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SCANDINAVIAN ANTIQUITIES OF DUBLIN. 249
But the greatest improvement as regards the trade of the APPENDIX.
Port has been the partial removal of the bar at the mouth
of the river. For the removal of this bar the most eminent
engineers had been consulted. In 1713 the Ballast Office
procured the services of Captain John Perry, 1 who had
been employed at Dover harbour, and at the Daggenham
breach in the Thames ; but, although he suggested plans
by which it was conceived that the depth of water might
be increased, the task was considered as hopeless, that to
render the port fit for vessels drawing even twelve feet
of water, it was proposed that an artificial harbour should
be constructed near Ringsend, one engineer suggesting that
this harbour should be accessible by a ship canal, along the
Sutton shore ? and another, that the canal should be
1 " Proposals for rendering the
Port of Dublin Commodious."
By Captain John Perry. 8vo,
London, 1720.
2 This would seem to have been
a plan of Perry's. For the rare
and finely engraved map of
Captain John Perry's scheme,
here photographed and litho-
graphed, I am indebted to my
friend Richard Bergoin Bennett,
esq., of Eblana Castle, Kingstown
The original engraving measures
2 feet 2 inches by 1 foot 9
inches. In the Appendix to the
Second Report of the Tidal Har-
bours Commissioners will be found
a full account of this project. In
July, 1725, the Lord Lieutenant
and Council ordered a map and
soundings
to be made of the
harbour, and that Captain Burgh,
Engineer and Surveyor-General,
and Captain John Perry, should
assist those appointed by the Bal-
last Board to examine the har-
bour. On 31st August, 1 79 5, the
survey was made, and on 29th
September, 1725, Perry published
his account
with a plan.
of a new approach
On 29th Xovember,
1725, the plan was referred by
the Lord Lieutenant and Council
to the Ballast Board ; and they,
on 3rd February, 1726, reported
against it. Their objections are
in the Tidal Harbours Com-
given
missioners' Second Report. Ibid.
Parliamentary Papers, vol. xviii.,
part i., pp. 13, 14. Perry anxious,
probably, to enlist the favour of
the public towards his scheme,
may have published this map at
his own expense in 1728. Mr.
Haliday sought in vain for a sight
of this map as appears by the
following :
" In Gough's Topographical
Antiquities
of Great Britain and
Ireland, p. 689, it is stated there
is a map of the city and suburbs of
Dublin, by Chas.Brookin, 1728,and
Bar lowered,