The bend in the Tyne at South Shields is restrictive and with modern H&S regs those ships (Esso Northumbria etc) would not be able to leave the river Tyne now. Once you get over 300mtrs you’re looking at a special project to get a ship into/out of the Tyne now. No ship over 300m can turn in the river either.
Surely they could blast out the stone step with some Capital dredging?
Nothing happening with the old Methodist Chapel that I know of.
Ah, that'll be why I didn't see it, I was North side both ways. But I must have passed it if its between the shipwrights and that house with the "interesting" garden decor and drive full of heavy machinery.
That's the place - the riverbank behind that house is littered with old hulks. Most of them holed so at high tide they're either partially or completely submerged.
The problem is, it was never needed. When Sunderland was a much busier Port, ships had shallower drafts, weren’t as large etc, hence the Dock entrances at Sunderland, which are also a problem for modern shipping. I’ve only ever been told about it, I’ve never seen it with my own eyes on a bathy survey. I would imagine the costs of doing something like that would be huge, getting permission from the MMO and EA would also be incredibly difficult, with the Wear an established salmon river again, the EA are incredibly nervous about any changes to the underwater environment. We/Sunderland are also hamstrung by our heritage in that the sediment in the Wear is still heavily contaminated from our industrial past. Both the Wear and Tyne are heavily affected by this now and large areas of both rivers cannot be dredged for fear of releasing the contaminants back into the water - there are ways around this but the specialist dredging required is much more expensive and disposal costs are also huge, assuming somewhere/someone would be able to take it. The commercial case for this would simply not add up and would take decades to pay off.
You have a point, but I'm 100% sure that some time around the 1980's a couple of Metres of bedrock were blasted from the Port Of Sunderland seabed/riverbed which at the time it was reported that it enabled the port to become a 24/7 port, so have things changed stopping POS from doing this even on a smaller scale. If the EA wouldn't allow this how come they have since allowed construction of new Ports at London Gateway and Great Yarmouth ?
My granda was skipper on one of the hoppers all his life until they were took away (think they went to the thames to be scrapped ) and he used to tell me stories of getting ragworm for all the fisherman. He said they were huge.
Yes it's one of the bird hides at Washington Wildfowl trust.
Ta. Looked too 'open' to be a hide, but couldn't think what else it could be.
In 1989 I was working on the river when one of the sand boats tried to dock in the north dock and he was empty. There was a strong westerly wind and he got caught broad side in the basin and went nose first into greenwells. Even with the massive noise from the storm we heard the impact. He was far too far out of the water to attempt that docking that night
no mate, Corp Quay is 8.5 m deep, 28ft. You couldn’t get the steel ships in there with a 4.5m (15ft draft] nee way.
I know. I meant as you go up river from corp quay. Its not deep at all. Still quite deep in places up around leibherr but apart from there its not deep at all anymore.
You’re probably right mate, I’m too young to know about what was blasted in the 80’s - I was busy at school and trying to buck lasses from St Anthony’s
. Could totally have happened though, but legislation and regulation were much slacker then, it was easier to turn a blind eye and the water was wick with some very nasty shit, there were few salmon (if any at all) in those days. Great Yarmouth isn’t a new port mate, it’s been there a very long time and has huge restrictions on vessel size, A&P own a lot of the infrastructure there and have done a good job of improving facilities in recent years, Peel Ports Own the rest and have expanded slightly with a deep water berth, but the key difference is; they only had to dredge sand to achieve this and sand is regarded as having little ecological value, we have mud, which apparently has loads of ecological value (See the recent work at Dover and the dredging of sand which has destroyed seahorse habitat as an example of poor EA judgement). GY is seen as a good O&M base for projects in the southern part of the North Sea And Fred Olsen made a maiden cruise call with Balmoral last year (they’re based in Ipswich) but there’s little in terms of bulk handling going on, which is where the money is. London Gateway is a different kettle of fish altogether, the money involved was mind boggling and it will take decades to recoup the outlay, but with UAE backing they were able to throw tonnes of money at it, I’m not familiar with the exact circumstances of the ecological issues with Gateway but buying up similar lands in other places and gifting it to the Ea can work in your favour, I’m sure some of that went on.. plus LG is a container only port, it only handles containerised cargoes which the South of England consumes on a massive scale, there are no bulk or break bulk materials handled there.Absolutely, you’re quite right about that, hardly any water at all beyond corp Quay. The black humour of our emergency services will tell you that its not the fall that kills jumpers from the bridge now, it’s getting stuck in the mud beneath it..
