Jesse
Hartley Dock Engineer
When Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s famous iron ship
Great Britain was launched in Bristol by Prince Albert on the 19th July, 1843,
she was larger than any vessel then in existence-and the dock entrance was not
deep enough for her to pass through. But she found a suitable berth in
Liverpool and from there she operated a service to New York. The man who
planned and built the docks that could accommodate what was then the largest
ship in the world was Jesse Hartley.
Jesse Hartley was born in Pontefract, Yorkshire on
21st December, 1780. His father was a stonemason, architect and bridge master
and Jesse’s earliest professional works were executed in the West Riding under
his father’s direction. Until his appointment in 1824 as Civil Engineer and
Superintendent of the Dock estate in Liverpool, Hartley concentrated on the
design and construction of masonry bridges. By then his experience of bridge building
was very wide-it ranged over works in Yorkshire, Lancashire, London and
Ireland. His appointment to the important Liverpool job is interesting because
he had no direct experience of dock construction, and among the thirteen rival
applicants were several well- known engineers. Nevertheless, Hartley’s
appointment as dock surveyor gave him the chance to express the grandiose ideas
and expend the prodigious energies which became the trademarks of his tenure. |
| Salthouse Dock, late 19th Century |
Early in November, 1824, less than eight months
after his appointment, Mr Hartley, the Dock Surveyor, laid before the
Trustees of the Docks a General Plan of Dock Works for the Improvement and
Accommodation of the Port, accompanied by a very full report thereon.’He had
not wasted any time. His plans for dock works included construction of a river
wall and works to the north of Princes Basin as well as schemes for the Dry
Dock, the Salthouse Dock, the Brunswick Basin, the proposed Brunswick Dock, the
South Basin and the Graving Dock. The Dock Bill which had been formulated
mainly on the basis of the Surveyor’s recommendations received the Royal Assent
on the 27th June, 1825. Similar enabling acts, to allow the Dock Trust to raise
revenue and govern its estate, were an integral part of the management of that
estate, and the pattern of plan preparation, submission, argument, production
of expert witnesses and so on became a familiar one to Mr Hartley. The
Liverpool docks built under his direction were Clarence, Brunswick, Waterloo,
Victoria, Trafalgar, Albert, Canning Half-tide, Salisbury, Collingwood,
Stanley, Nelson, Bramley-Moore, Wellington, Wellington Half-tide, Huskisson and
Canada Docks.
Hartley’s plans for new docks were hardly
revolutionary, but he was responsible for several important innovations and his
position gave him a unique opportunity to deal with each of his docks as a part
of a whole system. Despite his predilection for curious architectural styles,
he was a pragmatist. When planning what has become his most famous monument,
the Albert Dock warehouses, he not only made models of the brick arches which
he proposed for the new buildings but also conducted an experiment to ascertain
‘ how long sheet iron placed as a ceiling, under a wooden floor, could
resist fire’. For the purposes of the latter he constructed a building 18 feet
square and 10 feet high in the Dockyard and invited Dock Committee members to
watch him set fire to it. The timber resisted combustion for 40 minutes. One of
the results of the experiment was a design for an iron framed incombustible
warehouse.
 |
| Harley's Albert Dock |
The Albert Dock warehouses exhibit some novel uses
of iron, and they were equipped with hydraulic cargo-handling and dock
machinery. Hartley’s business trips were sometimes to seek and sometimes to
give counsel on architectural and engineering matters. Such contact, often with
other eminent engineers such as James Walker, George Stephenson and George
Aitchison, must have been stimulating and useful to Jesse Hartley. For
instance, enclosed dock-warehouse systems were pioneered in London in the early
nineteenth century.
The new docks offered two distinct advantages: with
the use of locks to impound the water at a constant level, loading and
unloading were unaffected by the rise and fall of the tides; and the docks were
enclosed by high boundary walls which reduced opportunities for pilfering.
Hartley’s meticulous attention to every detail of
each project under his superintendence is shown first in the design and then as
completely in its execution. He liked things done properly. The S. & J.
Holme’s contract for bricks for the Albert Dock specified bricks manufactured
of the Clay called the North Shore Clay, to be hard burned and well shaped and without any admixture of Clinkers or of
broken or of Soft Bricks or Bricks containing Lime pebbles. It was thereby agreed that the Surveyor of the
said Docks should have the sole and uncontrolled power of rejecting all such of
the said Bricks as he may in his own judgment deem soft, badly shaped or in the
slightest degree defective or otherwise
unsatisfactory to the Surveyor of the said Docks in any manner howsoever.'
Further, the rejected bricks had to be removed from the building site-within 24
hours, at Holme’s expense. Only the value of the contract and, presumably,
Holme’s confidence in their product can have compensated for the many penalty clauses
imposed on them by the Surveyor.
Before coming to Liverpool, Jesse Hartley worked for
John Carr, a noted architect in the Palladian style. In Ireland Hartley worked
for the Duke of Devonshire who also employed the architect William Atkinson;
Atkinson specialised in Gothic and castellated styles. Much of Hartley’s work
is utterly distinctive and beyond pastiche. It is also breathtaking, sometimes
amusing, always interesting and occasionally beautiful. Picton was particularly
scathing about Mr Hartley’s more outrageous structures, such as the (now
demolished) hydraulic accumulator tower, at Canada Dock, a lofty structure in
grey granite with some subordinate attached buildings in a sort of castellated
style.
 |
| Hydraulic accumulator tower, at Canada Dock |
Economic factors well beyond Mr Hartley’s province
gave him the opportunity and the means to realise his monumental visions. By
the beginning of the nineteenth century Liverpool was the distribution port for
the manufacturing districts of Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Midlands.
International trade with the West Indies, the United States and West Africa
continued to grow, and the breaking of the East India Company’s monopolies
opened the Indian and Chinese markets to Liverpool merchants. The capital
accumulated as a result of increased trading activity was invested in
infrastructure to handle more trade. The opening of the Liverpool and
Manchester Railway in 1830 marked the beginning of railway transport and was
the start of a vast railway network linking Birmingham (1837), London (1838),
Birkenhead and Chester (1840) and Bury (1846). Related new capital works were
the docks, quays, warehouses and other port facilities necessary for the
increasing volume of goods to be handled. Jesse Hartley was quite equal to the
challenge of dramatic increases in trade and shipping and he worked apace to
provide Liverpool with the means to handle, store and despatch the ever greater
tonnages the shipping companies and merchants directed through his port. Having
spent nearly half his life working in Liverpool, Jesse Hartley died at home in
Bootle on August 24th, i860 and was buried under a plain granite headstone at
St Mary’s, Bootle. A road-widening scheme has displaced his gravestone, and
reconstructions have obscured and obliterated some of his dock works, but many
impressive samples of the architectural and engineering legacies of Jesse
Hartley remain.
Links
Sources
Liverpool Central Library
Dock Engineers and the Port Of Liverpool
Nancy Richie Noakes
