Westminster Dredging Company
The Kalis brothers; Kobus (J.J.) Kalis, Bertus (E.D.) Kalis and Wout Kalis who were partners of the family owned company Boskalis of Sliedrecht (The Netherlands), recognised expansion prospects in the UK during the early 1930s. In 1931, they secured a maintenance dredging contract with Lever Bros (now Uni Lever) for the dredging of Bromborough Docks with on-shore disposal; they mobilised a bucket dredger, barges, tugs and pump ashore unit from Holland, executed the works with professionalism, and in 1933 WDCo registered in London as an indigenous company. They particularly wanted an English name of impressive implication and ‘Westminster’ fulfilled their wishes.
J.J. Kalis, who rejoined Westminster after the Second World War, continued to manage the company with apparent autonomy for a number of years after the War. He was a knowledgeable dredging man, a powerful personality, a good judge of character with pertinent attributes, a disciplinarian, but charming and diplomatic to clients and potential clients.
Early dredging contracts were primarily confined to the Greater Merseyside, the west side of England and Scotland, and the east coast of Ireland, and to bucket dredging, but with a cautious expansion throughout most of the UK coast during the 1930s and the War years. Merseyside was an optimum base with a fully operational canal to the major inland port of Manchester, and the massive Liverpool and Birkenhead Dock systems and the Sea Channel approaches from and through the Liverpool Bay.
Until the 1950s, most port authorities operated their own dredging plant. Overtures to fully take over dredging maintenance by the Company were resisted for reasons of pride, historical bias, and loss of control. However, financial prudency was finally recognised and long term total maintenance dredging by contract came into vogue.
The advent of the Company to major status in the UK and overseas probably dates back to 1948 with the large scale reclamation of the River Dee marshes for the construction of John Summers Steel Works. There was substantial engineering interest in the UK in the electric shore-powered profile suction dredger ‘Dee’ (by cable from shore to dredger), and in the very high Proctor densification achieved by hydraulic placement.
Many small and large works followed the Dee Marshes reclamation including Brunswick Dock Entrance, Eastham Channel Deepening, the entirety of the Liverpool Docks system, Cammell Lairds Dry docks river entrances, Milford Haven Capital, Tranmere Deep Water Oil Jetties and Canada Dock River Entrance, to name but a few. Most of the above involved mechanical breaking of Triassic sandstone by Lobnitz rock breakers and marked the end of the Company’s reluctance to undertake rock dredging works.
The successful execution of the large Merseyside works confirmed the professionalism and capability of the Company and massive expansion began and continued from the 1950′s and beyond. The trailer dredger was introduced to Merseyside in the late 1950s and rapidly took over most maintenance work in the UK. One of the first major overseas contracts was executed in Lagos (Victoria Island, Nigeria) with the custom Clyde-built W.D. Enterprise gaining access beneath the severe restrictions of Carter Bridge.
The James Company of Southampton was integrated with the Company in 1954. The Kalis family believed in an on-site presence of the supervisory group and the senior management was always on site at muster times or change of shifts. When Bill Kalis (nephew of J.J Kalis) took over the James Company management he continued the daily presence principle and was always at Southampton 101 berth for reliefs at 06.45 hours and 18.00 hours.
Major works began in the Arabian Gulf and Sweden. Beaver Dredging was established and registered for works in Canada. Works in Ghana were undertaken and in 1963 where John Holt Westminster Dredging was formed and re-registered in 1964 as Westminster Nigeria. 1963 saw the beginning of the Niger Delta contract to dredge canals and oil drilling locations and construct sand access roads in the intensive mangrove swamps. The first dredged canal and oil drilling location at Opukushi in the very remote central Delta had no designated approach. The access for the dredging plant was by constant reference to aerial photographs and continuous hand-lead soundings to determine water depth with safe access. By the end of the 1960s, the group Company had established itself internationally as a major organisation.
By the early 1970s, a new central office was opened at Bentley and regional offices at Bromborough, Southampton, Gravesend and Newcastle were established. This new-look regime was short-lived and the company became centralised in 1982 (with responsibility for the UK and Ireland only) the modest accommodation at James Yard retaining only the ‘Green Hut’ site office at Bromborough.
The principle of imperative on-site presence of the supervision manifested itself at one of the first annual company dinner parties. The first action of J.J. Kalis on entering the reception hall at the Liverpool Adelphi was to recognise his superintendents. Forthwith he demanded to know who was on duty. The duty superintendent was named and identified at the bar starting to drink a beer; within thirty minutes the same superintendent was beginning his nightshift in his dinner jacket on the deck of the bucket dredger Amerika in Eastham Channel in inclement winter night conditions
Together with the centralisation of the administration into a single office, Westminster’s own repair yards became of less use. There was no more new building such as the heavy duty cutter dredger Port Sunlight, conversions such as Beaver McKenzie (the first trailer dredger to work in the Canadian arctic) or in-house repairs. Therefore in 1984, Westminster Dredging moved from James Wharf to Dukes Keep, Southampton.
The final move (and hopefully the last) came in 1990 when Westminster moved to its present location at Westminster House, Crompton Way, Fareham with improved road access to the motorway system and airports. At about the same time the Bromborough office moved to what is said to be the office with the best view in the Boskalis Westminster group, in Eastham.
The first large contract that was procured through the Fareham office was the deepening and maintenance of the channel to Barrow-in-Furness for the Vanguard Submarines.
Several large contracts have followed and in this 75th Anniversary year, Westminster Dredging can be proud to have executed contracts the length and breadth of the UK and Ireland (Lerwick to Plymouth, Aran Islands to Harwich)