The River Wyre was used for trading by coastal vessels before the 1600s. Traders established a presence at Poulton-le-Fylde with vessels unloading at Skippool (Ship Pool). Poulton was a sub-port under Lancaster and had a Custom House prior to 1708 whilst Wardleys, across the river, had a wharf and warehouse, built in 1741, for trade with Barbados. Into Poulton would pour timber from Russia and the Americas, nitrates from Africa and wines, tea and tobacco. Flax imports fed the sailcloth industries at Poulton and Kirkham.
Most of the Poulton trade would have been coastal with sailing flats, sloops and ketches ranging up and down the West Coast to ports such as Liverpool, Lancaster and Whitehaven.
As new harbour facilities were built at Fleetwood, in the 1800s, much of this trade was transferred to the new port, thanks largely to the rail link provided by the Preston and Wyre Railway which opened in 1840. This connected to other rail systems allowing goods to be quickly transported all over Lancashire to fuel its expanding industries.
Until the opening of the enclosed dock, in 1877, Fleetwood's riverside quays handled an increasing overseas and coastal trade. The Belfast steamers were built for the transportation of cargo as well as passengers. Other steamers would transport slate from Wales, clay from Cornwall and iron from Scotland, Furness and Cumbria. The export trade saw an increasing amount of coal beginning to flow across the Irish Sea to Ireland.
The opening of the dock in 1877 saw a marked increase in trade, although the export trade failed to expand to the same degree as the import trade.
Because the railway owned the port facilities, charges for goods carried over the rail network were relatively low and this gave the port an added advantage until the opening of Preston Dock and the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 caused the port's import/export trade to go into steep decline at the same time that the fishing industry began to take off.
One type of vessel that was commonly found was the sailing "flat". These were flat bottomed barges designed to trade the tidal creeks along the coast. They would bring their cargo in and wait until low water when they would sit on the hard sandbanks and offload their goods directly into horse drawn carts. Sir Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood was known to have owned ten of these vessels.
Up river, at Burn Naze, a private jetty had been built to serve the United Alkali Company works. Limestone was brought to the works from Welsh quarries whilst soda ash, salt and alkaline products were exported from there by coastal vessels bearing names such as Calcium, Cerium, Thorium and Sodium.
In later years a variety of cargos were carried by steam and motor powered coastal vessels including paraffin wax, sulphur, carbide, fruit, butter and vegetables. On their outward voyages the coasters were often ballasted but have carried glass, chemicals, cars, steelwork and scrap metal. Fuel for the trawlers was brought by small coastal tankers like Onward Progress, Onward Pioneer, Onward Mariner and Onward Enterprise, bringing oil from Heysham and Stanlow.
