"122 
received a vote of thanks from the Trustees of the Harbour of 
Whitehaven for a plan which he had submitted to that body for 
the improvement of their harbour. In the Cumberland Pacquet of 
2oth January, 1790, reference is made to this plan as follows :— 
**Captain Huddart, whose abilities as a surveyor are well known, has 
offered a plan for the improvement of this harbour which is said to be more 
generally approved than any other ; but we do not hear that anything has been 
agreed on.” 
The paragraph is a trifle bald—old Ware (the editor at that time) 
was evidently somewhat out of his depth. We shall however see, bye 
and bye, that there were rival projects before the Board, on which 
opinions were —as we have known them to be in other places in 
more recent times—a good deal divided. At all events, in the 
following week’s impression of the Cumberland Pacquet, there 
appeared another paragraph, which, as a bit of judicious trimming, 
it would be difficult to surpass. This paragraph runs :— - 
“Our notice of Mr. Huddart’s plan for the improvement of this harbour 
went, as we are now informed, further than the circumstances would warrant. 
Amid such a contrariety of opinion, it is perhaps impossible to say which 
projection may have the most suffrage. There is, no doubt, a general dispo- 
sition to adopt the best.” 
The suggested improvements appear to have consisted of adding 
the two return piers at that port. The east return is stated by Mr. 
James Walker, of London, and Mr. Jesse Hartley, of Liverpool, 
civil engineers, in their report on Whitehaven harbour, dated the 
17th May, 1836 (a copy of which has been kindly lent to me by 
Mr. John Musgrave, the chairman of the Whitehaven Trustee 
Board), to have been built first. The effect of it was to throw 
back the westerly seas into the west part of the harbour. To 
prevent this the west return was built. Their joint effect was to 
deepen the harbour, but the funnel mouth threw in heavy seas, 
and made the whole so unquiet that the old bulwark was shifted 
eastward, by which the eastern harbour was naturally quieted. 
The North Tongue, now called the Bulwark, seems to be here 
referred to. It was erected about the year 1804, and shortly after 
Captain Huddart had submitted his report thereon to the Trustees. 
