15. Shipping and Trade.
Aberdeenshire has practically but three ports—Fraserburgh, Peterhead and Aberdeen. The herring fishing with its concomitant activities absorbs the energies of the two former so far as shipping is concerned, but Aberdeen having to serve a larger and wider area than these two northern burghs has developed a range of docks of considerable extent and importance. During the last forty years the Harbour Commissioners have spent £3,000,000in improving the harbour, increasing the wharfage, adding break-waters, diverting the course of the Dee, deepening the entrance channel, forming a graving dock and so forth. Still, in spite of these outlays, Aberdeen, which has been a port for centuries, has hardly grown in shipping proportionately to its growth in other respects. The reason is that, except fish, granite and agricultural products, the city has nothing of much moment to export.
At the docks, Aberdeen
At the docks, Aberdeen
Exclusive of fishing vessels the tonnage of home and foreign going vessels was in 1882, 587,173; in 1909 it had advanced to over a million, hardly doubling itself in 27 years. While its imports have gone up from 522,544tons in 1882 to 1,165,060 in 1909, the exports have made only a very slight advance. The chief export is herrings, and last year nearly 100,000 tons of these, salted and packed in barrels, were sent by sea. The fresh fish are dispatched by rail. Stones in the form of granite, either polished for monumental purposes or in setts and kerbs for paving, account for 50,000 tons. The remainder (of 210,554 tons) is made up by oats, barley, oatmeal, paper, preserved provisions, whisky, manures, flax and cotton fabrics, woollen cloth, cattle and horses, butter and eggs, salmon and pine-wood.
The trade is mostly a coasting trade and more an import than an export one. Coal is the chief article of import, 600,000 tons being discharged in a year. Besides coal, esparto grass, wood-pulp and rags for paper-making, foreign granite in the rough state sent to be polished, flour, maize, linseed, the horns of cattle used for comb-making, and the salt used in fish-curing, are the chief materials landed on the Aberdeen quays. Aberdeen being the distributing centre for the county, and all the railway routes focussing in it, the coal and the building materials not produced in the district, such as lime, slate and cement, all pass this way, while the tea and sugar, the tobacco and other articles of daily use, also arrive mostly by the harbour.
There are regular lines of steamers between Aberdeen and the following ports: London, Newcastle, Hull, Liverpool, Glasgow and Leith, as also with continental towns such as Hamburg, Rotterdam and Christiania.