In the 1850s, Lawrence Farrugia Bugeja, the Malta Steam Flour Mill Co., and the Malta and Mediterranean Gas Co. set up business on the quay below the Floriana crownworks from the Advanced Marina Gate (Magazine Bastion) to the fishpond (Il-Menqa). There were proposals to link Marsamxett and Grand Harbour by deepening the ditch between Floriana and Valletta, tunnelling east of the Customs House, or (a third option by Giuseppe Bonavia), by ship canal from the Menqa to Pietà.

Robert Stephenson, son of George Stephenson, whose Rocket of 1825 made railway history, arrived on the yacht Titania on February 5, 1857. Stephenson, an engineer with experience in locomotives and tunnels, advised that the canal should be partly in a tunnel. Digging started but the plan was eclipsed by events in 1859; it was mooted, again unsuccessfully, by J Scott Tucker in 1872.

Old roads and causeways in the South Western Basin.

On May 25, 1959, the Council of Government passed a resolution that created modern Marsa. The legislation was ‘engineered’ by the Crown Advocate, Sir Adrian Dingli, the de facto governor. It is a measure of Dingli’s standing that, during this time, he was appointed CMG, KCMG, and GCMG in the Order of St Michael and St George, was made CB ‒ Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1859, and had the ear of four governors: John Le Marchant, Henry Knight Storks, Patrick Grant and Charles van Straubenzee.

The resolution that costed the works – £125,552, to be shared equally by the Imperial and Malta governments – defined naval and commercial waters, dredging depths, disposal of spoils, and the construction of quays at two new basins for the exclusive use of mercantile shipping, which would also ‘own’ the moles from Marsa to Barriera Wharf. Except for rights of passage, the rest of the harbour, including French Creek, was ceded to the Admiralty. There would be a separate agreement for the construction of two breakwaters.

Dr Salvatore Naudi, one of eight elected members on the council, moved amendments (highly prescient as it turned out) on the ultimate responsibility for cost overruns, the value of property in French Creek to be used as payment in kind, Malta government jurisdiction at the new port, and for the mercantile community to remain in French Creek until Marsa was completed. Dingli rounded off the debate by lauding the benefits that would accrue, the timely separation of waters in the harbour, “the ring which bound Malta to England”, the “great advantages Malta enjoyed from British protection” and “the privileges of the Maltese by their loyal connection with England”, whose forces spent half a million pounds annually.

In 1860, Le Marchant cajoled four of the elected members to vote for an additional £10,833 for Marsa. A year later, William Scamp (of Bakery, No.1 Dock and St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral fame) who designed Marsa, proposed a graving dock in the new North Western Basin. It would be paid for by the Admiralty, but Malta would be obliged to use the additional funds to deepen the approaches; the dock would be used jointly. The project made a mockery of the 1859 resolution.

Modern Marsa was born out of the evacuation of French Creek.

The Lords of the Admiralty favoured the Marsa dock, turning down proposals for others in French Creek, the one at Senglea fortifications requiring the eviction “upwards of 600 boats of different kinds and 130 pontoons”. A compromise was found after much acrimony: Marsa was dropped and the new dock (Somerset) was built on War Department land at Senglea. It was a Pyrrhic victory for the elected members who won some control over money bills until 1873 when they were overruled on a separate issue.

With its landmark building, the Grain Store at southern end of Bridge Wharf, the Portu Novu altered the topography of Grand Harbour

Tredwell and Barnes laid the foundations of three-quarters of the quays at the South Western Basin by 1862. Meanwhile, Antonio Gabrielli, the dredging contractor, had failed to make any headway after 18 months’ work; he threatened to give up the contract unless given additional funds. The surveyors had either overlooked the huge stones under the silt, or the obstruction had been dismissed as a minor technical detail. Nevertheless, Gabrielli prevailed and completed the work by 1866, in the process destroying, albeit unwittingly, a massive site of antiquity.

The Malta Times and United Service Gazette of Thursday, November 8, 1866, praised the result and inadvertently described the destruction of the submerged archaeological paradise. Ships’ timbers and stone causeways had been found, “probably of Roman origin, as were doubtless the large fish-ponds or baths… marble pillars of a temple that stood at the foot of Corradino Hill… a marble torso of Diana, all of which have been presented by the contractor to the Malta Public Library Museum… numerous pieces of earthenware, amphorae, urns and water jars were continually brought up from the deep; but, unfortunately, the powerful machinery has no respect for curios”.

