282 HAKBOURS AND LIGHTHOUSES. PART IV. 



Among the early ports, Bristol ranked next in im- 

 portance to London; it also was provided with a con- 

 venient river, the Avon, up which ships were floated by 

 the tide to port. At the siege of Calais, in Edward III.'s 

 time, Bristol furnished almost as many ships and mariners 

 as London ; and it went on increasing in importance 

 down to the end of the seventeenth century, at which 

 time Liverpool had scarcely sprung into existence, and 

 was as yet little better than a fishing village. Before 

 the art of engineering had advanced so far as to enable 

 harbour walls to be built in deep water, these tidal rivers 

 sufficiently answered the purpose of harbours. Hence 

 London on the Thames, Bristol on the Avon, Hull on 

 the river Hull, Chester (the principal shipping-port for 

 Ireland) on the Dee, Gloucester on the Severn, Boston 

 on the Witham, and Newcastle on the Tyne. At Bristol 

 the ships lay upon the mud at low water, the course of 

 the river Froom having been turned, in early times, in 

 order to make " a softe and whosy (oozy) harbour e for 

 grete shippes ;" and the habit of lying on the mud made 

 the Bristol ships so bulge and swell out, that until quite 

 recently " a Bristol hog " could be recognised by the 

 practised sailor's eye far off at sea. Bristol was only 

 provided with floating docks at the beginning of the 

 present century, long after Liverpool had overcome the 

 difficulties of the Mersey and provided for itself a 

 system of docks now considered superior to everything 

 else of the kind in the kingdom. 



The ample line of the British coast, broken by innu- 

 merable deep water bays and inlets, also afforded con- 

 siderable convenience for the shipping of early times. 

 The small size of the craft enabled them to be beached 

 with ease, and the utmost that was done in the way of 

 harbour works was to empty large stones roughly into 

 the sea so as to form a breakwater or a pier at the har- 

 bour head. But the sea was found a fickle and dan- 

 gerous neighbour, and those early works were often 



