Dr Ronald Cox, engineering historian and visiting research fellow at the Department of Civil, Structural & Environmental Engineering at Trinity College Dublin, has written a book Dublin Port Chief Engineers, which was published by Dublin Port Company recently. In this second extract, Dr Cox explores the life and works of John Purser Griffith.

(Part I, on Bindon Blood Stoney, can be read here.)

'Dublin Port Chief Engineers' is available to purchase from Wordwell Books here.

Appointment as assistant to Stoney

On leaving college in 1868, Purser Griffith became a pupil of Bindon Blood Stoney at Dublin Port. In a letter to Proud, the secretary to the Dublin Port & Docks Board, in 1899, Purser Griffith noted that it was an almost universal custom to take pupils in the leading engineering offices, and considered it the best method for a young engineer to acquire knowledge in any special branch of his profession.  

As a boy in Holyhead, Purser Griffith became friends with Anthony George Lyster, whose father George Fosberry Lyster was one of the assistant engineers working on the Holyhead harbour project.

In due course Anthony succeeded his father as chief engineer of the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board at Liverpool. Purser Griffith later sent his eldest son, John William, who had graduated from the engineering school in Trinity College in 1898, to Lyster’s office and paid him a fee of 500 guineas for the privilege. 

His son later became assistant to his father at Dublin Port, taking over as engineer-in-chief in 1913. Two signed drawings by Purser Griffith in the Irish Architectural Archives are from this period. (IAA Drawings Nos. 85/166.1,2,3) They are dated September and October 1868 respectively, one being of a three-span masonry arch bridge over the River Liffey, the other of a single masonry arch bridge over Conyngham Road in Dublin.

Proposed alterations to Essex (later Grattan) Bridge

These may well have been test pieces completed when Purser Griffith was commencing his time as a pupil with Stoney. A further undated drawing shows the proposed alterations to the profile of Essex (later Grattan) Bridge, the reconstruction of which Stoney had designed in 1865.

Early in 1870, Purser Griffith secured a position at £50 per annum as one of a number of assistant county surveyors with Antrim County Council working on road projects.

The county surveyor, Alexander Tate (1823-1887), had taken over in 1861 from Charles Lanyon (1813-1889). Tate had previously held the post of county surveyor in Dublin between 1855 and 1861 with responsibility for the Northern Division, during which time he acted as hon. secretary of the ICEI, a task which he handed over to Stoney on transferring to Antrim. (21) No doubt encouraged by Tate and by Stoney, Purser Griffith was soon elected to membership of the ICEI and was, in due course, to play an important part in its activities, becoming president in 1887. Purser Griffith remained in Antrim until April 1871.

Shortly after the reorganisation of the port administration in 1867, when the Dublin Port & Docks Board replaced the Ballast Board, the board appointed a Harbour Improvement Committee "to enquire into and report on the means to be adopted to meet the requirements for the better accommodation of the trade of the Port".

Proposed works included rebuilding much of the north and south quays, the extension of the North Wall, the construction of a second graving dock and the rebuilding of Carlisle (O’Connell) Bridge.

Right-hand man

The scale of the projects envisaged called for extra staff, in particular, the appointment of young engineers to assist Stoney. Purser Griffith clearly came to be regarded as Stoney’s right-hand man and, by the time of Mann’s retirement in 1881, Purser Griffith’s duties were "to assist in making surveys, plans, specifications and estimates; to set out, measure and inspect works; assist in office correspondence, preparation of reports and management of the department, and to represent the engineer in his absence".

Between 1871 and 1898, Purser Griffith and Stoney shared the responsibility for all the engineering work in the port and were assisted at times by a number of young engineers taken on for short periods as pupils.

Stoney was already acquainted with the young Purser Griffith and had obviously been impressed enough with his potential to offer him a permanent position. This he gladly accepted, it being an ambition, which he had nurtured from his childhood days in Holyhead, to work on the building of a great harbour or port. And so began a long and fruitful period of professional co-operation and close friendship between these two adopted Dubliners.

When Purser Griffith entered the service of the port authorities on April 4, 1871, there were only two shipping berths outside of the Custom House (Docks) where a vessel drawing 12 feet of water could lie afloat at all states of the tide.

Griffith at North Wall Quay.

In 1869, the contractor William Doherty had commenced the task of rebuilding the eastern section of Sir John Rogerson’s Quay and, by November 1871, some 850 feet of quay wall had been rebuilt.

Meanwhile, on the north side of the river, in May of that year, Stoney was supervising the laying of the first of his large monolithic concrete blocks to form the North Wall Extension as part of the creation of Alexandra Basin. The painstaking rebuilding of the North Quays had begun as early as 1864, but would not be completed under Purser Griffith’s direction until 1907.

