In 1891, the Midland Railway, which already operated Morecambe Harbour four miles to the north east, gave notice of its intention to develop a new harbour at Heysham and appointed consulting engineers James Abernethy and his son to undertake a feasibility study of the project. The plan was for an enclosed dock accessed through a lock, this idea made no further progress.
In 1895, a much larger Heysham port plan was put forward by Messrs James Abernethy & Son, in conjunction with the Midland Railway's chief engineer. This formed the basis of the harbour which was built, although there were many changes as work progressed and the full scheme was never completed. In 1896, an enabling Act of Parliament was obtained for the construction of the harbour and the contract for construction was let in July 1897. The project cost about £3 million.[3][4]
The first ship to dock at Heysham was the Antrim, one of the ships that the Midland Railway had ordered for Heysham services. She came into the harbour on delivery from builders, John Brown at Clydebank on the 31st of May 1904. The first passenger sailing was a day trip to Douglas, Isle of Man by the Londonderry on the 13th of August 1904.
The south jetty was built in 1909 to reduce silt build up in the harbour entrance, plans from 1907 show that two jetties where originally planned each side of the entrance, but a north jetty was never actually built.
In 1941 a deep-water berth (Ocean Jetty) was built to the north east of harbour entrance. This was to allow tankers which were too large for the port to berth at the new Trimpell refinery which produced aviation fuel. Much of the fuel produced would have been for fighter aircraft stationed in Britain during World War II.[5] After the Tranmere pipeline construction the Ocean Jetty berth was rarely used until its demolition in 1976.
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