Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/457

 hundred and thirty feet in length and seventy feet in width, surrounded by convenient quays and sheds in direct communication with the railway. Opening from the existing basin, and extending in a north-*eastern direction, with a passage of sixty feet in width, another wet dock is contemplated, one thousand three hundred and thirty feet in length, by three hundred feet in width, comprising a water area of eight and three-quarter acres, and a total quayage of two thousand eight hundred and forty lineal feet.

Eastward, and in connection with the dock now described, by means of a sixty-feet passage, there is to be an "import dock," one thousand four hundred and fifty feet in length, with eleven acres and a half of water-space, and a quayage of three thousand two hundred and eighty lineal feet; while at the extremity of the whole, the half-tide basin at present in use is to be more than doubled in size, and another graving-dock constructed seven hundred and forty-five feet in length, with "repairing berths," which will be applicable for other trade purposes, and if thus used, furnished with forty and twenty-ton hydraulic cranes. When these new works are completed the water area of the Liverpool Docks will be increased by more than one hundred and thirty-three acres, and upwards of thirty thousand lineal feet added to the present vast extent of quayage. Their estimated cost is 4,834,051l., which will raise the borrowed capital of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board to close upon twenty millions sterling.