Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/455

 *quired to remove accumulations of mud in the docks, basins, and approaches, and these at all times maintain the full depth of water, while strict rules are enforced, and a large and efficient body of police are permanently employed.

Notwithstanding the vast accommodation at present afforded to shipping, the growing wants of Liverpool are so rapid that it has been found necessary to materially increase the existing accommodation, besides widening the entrances to some of the existing docks, and increasing the area of their water-space. Three more large docks are to be constructed to the north, one to contain an area of twenty acres of water space, and three thousand and seventy lineal feet of quayage; another to embrace forty-three and three-quarters acres of water space, surrounded by ten thousand eight hundred and seventy lineal feet of quay walls; and the third to contain eighteen acres of water-space, with a gross quayage of three thousand eight hundred and sixty-five lineal feet. At least one of these docks is to be capable of receiving ships of the largest size, with quay walls suited for vessels "ranging up to six hundred feet in length, should such a type come into use." It is proposed to surround them with sheds ninety-five feet wide, "flanked by roadways ranging from eighty to one hundred feet in width," except at the ends of the branch docks, where the erection of stores or ware-*