The pool was a smelly bank of mud with a thin creek running through it, only navigable at high tide. Ships, or rather boats, beached to unload.



Blocking off the entrance would have kept the tide and boats out; unless the area behind a river wall was dredged, excavated and tidal gates installed, which is more or less how the Old Dock was built (but with three more sides to form quays for loading and unloading). There was no scope to build the Wallasey-sized 'floats'.

The Wirral side was a more natural harbour but was very poorly connected to the rest of the region (being a peninsular)