Reasons for ‘harbours of refuge’

Throughout the early 1800s, Britain feared the ‘Napoleonic threat’ of invasion. The more explicit threat from France abated with the defeat of Bonaparte's armies at Waterloo in 1815 and his death in 1821 on St Helena. But latent fears of a resurgence of French naval power in the mid-1800s, emphasised by the construction of the large harbour at Cherbourg, fuelled proposals in Britain for ‘harbours of refuge’ in the English Channel, debated at length through the 1840s. The perception of this new threat drove harbour construction at Portland, Jersey (St Catherine’s) and Alderney (Braye Bay), and later at Dover where work had already started. This paper will outline the history of these harbours/breakwaters, and the extent to which they failed or succeeded.

Harbours of refuge were notionally conceived to provide shelter from storms for commercial vessels, including mail packets, fishing and general trade. Use for naval purposes was sometimes less than explicit. Most of these harbours had difficult gestations, often with repeated shortages of money, particularly for Cherbourg. At the time of their design (∼1840) most naval vessels were powered by sail. Harbours and trading practices would have adapted to the restrictions so imposed. For instance, it was very difficult for a sailing vessel to leave harbour in the face of an onshore wind. This limitation was understood in commercial operations. But even as these harbours were being developed, the propulsion (and form) of vessels changed, with greater use of steam power rather than sail, and iron (later steel) replacing wooden hulls.

A partly hidden sub-text of the ‘harbours of refuge’ debate was, however, the development of new harbours for the Royal Navy for deterrence, ie. defence. A further sub-text, less commonly discussed, was their potential use for offensive purposes. For the Channel Islands, this would essentially be to blockade or stage attacks on the major French port at Cherbourg.

Possible sites in Britain for ‘harbours of refuge’ were at Holyhead, Peterhead, Harwich, Dover, Seaford, Portland, Jersey (St Catherine’s) and Alderney (Braye Bay). Both Jersey and Alderney are close to the coast of France, seen as the major military threat.