Mersey Docks and Harbour Company
administrative body of the Port of Liverpool
The Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (MDHC), formerly the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board (MDHB), owns and administers the dock facilities of the Port of Liverpool, on the River Mersey, England. These include the operation of the enclosed northern dock system that runs from Prince's Dock to Seaforth Dock, in the city of Liverpool and the dock facilities built around the Great Float of the Wirral Peninsula, located on the west side of the river.
Peel Ports, the MDHC's parent company, owns other maritime facilities in the area, including the Cammell Laird shipyard, Tranmere Oil Terminal and the Manchester Ship Canal.
History
Liverpool Common Council's Dock Committee was the original port authority. In 1709, it had been authorised by the Liverpool Docks Act 1709 (8 Ann. c. 8) to construct Liverpool's first enclosed ship basin, the Old Dock, which was the world's first commercial wet dock. Section 5 of the act made the Liverpool Corporation trustees of the docks.
The old Dock Committee was replaced by a separate legal body, the Liverpool Dock Trustees (formally, the Trustees of the Liverpool Docks) by the Liverpool Port and Town Improvement Act 1811 (51 Geo. 3.
The public source identifies “Mersey Docks and Harbour Company” as administrative body of the Port of Liverpool. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mersey, Docks and Harbour.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5460979. VIAF identifies the subject as 155948858. The Library of Congress control number is n81064781. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1709 and 1811.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mersey Docks and Harbour Company” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.