Whitby Harbour Dredger: The Yorkshire barge which removes thousands of tonnes of silt from Whitby's harbour every year
Whitby has been a port since at least the 7th century, initially as home to small fishing boats and a safe haven for North Sea shipping.
By the 1600s the harbour was a hub for exporting locally mined alum and for coal and timber imports, and a century later it was a thriving shipbuilding centre and major whaling port.
But while other ports thrived along England’s north-east coast Whitby never became a major cargo-handling centre.
In the 1950s a study of the harbour’s commercial potential compared it with neighbouring ports like Hull, Teesside and West Hartlepool and suggested it suffered a loss of traffic due to the depth of water.
A major problem was that silt washed downstream by the River Esk met sand being brought in by the twice-daily tides.
The answer was to employ a dredger with an onboard excavator to dig out sand bars and keep the harbour at a navigable depth.
Today the work is carried out by Whitby harbour’s own dredger, the Sandsend, a 143ft (44m) barge converted for the task in 2003 with a Hitachi long-reach excavator and two hydraulically operated “spud legs” which anchor the vessel securely to the harbour floor to maintain the vessel’s stability and prevent drifting due to currents and tides.
It is capable of digging 26 feet (8m) below the waterline.
The sediments scooped up by the Sandsend are deposited offshore. The amount varies from year to year but it can be as much as 50,860 tonnes, the figure for 2021.
Dredging operations are the subject of controversy among harbour users, and a pause in operations a decade ago led to a fishing coble becoming stranded on a new sand bar which formed in the main channel.
The scale of operations will accelerate this year following the removal of a 5,000 tonne monthly limit.