TKANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. ;983 



less degree, to the canals) of a couutry, and sliould be looked upon as links iu tlie 

 chain of transport and intercommunication. 



They are certainly as necessary adjuncts of a railway, at least in our country 

 and iu respect of goods and minerals, as large stations and depots are in all 

 important towns. 



The older view of our Parliament was that docks and railways should he in 

 ditferent hands ; but I much question whether this idea should now commend 

 itself. It is difficult, as I have said, for a dock enterprise standing alone to make 

 any considerable return on its cost, and, though it is true that capital can be 

 found under guarantees of an already developed trade by some of the great Dock 

 Trusts, such as at Liverpool or Glasgow, the return is but a modest one, and not 

 such as IS likely to tempt capitalists to new ventures in constructing or enlarging 

 many of the docks which stand in need of improvements. 



On the other hand, a railway company which gets a fairly long lead for the 

 goods to and from a dock can aflbrd to look at the matter of expenditure on 

 docks with some liberality. We have conspicuous examples of great public 

 benefit being afforded at Southampton and at Hull, where the docks have lately 

 passed from the hands of financially weak companies, dependent only on dock dues, 

 to the ownership of powerful railway companies. Similarly, several of the North- 

 eastern ports besides Hull — the large docks at Grangemouth, Barry, Penarth, 

 Garston, Fleetwood, and elsewhere — are further examples amongst others in whicb 

 the revenue of railway companies has been spent on dock improvements with a 

 spirit which would be otherwise unattainable. A dock also must necessarily be 

 nowadays almost wholly dependent for its efficient working on the best understand- 

 ing being maintained with the railway companies for the prompt and adequate 

 provision of land transport, so that in that point of view also the two interests 

 are one and should be recognised as such. 



In the consideration of the advisability for concentration of ownership, therer 

 remain only the questions of safeguards against unfair treatment of competitive 

 modes of transport, such as canal and road traffic, and provision against any 

 improper results of monopoly of railway access. These, I think, can be provided 

 by Parliamentary enactment, either by insisting on adequate access under proper 

 conditions for all within reach, or, in any case of inadequate facilities being 

 accorded, by authorising the construction of other docks in the hands of competing 

 railway companies or of other aggrieved parties, with in such cases railway privi- 

 leges. With these safeguards the public could be efficiently protected, and, if this 

 be so, I cannot but think that, cceteris paribus, the trading community will be better 

 served by docks directly connected with railway companies than' by separate exist- 

 ences and management. On the one hand, I hope that those who administer the 

 great railway undertakings will realise this community of interest, and, on 

 the other, that Parliament will favour intimate financial relations between 

 docks and railways, instead of more or less systematically discouraging such 

 connection. This question is one which is peculiarly interesting here at Bristol, 

 where the docks are in the hands of the Corporation, and where the railway com- 

 panies carry the traffic, which, but for the docks, would be largely non-existent. 



(III.) Leaving now the question of modern docks and shipping, as to which, as I 

 have said, Bristol is interesting to engineers, there are one or two other matters 

 of history which appeal to Section G in this locality. In the first place, Bristol 

 was the birthplace of the Great Western Railway. I. K. Brunei, its engineer, had 

 previously, by public competition, been selected to span the gorge at Clifton by a 

 suspension bridge of the then almost unrivalled span of 702 feet. Again, under 

 the influence of Brunei, Bristol became the home of the pioneers of Transatlantic 

 steamships, and the story of the initiation of the enterprise is thus told iu the memoirs 

 of his life. In 1835, at a small convivial meeting of some of the promoters ot^ the 

 Great Western Railway, some one said, ' Our railway to Bristol will be one of the 

 longest in England,' and Brunei exclaimed, ' AVhy not make it the longest line 

 of communication in the world by connecting it with New York by a line of 

 steamers ? ' Out of this grew the ' Great Western ' steamship, and the history of the 

 enterprise and of its success is too well known, at least here, to require any 



