Yorkshire Almanac 2025

Unedited excerpt

The excerpt in the book is shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

The Queen embarked on the Fairy, and made a water progress through the Docks; this was very animated; a great contrast to the Sultan’s water progresses in all respects; favourable as regards the acclamations of the free and intelligent thousands that lined every wharf, and thronged on all the steamboats; unfavourably, I am bound to add, as regards the comparison of dingy Hull with gleaming Stamboul; and the murky Humber with the sapphire Bosphorus.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Had Howard ever visited Constantinople?

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Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Abdulmejid I (1) W/G ·
• Autocracy (2) W/G ·
• Bosporus (1) W/G ·
• Constantinople (1) W/G ·
• Crimean War (6) W/G ·
• Democracy (2) W/G ·
• HMY Fairy (1) W/G ·
• Howard, George William Frederick (1802-64) (2), 7th Earl of Carlisle, known as Viscount Morpeth 1825-48, MP, statesman, orator, writer W/G ·
• Humber (21) W/G ·
• International trade (17) W/G ·
• 📌Kingston upon Hull (74) W/G ·
• Ottoman Empire (6) W/G ·
• 📌Port of Hull (19) W/G ·
• Queen Victoria (10) W/G ·
• Spithead (1) W/G ·
• Steamboat (2) W/G ·
• Tanzimat (1) W/G ·

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Had Howard ever visited Constantinople?

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Similar

19 October 1775: Mayor Joseph Outram lays the first stone of Hull’s first dock and customs quay, dooming the town’s walls and commencing its great expansion

1 July 1840: The opening of the Hull and Selby Railway terminates the threat to Hull’s port from Goole, Scarborough and Bridlington

30 July 1798: The homeward-bound Greenland whaler Blenheim fights off a Royal Navy press gang in Hull harbour, killing two boarders

9 January 1935: Returning from Bear Island, the trawler Edgar Wallace capsizes in the Humber at Hull, killing 15

26 July 1802: Dorothy Wordsworth travels with brother William from Scarborough across the Wolds to Beverley and Hull

26 November 1851: Exports in sterling to foreign ports for the year to date by one of Hull’s largest shippers, Brownlow, Pearson and Co.

19 February 1866: The Diana, Hull’s first steam-assisted whaler and its last of any nature, leaves on its fateful voyage to the Arctic

26 April 1867: In a requiem to Hull’s whaling industry, the Diana sails into port at the end of its fateful Arctic voyage

1 September 1651: Robinson Kreutznaer sails from Hull, and soon wishes he hadn’t

17 August 1778: Civil engineers John Smeaton and John Wooler explain how to use the River Hull to flush the dock which has replaced the northwest section of the city walls

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Smeaton’s scheme did not prosper. John Timperley:

Various schemes had been suggested for cleansing the dock of the mud brought in by the tide; one was by making reservoirs in the fortifications or old town ditches, with the requisite sluices, by means of which the mud was to be scoured out at low water; another by cutting a canal to the Humber, from the west end of the dock, where sluices had been provided, and put down for the purpose, when it was proposed to divert the ebb tide from the river Hull along the dock, and through the sluices and canal into the Humber, and so produce a current sufficient, with a little manual assistance, to carry away the mud. Both of these schemes were however abandoned, and the plan of a horse dredging machine adopted; this work began about four years after the Old dock was completed, and continued until after the opening of the Junction dock. The machine was contained in a square and flat bottomed vessel 61 feet 6 inches long, 22 feet 6 inches wide, and drawing 4 feet water: it at first had only eleven buckets, calculated to work in 14 feet water, in which state it remained till 1814, when two buckets were added so as to work in 17 feet water, and in 1827 a further addition of four buckets was made, giving seventeen altogether, which enabled it to work in the highest spring tides. The machine was attended by three men, and worked by two horses, which did it at first with ease, but since the addition of the last four buckets, the work has been exceedingly hard.

There were generally six mud boats employed in this dock before the Humber dock was made; since which there have been only four, containing, when fully laden, about 180 tons, and usually filled in about six or seven hours; they are then taken down the old harbour and discharged in the Humber at about a hundred fathoms beyond low water mark, after which they are brought back into the dock, sometimes in three or four hours, but generally more. The mud engine has been usually employed seven or eight months in the year, commencing work in April or May.

The quantity of mud raised prior to the opening of the Junction dock, varied from 12,000 to 29,000 tons, and averaged 19,000 tons per annum; except for a few years before the rebuilding of the Old lock, when, from the bad and leaky state of the gates, a greater supply of water was required for the dock, and the average yearly quantity was about 25,000 tons. As the Junction dock, and in part also the Humber dock, are now supplied from this source, a greater quantity of water flows through the Old dock, and the mud removed has of late been about 23,000 tons a year.

It may be observed, that the greatest quantity of mud is brought into the dock during spring tides, and particularly in dry seasons, when there is not much fresh water in the Hull; in neap tides, and during freshes in the river, very little mud comes in (Timperley 1842).

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