IX. A PERIOD OF SMALL IMPROVEMENTS.
It does not seem clear why Lord Aylmer invited Captain Perry to report on the harbour. Some historians have said it was because he was the Lord Warden, but he never held that position. He was a Member of Parliament for Dover, but he had been raised to the Peerage before he asked Capt. Perry to make his report. Lord Aylmer's only other connection with Dover Harbour was that he was the Ranger of Greenwich Park. That Park is a part of the Manor of Earl Greenwich, which was annexed to the Crown in the reign of Henry Vlll. ; and, James I., when he, by charter, granted to the Commissioners of Dover Harbour, the Harbour lands, they were, somewhat curiously, granted " as of our Manor of East Greenwich, in free and common socage, by fealty only, not in capite, nor by any manner of Knight service, without any rent and without account to us." Probably it was by virtue of this peculiar method of conveyance that Lord Aylmer, as Ranger of Greenwich Park, was entitled to satisfy himself that the Commissioners of Dover Harbour were taking the right steps to preserve the estate which James I., had granted to them. There is less difficulty in finding the reason why Lord Aylmer selected Capt. John Perry to discharge the duty. He appears to have been an expert in sea and river defences, his reports on Daggenham Breach (on the Thames) the Port of Dover and the Port of Dublin afford ample evidence of his sagacity. In his survey he found that when the wind blew hard from the South and South-West it caused a drift of shingle which so choked up the mouth of the harbour that no ships could enter. He found on enquiry that that stoppage had not occurred so often as had been reported, yet the apprehension of it deterred shipmasters from putting in to Dover when in doubt as to its condition. He found that on the sill of the basin there were but ten feet of water, and he thought that might, with great advantage, be deepened. As to the remedy for keeping out the shingle he proposed to carry the South Pier i 50 or 200 feet further out to sea remarking " I beliexe that the harbour will thereby be freed from being choked up any more for ever." He also proposed the construction of groins, eastward and westward, to ward off the shingle, and more effectual sluicing arrangements to clear out the shingle if by chance it should tind its way between the pier heads. When this report reached Lord Aylmer he was ill and dying, less than two years later it was left amongst his papers. Subsequently Capt. Perry asked the second Lord Aylmer to return it to him, and it was submitted to the Harbour Commissioners, l)Ut they never attempted to carry out any })art of the new works that he had recommended.
In 1723 Dover Harbour lost two thirds of the Passage Tolls which went to the Port of Rye, and by means of the remaining third and their own revenue they employed their regular staff of workmen in clearing out many thousands of tons of mud out of the floating Ijasin and the Pent so as to provide more back-water for sluicing ; and they made a gateway out of the basin into the Pent to admit vessels to the Upper Water. This work was done under the direction of Mr. James Hammond Jun., whose father, James Hammond Sen., filled the office of Clerk of the Cheques of Dover Harbour and appeared to be occupying the positions of treasurer, engineer and harbour master. Young James Hammond, who occupied no official position at all, except that of assistant to his father, seems to have carried out very valuable work in clearing out thousands of tons of mud, and building the Pent gateway; and at the same time he conceived a geimine lo\e for Dover Harbour and Dover generally, putting on record many facts concerning the Port, the Town, the Castle and the Churches, thnjwing light on many Dover affairs, which, but for the manuscript which he left behind, would otherwise ha\e l)een ol)scure. The work directed by James Hammond, Jnr., was carried out between the years 1727 and 1732. The mud from the basin was, by young Hammond's contrivance of a temporary turn-water, carried out to sea by the current, but the mud had to be taken out of the Pent by hand, a good deal of it being carted by the farmers to the neighbouring lands for manure and part of it mixed with shingle was placed on the sea front shingle to make .solid ground. The removal of the mud made room for many thousands of tons of l)ack water, and the gateway built with stones and fitted with sluice and a drawbridge, gave a shi|>way into the Pent without interfering with the public thoroughfare along Union Street. At the same time the Crosswall was faced with stones, 'it having many years previously been built with timber, under the direction of Sir Henry Sheers, by Master Carpenter Ockam. The whole of of the works under James Hammond, Jnr., were completed 'n 1738 by the erection of a swingbridge over the Crosswall gateway to make a short footway from Union Street to Clarence Place.
Between 1740 and 1757 Cheeseman's Head was repaired and the Castle Jetty built. The total outlay on these two works and repairs up to May 1757 amounted to £22,226 4s. 2d. The Commissioners were able to meet this extra expenditure, in spite of the fact that Rye was taking two thirds of the Passing Tolls, because their local revenue from harbour dues and ground rents had increased and the increase of the shipping trade had made one-third of the Passing Tolls nearly as much as the whole had been in the reign of Charles 11. The revenue further increased in 1756 owing to one half of the Passing Tolls being allotted to Dover.