The old gun positions were supplemented by the construction of three new batteries to command the Harbour and the Straits. On the Clifftops east of the town was the Langdon Battery, built for three 9.2-inch  guns which arrived by sea  in 1904?  On Long Hill at the west  of the Citadel, a similar  battery  was built to  accommodate three 9 inch  guns, and  on the edge of the cliff overlooking the Admiralty Pier, another with three 6 inch guns covered the close approaches.

The great Admiralty Harbour was also under construction. The extension to the existing pier and the new Eastern  Arm crept seaward  like accusing  fingers to approach  the end  of the  South Breakwater, enclosing  an area of more  than six hundred acres of sheltered water in which battleships, cruisers, destroyers and their attendant craft could anchor, and pens where submarines and the fast motor craft of the Dover Patrol could lie in safety between their operational sorties. In 1909, when the main constructional works on the Harbour were complete, the Harbour Board leased an area of land at the landward end of the Admiralty Pier to the South Eastern and Chatham Railway Company. In the summer of 1914 not a moment too soon the S.E & C.R. completed the Marine Station. This was immediately called on to play an important part in the transport system between England and France during the 1914-18 war.

The Admiralty Pier Around 1900 being widened for The new Marine Station that was designed by Mr. P Tempest 

When war broke out, the Harbour and the town became one great maximum-security area, given over almost completely to naval and military activity. As a result, the ferry services were transferred to Folkestone. Into Dover came numbers of refugees and, in conditions of immense secrecy, the treasure and Crown jewels of Belgium, to be deposited in the vaults of the Bank of England until the war was over.

Besides the constant coming and going of all types of naval vessels, from great battleships to tiny high-speed motor boats, vast numbers of troops and great quantities of military supplies passed through the Harbour to Europe, and more than three thousand ambulance ships brought back nearly a million and a quarter wounded soldiers, who were transferred into ambulance trains at the then new Marine Station and taken to hospitals all over the country. All this naval and military activity could not pass unknown to the enemy, who from time to time carried out raids on the town. From the sea, submarines and destroyers bombarded the town on a number of occasions, and there were air raids by aircraft and zeppelins. The last zeppelin attack resulted in the dropping of a 600lb bomb, which caused minor damage and many broken windows in the Maxton and Folkestone Road area.

A and B class Submarines in Dover Docks in the First World War & a view from East Cliff taken in 1953 of the two original car ferry berths. Note the Submarine Pens on the South Jetty in the background.

At the end of the first war, Dover was concerned with the movements of vast numbers of troops and thousands of tons of military supplies back from Europe, and this provided much trade and employment during a period when the town would otherwise have been in a most depressed state. However, a brief period of real prosperity in the first two or three years, when life was getting back to normal after four years of upheaval, was soon annulled by the lack of work for the returning men, by the ending of all interest in the Harbour on the part of the Admiralty and by the depressed state of the national economy. Socially, too, it was a difficult period, a time of change when all the old certainties and the traditional ways of life were in the melting pot.

There was some progress: roads transport increased rapidly and small' bus, coach and lorry firms, many of them operated by one or two men with war surplus vehicles, provided a over-abundance of transport facilities never before experienced. However, uneconomic competition in the haulage field and the passing of the Road Traffic Act in the passenger field eliminated many enterprises and resulted in bankruptcies, mergers and take-overs. The East Kent Road Car Company emerged as the survivor in passenger carriage, also taking over the old tram routes when Dover's tramway system was scrapped.

An open-top tram prepares to start of from the River terminus near River church

There was also some building, most of it consisting of individual private houses for people of moderate means. Important developments connected with the Harbour went ahead. In 1923 the separate railway companies in southern England were merged to form the Southern Railway, which then took over the railway system in the docks as the tenant of the Harbour Board. People started taking their cars abroad with them on holiday, and in 1928 Captain Townsend started the first car-ferry service to the continent with his small coaster, the 'Artificer'. The venture proved successful and after his third ship, a converted ex-naval sloop called the 'Forde' entered service, the Southern Railway decided to compete. In 1931 its specially built 'Auto carrier' operated a daily cross-Channel service. The number of cars carried increased yearly and both services prospered. The railway company then built a train-ferry berthing dock near the South pier and the train-ferry service was inaugurated late in 1936 by three specially designed geared turbine ships, the 'Hampton', 'Shepperton' and 'Twickenham' ferries, built by Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson at Newcastle and launched in 1934. In 1939 the number of vehicles crossing the Straits was 31,000, a substantial increase on the 6,000 carried by Captain Townsend in his first pioneering year.

The coming of the Second World War in 1939 put a stop to such operations, and in 1940 the western Harbour entrance was again blocked and Dover reverted back to a war footing. The Harbour was now too vulnerable to be used for the larger navel ships, though small craft and those of the Dover Patrol did operate from bases in the Harbour and the town was of military importance as a command center. Things were fairly quiet during the early months of the war, but large numbers of troops were shipped back through the port during the Dunkirk evacuation, which was largely controlled from the command center in the town. On 22 August 1940 the long range shelling of Dover by German guns sited on the French coast began; it continued almost to the end of the war. This shelling coupled with bombing raids caused fearful damage to the town, reducing whole streets to rubble. A remarkable chart entitled 'Dover's shells and bombs', published by the local news paper 'Dover Express' is graphic evidence of the fact that every area of the town suffered, 10,056 premises being damaged and 3,871 of them either severely damaged or completely destroyed. 216 civilians were killed and 760 injured, a toll, which only ended when the allied advance into Europe cleared the German gunners from the coastal area. The last German shell fell in Castle Street at 7.15 p.m. on September 1944.

One of many streets in Dover hit by shelling from the French coast. and a view of the sea front before the Gateway flats were built