious panelling of her lounge had been secured from her previous owner in Paris, where she had lain for many years laid-up. She is now a very fine and historic example of a preserved passenger tender, and can be viewed at Belfast.

The White Star Dock, later renamed ocean Dock in 1922, was completed in 1911 at Southampton and enclosed a water area of sixteen acres, open at the south to the river Test, and was dredged to a depth of forty feet above mean tide to accommodate the giant trio of Olympic, Titanic and Britannic. The six berths in the dock were of a combined length of 1,476 feet, and passengers and cargo were processed through two long, narrow single storey sheds flanking the berths. These green painted sheds matched the locomotive and carriage colours of the London and South Western railway Company. The population of Southampton had now increased to 120,000 and a large portion of them waved Olympic away on her maiden voyage from the port on 14th June 1911. Titanic arrived at Southampton from her trials on the early morning tide of 4th April 1912, and she sailed at midday on 10th April, first to Cherbourg and then to Queenstown (Cobh), and then to her doom. Titanic almost collided in the new dock with the liner New York, berthed next to oceanic of White Star Line, had her ropes snapped when Titanic was being towed astern out of the dock due to suction. This portent of the disaster that was about to unfold in the ice fields off the great Banks went unheeded.

Eastern Docks Repair Facilities

The familiar triangular shape of Southampton Eastern Docks of 170 acres in area had thus been completed in 1911, and it also had the repair facilities that were necessary for the now premier passenger port of the United Kingdom. These were six dry docks owned by the London and South Western railway Company, and the dimensions of these dry docks were as follows in feet:

	Length	Width	Depth On Blocks	Depth On Sill
No. 6 Dock	897	100	32	34
No. 5 Dock	745	91	31.5	33.5
No. 4 Dock	479	56	21.5	23.5
No. 3 Dock	523	80	23.2	25.2
No. 2 Dock	281	51	13.4	15.4
No. 1 Dock	401	66	18.5	20.5

White Star Line had also invited Harland & Wolff Ltd. of Belfast to open a repair yard in the port in March 1907, and leased a site at the head of the Trafalgar graving dock (No. 6 Dock). This Trafalgar dry dock had been excavated in 1901 and the land ‘spoil’ was taken to the Western Esplanade to form reclaimed land for the new Pirelli Cable factory. This dock was opened on 21st October 1905 and named Trafalgar Dock on the centenary of the important naval battle. The Trafalgar Dock was enlarged in 1913 to dock the Olympic class, and again in 1922 to dock Berengaria of Cunard Line by cutting a ‘v’ shape into the head of the dock to accommodate this former German liner.

The dock site was immediately leased in 1907 to local shipbuilder John I. Thornycroft & Company for one year to more quickly transfer and recruit the workforce for the new repair works, which covered two acres and quickly gained twenty shops for the different trades as well as offices for the administration and draughtsmen. The first major job at Southampton was the joining together of a new bow half to the stern of the White Star liner Suevic, which had stranded at the Lizard in March 1907, the new bow section being launched at Belfast in September 1907 and was then towed to Southampton for the ship surgery.

An iron foundry was added to the Harland & Wolff Ltd. repair yard in 1909, and the yard was busy with repairs to the Channel flotillas of destroyers during World War I. The main clients of the yard were the lavender hulled Union Castle Line express liners to Cape Town, and other big British liners such as Empress of Britain in between her transatlantic voyages and her world cruising programme of 1935/37. Armstrong Whitworth & Company of Newcastle built a huge floating dry dock capable of docking the biggest liners in the world, and this was moored near the yard. It was inaugurated on 27th June 1924 by HRH the Prince of Wales, and remained at Southampton for the next sixteen years until towed to Portsmouth for the docking of aircraft carriers and battleships. The heavy workload of repairing merchant and naval ships continued during World War II, in addition to making parts for Blenheim bombers. A pontoon was later added parallel to the quay at which repairs afloat could be undertaken. The Southampton repair yard was sold to Vosper Thornycroft Ltd. in 1973.

World War I

Southampton Docks had thus become very important by 1914 with 11,515 vessels arriving in the port that year with cargo or in ballast. It’s proximity to France saw it immediately requisitioned by the government for war duty. It was known as Number 1 Embarkation Port, and the normal traffic of transatlantic express services and cargo unloading was largely reduced. During the course of the war, over seven million British troops passed through Southampton as members of Expeditionary Forces or major battalions to the stalemate of the trenches in France and the horrendous loss of life at the Somme, Ypres and Passchendale.

The brave men of the ‘Pals’ battalions recruited in major British cities and counties were killed in action in their hundreds of thousands on charges against the gatling and machine guns of the enemy. The three ‘Pals’ battalions (18th, 19th, 22nd) of the Durham Light Infantry (DLI), for example, suffered a large number of men killed, with 160 men awarded military medals for conspicuous gallantry in the face of the enemy. The cargo wharves at Southampton loaded or unloaded almost four million tonnes of military cargo in a continuous night and day supply operation. Netley Pier was constructed during the war on the north bank of Southampton Water to speed the transfer of seriously wounded troops to the quarter mile long Netley Hospital, opened in 1868 to treat war casualties from the Empire battle fronts. The hospital was demolished in 1966 leaving only the central tall chapel as a reminder of the very serious injuries that were treated there over the previous century.

A specially built pier of 300 feet in length with a link span of 120 feet at its end was built out from the Western Esplanade during 1917, served by railway lines laid from Southampton West Station, to speed the transport of troops and equipment to the war front in France. Three train ferries were built on the Tyne and Clyde to operate from this pier from December 1917 to Dieppe and Cherbourg. The twin funnelled train ferry Lennard with a gantry framework along her entire length was also operational from this pier in late October 1918 only days before the end of the war. There is evidence of the remains of this pier, which was disused by 1922 and was demolished in 1929 when the new Mayflower Park was constructed and a start made on the new Western Docks. At the extreme west corner of Mayflower Park, where today pontoons are laid each September for the annual Southampton Boat Show, a stone ‘hump’ extends out slightly from the sloping stone wall of the park.

