54 
then were about 200,000 tons annually ; now — the acreage 
of the docks having increased from about 100 to 500 or 600 
acres — they are probably at least 600,000 tons annually, 
and all this refuse is discharged into the river. To eluci- 
date the matter we may give the following extracts from 
Admiral Evans’s report of 1843 relative to the causes which 
to the extension of the Victoria Bar, and of the effects of 
depositing mud and other substances in the bed of the river : 
The extension of Victoria Bar is occasioned by a greater 
quantity of detritus being held in suspension by the ebb 
than by the flood tide, which causes the point of deposit to 
continually extending outwards to where the stream of ebb 
is exhausted. Although this to a certain extent is of com- 
mon occurrence at the mouth of all estuaries, yet the excess 
of matter held in solution by the ebb over the flood tide in 
the Mersey is in a great measure to be attributed to the 
habit of throwing into the river the whole of the mud and 
sand ^ daily’ extracted from the Liverpool docks, amounting 
from January, 1843, to January, 1844, to 213,000 tons ! 
This enormous quantity is taken out of the docks by steam 
dredges, discharged into mud fiats, which are towed out by 
steamers every tide, day and night, except on Sundays, and 
emptied into the middle of the river at the worst possible 
time of tide — namely just before high water, so that part of 
the mud is taken up the river to feed the Pluckington and 
other banks ; part is precipitated to the bottom, taking with 
it the sand held in suspension by a full tide ; and the re- 
mainder is filtered through the different seaward channels, 
leaving a portion of its silt in them. 
This practice, so mischievous to the navigation of the 
Mersey, and detrimental to the best interests of Liverpool, is 
continued under the sanction of a local Act of Parliament 
(6th of George IV., cap. 117), which was passed in the year 
1825. Since the passing of that Act the dock space of Liver- 
pool has not only been doubled, and annually increasing, but 
