1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Goole

GOOLE, a market town and port in the Osgoldcross parliamentary division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, at the confluence of the Don and the Ouse, 24 m. W. by S. from Hull, served by the North Eastern, Lancashire & Yorkshire, Great Central and Asholme joint railways. Pop. of urban district (1901) 16,576. The town owes its existence to the construction of the Knottingley canal in 1826 by the Aire and Calder Navigation Company, after which, in 1829, Goole was made a bonding port. Previously it had been an obscure hamlet. The port was administratively combined with that of Hull in 1885. It is 47 m. from the North Sea (mouth of the Humber), and a wide system of inland navigation opens from it. There are eight docks supplied with timber ponds, quays, warehouses and other accommodation. The depth of water is 21 or 22 ft. at high water, spring tides. Chief exports are coal, stone, woollen goods and machinery; imports, butter, fruit, indigo, logwood, timber and wool. Industries include the manufacture of alum, sugar, rope and agricultural instruments, and iron-founding. Shipbuilding is also carried on, and there is a large dry dock and a patent slip for repairing vessels. Passenger steamship services are worked in connexion with the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway to Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bruges, Copenhagen, Rotterdam and other north European ports. The handsome church of St John the Evangelist, with a lofty tower and spire, dates from 1844.