The red Funnel fleet of the Southampton, isle of Wight and South of England royal Mail Steam Packet Co. Ltd. were painted grey and served as messengers, minesweepers, patrol boats and fast packets to the French ports of Dieppe, Cherbourg and Le Havre. A large portion of their fleet including Princess Beatrice, Her Majesty, Balmoral, Lorna Doone, Bournemouth Queen, Stirling Castle, Queen and Princess Mary all served with distinction. Princess Mary and Queen were sunk during these vital missions with the loss of some of their brave crew members. Second hand steamers were purchased at the end of the war to replace these losses, and a reassessment of the worn out vessels undergoing major refits saw a temporary reduction in the Southampton to Cowes passenger service until 1920.

The New Western Docks

If one had stood in the early 1920s on the ‘down’ platform of Southampton West Station (renamed Southampton Central in 1935 and enlarged and improved) then the view would have been of the vast flanking sea water and river water of the wide Test River, which also lapped the nearby mediaeval walls of the town. The site of today’s modern shopping centres, hotels and business parks would be submerged in deep water. A vast land reclamation project was begun in 1923 when the Southern railway Company gained Parliamentary approval to begin a very ambitious dock construction. Dredgers of the Foremost and James Dredging companies first of all filled in with dredged aggregates the site of the present Mayflower grass and car parking area to the west of the royal Pier. A straight line of seven thousand feet in length was then drawn across the open water to build deep water quays of this length as well as a 1,200 feet long graving dock at its western end.

The vast reclamation scheme cost £10 million excluding the cost of the quays, graving dock and dock equipment, sheds and railway lines. The area behind the completed line of the quays remained as open water for some years until enough dredged aggregates could be pumped into the huge area to form new land. The much loved Tyne built four funnelled Cunard liner Mauretania became the first ship to berth at the new Western Docks on 19th October 1932. A total area of 400 acres had been reclaimed from the sea and the river Test, and the new quay had a depth of 35 feet at low water with a very adequate turning area of width 600 feet all along the quay. As soon as the land behind the quay became stable, the first factory construction was begun and opened as the Solent Mills of J. rank Ltd. in late 1934. This large mill is still in operation today over eighty years later.

The King George V dry dock at the western end of the new docks was 1,200 feet in length with a width at the entrance of 135 feet. It was designed by F. E. Wentworth – Shields and constructed by Mowlem Cement Company and Edmund Nuttall Sons & Company. The construction effort involved was immense with two million tonnes of earth removed and almost one million tonnes of cement used. It was formally opened on 26th July 1933 by King George V and Queen Mary with the White Star liner Majestic as the first ship in the dock, which retained its status as the largest dry-dock in the world for the next thirty years. The giant Cunard liners, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, were frequently to be seen in the dock, with the best vantage point being the pedestrian bridge over the nearby railway lines. The giant liners were dry-docked at the very top of tide, with the water in the dock pumped out in four hours by four centrifugal type pumps. The dock was later taken over by A & P Appledore Ltd., but their lease was terminated by associated British Ports (ABP) in 2005. The caisson gates and keel blocks were removed and the dock converted into a permanent wet dock. It is still in use today by Solent Stevedores Ltd. in conjunction with nearby bulk handling terminals.

World War II

Southampton played a huge part in the preparations for the landings in Normandy on 6th June 1944, but suffered heavily from German air attacks during the preceding four years. The town and docks were raided by the Luftwaffe 57 times from the first raid of 20th June 1940, three of these were classified as major raids with the last major raid in June 1942 by fifty bombers. Huge damage was done to the Docks, with only rubble left from Southampton High Street, which was pushed towards Town Quay to later construct temporary berths for landing craft. one attack alone in august 1940 destroyed the international Cold Storage Depot at the Western Docks together with 2,300 tonnes of butter, which burnt and smouldered for another nine days.

The big raids of 30th November 1940 and 2nd December 1940 completely destroyed the big ‘M’ warehouse of the inner Dock in the Eastern Docks, with big pock-marked bomb craters all the way to the far west of the Western Docks and the King George V dry dock. The port was a top priority target for Luftwaffe bombers based in Northern France, with nine hundred buildings destroyed and over six hundred civilians killed. The British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) had embarked for France at Southampton at the beginning of the war, and many Southampton ferries and small craft took part in the subsequent withdrawal from Dunkirk, with two red Funnel ferries lost. The port was then closed as it was too dangerous for large ships to berth, only coastal shipping was allowed in. The big Floating Dock was towed away to Portsmouth in 1940 for urgent naval repair work. The Southampton dock workers moved away to more active ports around the country.

However, by mid 1943 the planning for the D-Day invasions was in full swing, with Southampton once again the prime embarkation port for an assault on Europe. The full length of the Western Docks was occupied with rows of landing craft eight deep, together with sections of the two Mulberry harbours ready at other berths to be used for the resupply of troops and ammunition. Many of the Mulberry harbour sections were built by the local Harland & Wolff Ltd. yard, then were tested for assembly in the Solent ready for towing across the Channel. This yard had almost been bombed out of operation on several occasions, but continued to help the war effort. A huge total of 5.3 million troops passed through the port during the war, together with 3.9 million tonnes of war material. The local Southampton railway ferries Dinard, isle of Guernsey, isle of Jersey and Brittany were used as troop transports across the Channel from June to October 1944. After the defeat of Germany, the big liners such as the grey painted Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth began to return to the port from august 1945 onwards.

Part 2 – Next Month