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The Fairbairn Crane
The crane is named after the renowned Scottish engineer, Sir William Fairbairn, who patented the design for its iconic curved jib. Constructed of wrought iron, the jib is a hollow box girder: a relatively light-weight design that provides great structural strength, while also serving as a conduit for the lifting chains. It stands 32 feet tall and originally rotated 360, reaching 24 feet out over the dock. Powered entirely by hand, it used an ingenious array of gearwheels to magnify the force applied at the crank handle by a single craneman to lift and lower loads of up 30 tons.
Built at the Fairbairn Engineering Company’s works in Manchester, it was erected on Esplanade Quay in 1868 to serve the newly established cross-Channel steamship services. For many years it was the most powerful crane in the harbour and was used for lifting the heaviest cargoes: ships’ boilers, gun barrels for artillery cannons, and mining equipment for the Kent collieries. It was used intensively during the First World War by the Army, who laid a railway siding next to it, and afterwards for unloading military equipment returning to Britain.
More efficient steam-powered cranes were installed around the harbour in the 1920s and 1930s, taking over the routine loading and discharging of ships, but the Fairbairn crane continued to be used for heavy-lift work until the Second World War. Like the rest of Dover, the Wellington Dock suffered grievous damage from shellfire and bombing during the war. Many quayside buildings were so badly damaged they had to be demolished. In their place, a boatyard was established in the late 1940s on the newly cleared Esplanade Quay. The crane, which itself emerged from the war largely unscathed, took on a new role lifting yachts in to and out of the water.
By the 1980s, the work of lifting yachts had been taken over by road cranes, which were both mobile and more flexible. A century of exposure to the harsh dockside environment has meanwhile taken its toll and with its internal ironwork corroding, the Fairbairn Crane was retired from service. Scheduled as an ancient monument in 1978, it is now preserved.
As the sole surviving Fairbairn Crane in Britain that was built by the Fairbairn Engineering Company (rather than by another crane-maker under licence), it was proudly restored by Dover Harbour Board in 2024 and now stands once again as a local landmark and symbol of Victorian engineering innovation and prowess.
