“The river Wyre assumes a river character near Bleasdale Forest, in Lancashire, and after crossing the line of road between Preston and Lancaster, at Garstang, descends as a tortuous stream for five miles westward; then, in another five mile reach of one-third of a mile wide, north-westward, sweeping the light of Skippool, near Poulton-le-Fylde, on its way, and bursting forth from the narrows at Wardleys, upon a north trend, into the tidal estuary which embraces an area of three miles by two, producing a combined reflux of back-water, equal to fifty million cubical yards, and dipping with such a powerful _under-scour_ during the first half-ebb, as to preserve a natural basin just within its coast-line orifice, capable of riding ships of eighteen or twenty feet draft, at _low water spring tides_; perfectly sheltered from all winds, and within a cable’s length of the railway terminus, nineteen miles from Preston, and in connection with Manchester, Lancaster, Liverpool, and London. It is on the western margin of this natural dock that the town, wharfs, and warehouses are rising into notice, under the privilege of a distinct port, and abreast of which, the shores aptly narrow the _back-water escape_ into a bottle-neck strait of but one-sixth the width of the estuary, so impelling it down a two-mile channel as scarcely to permit diminishment of its three and four-mile velocity until actually blended with the _cross-set_ of the Lune and Morecambe Bay ebb waters. Thus, the original short course of Wyre to the open sea, is freed from the usual river deposit, its silting matter being kept in suspension until transferred and hurried forth at right angles by the ocean stream. It is, therefore, the peculiar feature and fortune of Wyre that, instead of a _bar_ intervening between its bed or exit trough and the open sea, a precipitous river shelf, equal to a fall of forty-seven feet in one-third of a mile, exists.” The first steam dredger, of 20 horse power, was launched on the 21st of January, 1840, and the important work of deepening and clearing the channel at once commenced.