Canning Dock

Canning Dock is a massive, square stone basin carved directly into the Liverpool waterfront. It is the oldest remaining wet dock in the city, finished in seventeen thirty-seven to keep ships afloat even when the tide pulled the River Mersey away from the shore. Sailors used to call this the dry dock, because once the gates closed, the water stayed put. It eventually became the primary place where thousands of enslaved people arrived and departed during the transatlantic slave trade.