Back to Bristol After a Week at Home in Sarasota FL

 Some may remember that my Hotel in Bristol is situated at the old City Docks.     Here is a bit of the early history of those docks via Wikipedia

"Bristol grew up on the banks of the Rivers Avon and Frome. Since the 13th century, the rivers have been modified for use as docks including the diversion of the River Frome in the 1240s into an artificial deep channel known as "Saint Augustine's Reach", which flowed into the River Avon.^[1][2] Saint Augustine's Reach became the heart of Bristol's docks with its quays and wharfs.^[2] The River Avon  and the River Severn into which it flows, have  tides which fluctuate about 30 feet (9 metres) between high and low water.(second only to the Bay of Funday,  jmp) 

This means that the river is easily navigable at high-tide but reduced to a muddy channel at low tide in which ships would often run aground. Ships had no option but to be stranded in the harbour for unloading, giving rise to the phrase "shipshape and Bristol fashion" to describe how ships and their secured cargo were capable of taking the strain of repeated strandings on the mud.^[3][4]

A tall ship in the Cumberland lock, Hotwells, during the 2004 Harbour Festival.

As early as 1420, vessels from Bristol were regularly travelling to Iceland and it is speculated that sailors from Bristol had made landfall in the Americas before Christopher Columbus or John Cabot.^[5]

 After Cabot arrived in Bristol, he proposed a scheme to the king, Henry VII, in which he proposed to reach Asia by sailing west across the north Atlantic. He estimated that this would be shorter and quicker than Columbus' southerly route. The merchants of Bristol, operating under the name of the Society of Merchant Venturers, agreed to support his scheme.

 

 They had sponsored probes into the north Atlantic from the early 1480s, looking for possible trading opportunities.^[5] In 1552 Edward VI granted a Royal Charter to the Merchant Venturers to manage the port.^[6]"

John Cabot (really an Italian, Giovanni Caputi) set sail in 1497 in "The Matthew".  His was the first recorded encounter with what we now call Newfoundland. ( It's likely that Basque Cod Fishers had been there before jmp)

JohnCabot (really an Italian, Giovanni Caputi)n670, the city had 6,000 tons of shipping, of which half was used for importing tobacco. By the late 17th century and early 18th century, this shipping was also playing a significant role in the slave trade.^[5

The old man after Bristol's Remembrance Sunday procession

View from my bedroom at the street side of the Hotel, the Tower and Spire of St. Mary Redcliffe Church. It was from this Tower that I heard the glorious sound of Change Ringing.

 

From the Harbourside Hotel: Bristol Cathedral (where I was ordained as a Deacon in June 2006.

Wharf Buildings, some are modern replicas.

The Waterfall is a modern add on.   It's the place from which the hugely controversial statue of Edward Colston was dumped into the Harbour.  At just about 2/3 down in the photo' you can see where the River Frome emerges from its underground route.

  

Indications that this was once a lively and working dock.

Bristol window cleaners at a five or six story office building.

Across the Street from my Hotel.  It  took four men about 10-12 hours to erect this scaffold.  And  oh those ladders!  Which one of us would climb them!