Stoney’s great project

Purser Griffith would have been well aware of Stoney’s great project and was obviously excited at the possibility of becoming involved. Thus, when the call came, Purser Griffith jumped at the chance. It turned out to be one of the most important decisions of his life and Stoney was also equally fortunate in being able to recruit someone with such potential.

The partnership was to last for 27 years, both men dedicating themselves to the formidable task of creating and maintaining, with limited financial resources, a deep-water port for the city of Dublin.

Shortly following his appointment, Purser Griffith was admitted to membership of the ICEI on November 23, 1871. His sponsors were Samuel Downing, the then professor of civil engineering at Trinity College, and WG Strype, the chief mechanical engineer at Grendon’s works in Dundalk.

Floating shears.

The chairman of the interviewing committee was his boss, Bindon Stoney, who was president of the ICEI at the time. Purser Griffith, like Stoney, was a great supporter of engineering professional bodies and served for many years on the Council of both the Dublin and London civil engineering institutions. He became president of the ICEI during the session 1887-88 at the age of 39.

Not long after joining Stoney at Dublin Port, Purser Griffith visited the Port of Hamburg on the invitation of the chief engineer, Dalmann. He was impressed by the rapid turnaround of shipping at the port, which was well equipped with steam cranes, railways, sheds, etc. On later visits, he found that the steam cranes had been replaced by hydraulic and, later still, electric cranes.

Dalmann claimed to be able to accommodate more shipping per lineal foot of quay than any British port. Purser Griffith examined the position in Dublin and realised that, although coastal shipping spent few days in port, ocean-going vessels often spent four to six weeks tied up in port alongside expensive quaysides.

He realised that quick turnaround of ships was essential, but that this could not be achieved without mechanical handling equipment, such as cranes, to a large extent replacing manual dock labour. However, the first priority was to provide deep-water access to the port for larger vessels, and it was not until the early 1900s that moves were made to provide a range of mechanised facilities to speed up the handling of cargoes.

Developments at Dublin port

Addressing the opening meeting of the 1914-15 session of the Dublin University Engineering Society in Trinity College, Purser Griffith took the opportunity to record the development of the Port of Dublin in the years since the Act of 1707, which set up the Ballast Office to levy tonnage dues and use these to improve the approach channel in the river to the quays.

The development of the Port of Dublin has been ably recounted by Gilligan in his history of Dublin Port published in 1988. Purser Griffith quite naturally concentrated on the period during which he was employed by the board, namely 1871 to 1913.

Floating shears.

During this time many important improvements were made to the port, including the provision of deep-water quays along the north and south banks of the river, the extension of the North Wall to form Alexandra Basin, additional lighthouses, a major dredging programme, the electrification of the port, and the provision of facilities for the handling and storage of oil products.

Purser Griffith formed many personal friendships with distinguished engineers who visited the port to view the work on the North Wall Extension and these contacts were to prove useful in his later consulting work for a number of port authorities, including Liverpool and Hull.

Major achievement

An account of the major achievement of Bindon Stoney in creating the deep-water Alexandra Basin has already been described in Chapter Four. It is clear that Purser Griffith contributed significantly to the successful outcome of this project and other port developments, such as the reconstruction of the river-side berths and a number of bridges.

Reporting in 1912, on the occasion of Purser Griffith’s proposed retirement from Dublin Port, the Irish Builder & Engineer remarked "During the actual administration of Sir John Griffith himself as chief engineer, no works of great public fame have been done, but this may be said to be due solely to the fact that as the right hand of so eminent a man as Dr Stoney, he had the largest share in the carrying out of the great works, and if his works since have been less known to public fame, they have not been the less important."

However, Purser Griffith was allowed in due course to develop a wider role as a consultant outside of his port duties, whereas Stoney was expressly prevented from so doing by the terms of his agreement with the board.

When his salary was increased to £1,500 per annum in September 1872, Stoney undertook in return "to continue to give his professional services exclusively to the port". This resulted in Purser Griffith becoming more widely recognised in the profession. 

Dublin Port Chief Engineers is available to purchase from Wordwell Books here. 

(Part I, on Bindon Blood Stoney, can be read here.)

Author: Dr Ron Cox is a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Fellow of Engineers of Ireland, a Fellow of the Irish Academy of Engineering, and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Recent books include Ireland’s Bridges (2003), Engineering Ireland (2006), Ireland’s Civil Engineering Heritage (2013), Called to Serve (2013) and Called to Serve Two (2019).