The Kent port of Whitstable can lay claim to one of the earliest passenger-carrying railways in Britain, opened in 1830, albeit more than twenty years after the railway from Mumbles to Swansea opened. The Canterbury & Whitstable Railway became known as the ‘Crab & Winkle’ in deference to the port’s renowned trade in shellfish, although it was oysters with which the town was especially associated, and Whitstable is still affectionately known as ‘Oystertown’.
The port, however, particularly developed a trade in stone, which continues to this day, and, with a coking plant on the harbour to supply the coke-fired locomotives on the Victorian railway, there was a ready supply of tar, which was soon exploited to make tarmacadam for roads.
In Victorian times the north Kent town was developed as a seaside resort within easy reach of London, and it was served by a regular steamer service from the capital.
Local publisher W. J. Cox, who had a shop in Whitstable High Street, marketed this photograph of a Whitstable oyster dredger under full sail and at work c.1907. The photograph was probably taken from one of the other oyster boats. Cox produced an extensive series of tinted cards of the town and its environs.
Whitstable harbour, around 1905, from one of James Valentine’s postcards of the town, showing the quayside entirely lined with sailing vessels – not a steamer in sight. To the right are the coastal cargo ships which worked from the small port, while on the left are a number of the town’s oyster boats.