"trainfinder22"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> We dont have anything that big out here on the canal...
> Piers refer to long narrow docks that extend out to the water on the
>great lakes...We never use the word Wharf on Fresh Water..
>
> We have Marinas and Boat centers and we have ports...
> Oddly even places that are a hundred miles inland have port in there
>name like Willamsport PA
The OED says a wharf is where a ship can moor to load and unload. The
word "ship" comes from the Dutch "schip" AIUI ("skipper", meaning the
person in charge of, er, a ship, comes from the same root). My barge
is Dutch, and such vessels are definitely called "schips" by the
Dutch. So, I think a wharf is somewhere a barge can moor for loading.
OTH "dock" is an enclosed are of water of a port for loading etc.
A pier is not a dock. It is a fixed structure extending from the
shore into the water (OED says "sea" specifically, but I have often
heard the term applied to such structures in fresh water)), often for
the mooring of vessels. There is a famous one in England - Wigan Pier
(on the Leeds & Liverpool canal), although it wasn't much of a pier.
In Canada, piers on the sea and major lakes which are built and
maintained by the federal government are to as "wharves" by the feds.
The manager of such a wharf still carries the correct, but too
seldom-used nowadays, title of "wharfinger".
Mike mentioned Cambrian Wharf in Birmingham. Also in Brum there are
several facilities known for hundreds of years as ports, e.g. Hockley
Port.
Of course, you have Lockport, definitely a canal place.
I dislike the use of "marina" to describe an inland facility, as to me
the word is derived from "marine", meaning "of the sea". I prefer the
inland version to be called a port.
I think "quay" was never used for a waterway facillity. In Britain,
it seems to have appeared only to refer to sanitised docks, e.g.
"Surrey Quays" for the infilled, shallowed, built over, and generally
sadly ruined Surrey Docks.
Adrian
Adrian Stott
07956-299966
