Richborough Port in World War One

Ships in the Port of Dover

22nd October 2009

During the First World War, it was necessary to transport vast quantities of munitions, equipment and stores to support the British Army fighting on the Western Front. Dover was jam-packed with the huge fleet of warships and auxiliaries comprising the Dover Patrol and with ferries bringing back the wounded to the Admiralty Pier. Folkestone was dedicated to moving the millions of soldiers across to fight and home for leave. A sprawling temporary port was therefore built by the Royal Engineers at Richborough near Sandwich, north of Dover, to enable shipping these huge amounts of supplies to the BEF in France. The Inland Water Transport Section of the Royal Engineers was operating barges on the canals of France and Flanders and this was a natural progression. A great number of barges were built on site and tugs towed them back and forth, nearly two million tons being shipped in this way. Towards the end of the War, a rail ferry berth was constructed and three train ferries entered service, capable of carrying the tanks and large guns which could not go by barge. At the end of the war, they were used to transport roll-on roll-off cars, lorries and buses back from France. In 1919, they were bringing back more than a thousand lorries per week. These photos from "Richborough Port" by Robert Butler (available from Ramsgate Maritime Museum), show one of the ferries loaded with lorries, and also the two-ton electric transporter cranes in the background in the second photo, which were the forerunner of the modern container cranes shown in the third photo. The port was no longer required at the end of the war and was left to silt up. The train ferries, imaginatively named TF1, TF2 and TF3, were sold to the Great Eastern Railway and moved to Harwich. The site was used for the construction of Mulberry harbour sections prior to the Normandy landings in WW2 and and is now the location of Pfizer's pharmaceutical complex. RORO ferries were not reintroduced on the Dover Strait until the nineteen fifties, and I believe that container cranes only reappeared with the container revolution in the sixties. It seems extraordinary that RORO ferries and container cranes should have been invented by the British Army all those years ago and then lapsed only to be reinvented again so many years later.

Train ferry carrying lorries back from France in 1919

2 ton electric transporters in background, forerunner of todays container cranes

Modern container cranes in Dunkerque West