Act (An) for making and establishing Public Keys or Wharfs at Kingston upon Hull [...]

Bookseller Notes

The first separate edition of the Act of 1774 which allowed funds to be raised for the construction of the dock at Hull, via the newly formed Hull Corporation. A rapid increase in the shipping trade of Hull followed naturally from the rapid industrialisation of Yorkshire during the second half of the eighteenth-century. The tide-dependent wharves on the west bank of the River Hull were superseded by the enclosed docks of Britain's first statutory dock company: The Hull Corporation, Trinity House and Hull Merchants, founded in 1773. The Act allowed the Dock Company to raise up to one hundred thousand pounds by shares and loans.