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The Crane in Service
When first erected, the Fairbairn Crane was known as the “30-ton crane”, reflecting its functional role as a piece of port equipment rather than a relic of Victorian engineering. As the largest crane in the harbour, it was used for lifting the heaviest cargoes, like iron cylinders for lining the mineshaft of the Shakespeare colliery (the first of the Kent coal mines) and artillery guns for the Army. It was also used for repair work on ships lying alongside the quay, lifting hull plates, boilers, and other items of machinery. Within four years, the size of the cargoes being handled at the quay increased so much that the gateway to the crane yard had to be widened. In 1913, the gates were replaced again, and a new warehouse, 33 feet long by 18 feet wide (10×5½ meters), was erected in the yard to house cargo awaiting shipment or removal.
Iron cylinders for lining the mineshaft of the Shakespeare colliery, awaiting removal from the crane yard in 1902
Shipowners using the crane were initially charged a rate of 5 shillings per ton of cargo lifted, but the tariff was later changed to a rate of £3 for every 12 hours or part thereof that the ship was on the berth. An additional charge of one shilling per hour applied overnight, to cover the overtime of the attendant who worked the crane. Dover Harbour Board provided the attendant, but shipowners were responsible for ensuring that all loads were properly balanced and slung when lifted. In September 1914, within weeks of the outbreak of the First World War, a railway siding was laid on Esplanade Quay and the crane became an important link in the logistics operation supporting the Western Front. Equipment of all kinds was brought down to Dover by train from Army depots across Britain, and the crane was in constant use for the rest of war loading box wagons, locomotives, ambulance coaches, and loose machinery onto ships for carriage to France.
As the most powerful crane in the harbour, it was used for the heaviest lifts. Dover Museum copyright.
A paddle steamer alongside at the crane yard in October 1904.
Another crane, similarly, worked by hand but smaller (capable of lifting only six tons), was erected on Esplanade Quay in 1916, approximately 150 feet to the south, also as part of the war effort, enabling ship’s forward and aft holds to be worked simultaneously. When the Admiralty released it after the war, the new crane was taken over by Dover Harbour Board for commercial use alongside the 30-ton crane. As military demands eased after the end of the war, the crane was used to support the huge salvage effort to catch up on the backlog of repairs and maintenance that had built up during the conflict. Small workboats were lifted out of the Wellington Dock onto the quayside for mechanical overhauls and repair and repainting of their hulls. At the same time, the Dock itself was dredged and new mooring posts fixed on the quayside, ready for the resumption of commercial traffic. Both cranes remained busy well into the 1920s unloading some of the Army’s vast stockpile of equipment that was being returned to Britain. Many items, declared surplus by the War Office, had been bought by businesses in England to rebuild and expand their own operations. The East Kent Railway alone bought some 100 surplus English-made railway trucks, which were shipped back from Calais and Boulogne, landed by the 30-ton crane and then shunted to the colliery line at Shepherdswell.
Unloading artillery gun barrels, early 20th century.
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, with the rubble of the demolished Gun Wharf buildings in the foreground, and wartime landing craft alongside the crane.
Reliable as it was, the Fairbairn Crane was slow. In 1929, Dover Harbour Board bought three steam-powered cranes for the quays on the opposite side of the Wellington Dock. The railway companies had already installed steam and electric cranes on the Admiralty Pier. While not as powerful as the Fairbairn Crane – one was rated to 8-tons and the other two to 5-tons – the new cranes were significantly more efficient. Being mounted on rails, they were also mobile, capable of moving along the quay as necessary to lift and load cargo in more than one hold of a ship.
The crane yard in 1948, during the post-war clearance of the quays around the Wellington Dock, with the railway siding in the foreground.
With shipowners preferring to use the new powered cranes for most routine work, the older cranes became known, somewhat dismissively, as “the hand cranes” and were used only for occasional project work. A number were removed in the 1930s but the Fairbairn Crane, being more powerful and more useful than the others, was kept in good working order. Its railway siding was similarly well maintained, with its rails and sleepers all renewed in 1934. Throughout the 1930s, although commercial use of the crane declined, the Army continued to use it for shipments of heavy guns and carriages, right up to its full 30-ton weight limit. The crane was also important for maintaining the moorings that had been laid in the Outer Harbour. Dover Harbour Board built a new shed in the crane yard in 1927, as a depot for these moorings, and the crane was used to lift the heavy anchors, chains and shackles onto barges for transfer. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the entire harbour was once again taken over for military use. The Wellington Dock suffered extensive damage from enemy action during the six years of war. Quayside buildings were hit repeatedly by shellfire and bombing, leaving the quays strewn with rubble and the dock itself fouled with debris, and many later had to be demolished. The Fairbairn Crane was largely unscathed and, being mechanically relatively straightforward, was brought back into service towards the end of the war once Esplanade Quay had been cleared.
The Wellington Dock in 1958, in its new role as a marina for yachts.
New sheds and workshops were built on the newly cleared quay, including a new boatyard on the site now occupied by Cullin’s Yard restaurant. The Fairbairn crane was central to its operations, lifting yachts out of the water and onto trailers, on which they were then wheeled into the adjacent yard for repair work. A steady, if small scale, business was built up at the boatyard in the 1950s and 1960s. While recreational traffic continued to grow, the ever-increasing size of merchant vessels from the 1960s onwards heralded the end of the Wellington Dock as a place for commercial shipping. In 1985, after all cargo-handling had shifted to berths outside the lock gates, the Wellington Dock was re-purposed as a marina for yachts. Mooring pontoons were installed, so that yachts could be tied up across the full breadth of the dock, rather than just around the dock walls. Dover Harbour Board meanwhile took over the running of the boatyard after the retirement of its founder. By then, the Fairbairn Crane, after more than a century of service, had also been retired. The tasks of lifting yachts into and out of the water, or stepping and unstepping their masts, were taken over by Dover Harbour Board’s fleet of road mobile cranes. These, in turn, were superseded by a purpose-built boat hoist when the boatyard was relocated to the Granville Dock in 1999.
A yacht being lifted onto a trailer at the boatyard in the 1950s.
A yacht slung beneath the crane in 1972, next to cars parked up for export.
The Fairbairn Crane remained in place as a defining landmark on Esplanade Quay. Its working life at an end, it instead became a focus for painters and photographers and for enthusiasts of Victorian industrial engineering.
