These, aided by its happy situation, will soon render
it a great steam-port, and obliterate, it is to be hoped, the remains of the
squalid borough, which traces back its foundation to the times of Saxon sea-
kings. We must record, for the credit of Great Grimsby, that it evinced its
improved vitality by subscribing a larger sum to the Exhibition of Industry
than many towns of ten times its population and more than ten times its
wealth.
The execution of the railway and dock works, which will render Great Grimsby
even more important than Birkenhead, has been mainly due to the exertions of
the greatest landowner in the county, the Earl of Yarborough, who has wisely
comprehended the value of a close connexion between a purely agricultural and
manufacturing district.
His patriotic views have been ably seconded by Mr. John Fowler, the engineer
of the Manchester and Lincolnshire Railways, and Mr. James J. M. Rendel, the
engineer of these docks as well as of those at Birkenhead.
The Grimsby docks occupy thirty-seven acres, cut off from the sea. The work
was courageously undertaken, in the midst of the depression which followed
the railway panic, by Messrs.
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