Excerpt from A Short History of the Port of Bristol Here are many books about Bristol; the one in the hands of the T reader deals with the history of the Port in a form suitable for general reading and for reference: as far as I am aware, it is the first to treat the subject in a popular and comprehensive manner. The clocks are under municipal control, and their history and manage ment are matters of importance to all citizens. Bristol was once the second port in the kingdom; it long ago lost that position, through a variety of causes, some of which ought not to have operated. We lost our supremacy in the Atlantic steamship traffic through mistakes that should have been avoided. But in the latter half of the nineteenth century the old spirit of enterprise began to reassert itself. Many things were done to bring the port up to modern requirements. No doubt municipal control, with its multitude of counsellors, often hindered progress. How it did this, and how the forward policy ulti mately triumphed, is recorded in the following pages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.