navigation, amounted to £137,000, but a far greater sum has already been expended; yet the works are not fully completed. The length of the canal from Ferrybridge to Goole is about eighteen miles and a half; the fall to low-water-mark at Goole is 28¾ feet; its width is 60 feet at top, and 40 feet at bottom; the depth is 7 feet, and the locks 70 feet long by 19 feet wide. Goole was, when this work commenced, an obscure hamlet, containing only a few houses; but in the short period of four years, by the erection of extensive buildings, and the nature of the works, connected with the circumstance of its being admitted to all the privileges of a port of the united kingdom, it has grown into a town: it possesses a ship dock 600 feet by 200, and a barge dock of 900 feet by 150. There is also a harbour 250 feet by 200, communicating with the above-mentioned docks, and by two locks with the tideway. These docks are constructed for ships drawing 15 feet water.
The rates of tonnage on the Goole Canal are the same per ton per mile as on the old river navigation; and the accommodations of the port being so little known, from the rapidity with which it has arisen, will be best explained by the following letter: -
Whereas by an act of parliament made and passed in the sixth year of the reign of his present Majesty King George the Fourth, entitled, "An Act for the Warehousing of Goods," it is, amongst other things, enacted, that it shall be lawful for the Commissioners of his Majesty's Customs, subject to the authority and directions of the Commissioners of his Majesty's Treasury, by their order, from time to time, to appoint in what warehouses or places of special security, or of ordinary security, as the case may require, in certain ports in the United Kingdom, and in what different parts or divisions of such warehouses or places, and in what manner any goods, and what sort of goods, may be warehoused and kept and secured without payment of any duty upon the first entry thereof, or for exportation only, in cases wherein the same may be prohibited to be imported for home use; and it is by the same act further enacted, that every order made by the said Commissioners of the Customs, in respect of warehouses of special security, as well those of original appointment, as those of revocation, alteration or addition, shall be published in the London Gazette, for such as shall be appointed in Great Britain; We, the undersigned Commissioners of his Majesty's Customs, in pursuance of the powers so vested in us, have appointed at the PORT OF GOOLE, a warehouse and vaults, on the east side of the Ship Dock belonging to the AIRE AND CALDER NAVIGATION COMPANY, situate in a yard, inclosed on the north, south, and east sides, by a wall of fifteen feet high, and on the west side (being that next to the lock at the said port) by a fence, consisting of a similar wall, for about fifty-seven feet from each side towards the centre, as warehouses of special security, for the deposit of all articles except tobacco and snuff, under the provisions of the said act.
- By order of the Commissioners,
- T WHITMORE, secretary.
- By order of the Commissioners,
