Henry Wrigley on Harbours

Well, there’s two ways of looking at Cowes Harbour. What a lot of people don’t realise, it is an extremely busy Commercial Harbour.

Everyone associates Cowes with yachts and yachting events and everything, great. Vitally important to the economic infrastructure of the whole Island, but the commercial side, in this very small Harbour, which incidentally evolved from the Newport Harbour, ships got bigger, it was the shippers themselves, I think it was by 1897 established Cowes Harbour by an Act of Parliament.

Before then, everything was controlled by the Newport Harbour or the Newport Council, and obviously it got too big.

It’s brilliant for what our Victorian Forefathers established, in establishing the Act of Parliament because the wording and the clauses establishing Harbours around the United Kingdom held good until about 1996-7, which is brilliant. However.

Lots of things came out of date. Many Acts had clauses in the Acts had to be repealed and new Constitutions established.