Dredging Marsa in 1862.

The causeways “fashioned with large blocks of stone and cemented with pozzolana, have occasioned an immense delay and expense in the course of the work, as their foundations being at a considerable depth below the water level, had to be removed at great expense by divers and special machinery, besides causing great delay to the dredging and immense damage and wear and tear to the machinery”. The arms at the entrance of the North Western Basin were connected by a rolling, retractable bridge.

The New Port, or Portu Novu, was completed well before August 17, 1874, when French Creek was closed to merchant shipping. With its landmark building, the Grain Store at southern end of Bridge Wharf, the Portu Novu altered the topography of Grand Harbour. Some 800 to 1,000 men had been engaged on the works, which cost £250,000. Two tugs, 28 hopper barges and five dredgers had moved four million tons of mud for dumping outside harbour. Rock bottom had been reached at the South Western Basin; ships could not anchor so they had to moor on buoys or berth at two new jetties.

Gabrielli was bankrupt; his assets were sold by alienation to Emmanuele Zammit, his main creditor. The Zammits (Ta’ Ċejlu) were synonymous with Portu Novu. They built the chapel of Our Lady of Graces, stores and a dock. A stone bridge and a decorative hardstone arch were built over the new storm water canal; clay pipes on top of the arch carried town wastes – Urbium Sordibus In Mare Publicae Salutis Ergo Deducendis. The huge expanse of drained hinterland drew the attention of the War Department for use as recreation, exercise and parade grounds. Most of the land was leased from the government by 1902, earning it the sobriquet Il-Marsa ta’ l-Ingliżi.

Church Wharf in1874. Note the large estates in the foreground.

Portu Novu prospered after the opening of the Suez Canal. The wharves carried names that resonate to this day: Coal, Church, Shipwrights, Jetties, Bridge, Timber, Lighters, Flagstone. At Coal Wharf, four streets recalled British export towns: Hartlepool, Cardiff, Swansea, Newcastle. Handling agents like Gollcher and Ed. T. Agius operated fleets of coal lighters. It did not last; more efficient triple expansion steam engines led to fewer port calls for bunkers. Coal heaving was labour intensive; failure to mechanise handling made Malta uncompetitive. The Admiralty stepped in, taking over parts of Portu Novu to store coal for the navy. The first oil tanks at Corradino in 1909 signalled the demise of coal.

Maltese entrepreneurs, some of whom newly migrated from French Creek, invested in slipways, shipyards and engineering workshops. Their ‘bicycle’ workshops – Zammit, Bezzina, Archers, Horn, Trevisan, Camilleri, Cassar German, Stagno, Degiorgio, Downs, Mann, competed with the dockyard for light engineering work. In 1873, a new Muslim cemetery replaced that displaced at Xatt il-Qwabar in the North West Basin. Like Abela’s Cabinetto San Giacomo, it was wiped off the map.

The population grew exponentially. The Zammits offered land for the building of a new model town for workers. It was named Albert Town after the late Prince Consort. The foundations were laid by Governor van Straubenzee on July 22, 1875. Albert’s eldest son, Edward, Prince of Wales, landed at Portu Novu, the jewel in the crown of Grand Harbour, on April 6, 1876. A new abattoir was completed in 1899.

Shipwrights Wharf, the tramway power station, Il-Marsa ta’ l-Ingliżi and the Grain Store at right.

By 1890, there were some 620 residents in Portu Novu, which formed part of the parish of Ħamrun. Mgr Pietro Pace was concerned about the distance and the only available church for worship at Ta’ Ċejlu. He accepted the offer of Lorenzo and Maria Carmela Balbi to finance the building of a new church near Xatt il-Qwabar on a field owned by Ta’ Saura Hospital, Rabat, that contained sheds for weaving coal and fruit baskets. Work on the church, designed by Giovanni Domenico Debono, progressed rapidly after the first contract was signed on May 10, 1909. It was completed on May 25, 1912, and blessed on April 19, 1913, as part of activities marking the International Eucharistic Congress being held in Malta.

Marsa  has continued to evolve and change with the times. The town followed the dockyard as the birthplace of Maltese industry; its rich and varied history and heritage deserves to be recorded in an extensive monograph.

Concluded. The first part of this article was published on July 4.

A post-war view of the North Western Basin – Il-Menqa.