[1] Although the area to the north and west of Boston was a huge expanse of bog and marsh, the Haven was sufficiently shallow for it to have a ford.

Other commodities included wheat, sea-salt, woollen cloth manufactured in Lincoln and Stamford, lead from Derbyshire and iron from Yorkshire.

[4] By around 1800, the lower reaches of The Haven had become of network of winding channels, increasingly plagued by deposits of sand and silt, which made the use of Boston as a port problematic.

Boston Corporation therefore asked John Rennie to suggest a solution for the 13.5 miles (21.7 km) of waterway from the Black Sluice to the sea.

He proposed two solutions, the first of which involved straightening the channel between Skirbeck Church and the outfall of Hobhole Drain, from where a new cut would be created to reach the sea.

[5] Town Bridge prevented ships with masts from passing further upsteam, but river boats heading for Lincoln used the churchyard of St Botolphs as a quay.

However, by the 1880s ships resting on the mud at low tide was not particularly safe, and in parallel with the new channel to the Wash, a wet dock was built.

All of the Victorian warehousing that was built has since been replaced by modern industrial units, as the port handles around one million tonnes of cargo each year.

Land drainage in the area was also improved, as water levels on the downstream side of the Grand Sluice were reduced by around 4 feet (1.2 m).

[5] Improvements to The Haven convinced a group of businessmen to set up the Boston Deep Sea Fishing and Ice Company in 1885.

He wanted to replace older trawlers with new ones, but facing opposition, he waited until 1924, by which time he owned a controlling interest in the company.

The company finally managed to salvage the sunken vessel, but Boston Corporation were unwilling to pay the recovery costs despite having agreed to do so.

[7] In 2020, Boston still has a fishing fleet of around 26 boats, but rather than deep sea trawlers, they work locally landing their catches of cockles, mussels and shrimps.

Types of cargo handled include steel, paper and forest products together with containers, bulk, palletised and general goods.

Part of the rationale for the new bridge, which was designed and installed by the civil engineers Britcon, was that it would be accessible to those with mobility scooters, wheelchairs and pushchairs.

As well as being part of wider flood defence works, this would allow boats to pass through Boston town centre to access the South Forty Foot Drain at most states of the tide.

At the time, it was expected that the project would be completed by 2013,[22] but work did not start, and serious flooding occurred again in 2013, when over 800 homes and 79 businesses were inundated.

[24] Following a public enquiry in 2017, a £100 million project to build the barrier and associated flood defence works on both sides of the river, including widening the access to the Port of Boston wet dock, was awarded by the Environment Agency to the civil engineers BMMJV, a joint venture consisting of BAM Nuttall and Mott MacDonald.

[21] The costs of the scheme were met by the government's Flood Defence Grant in Aid fund, after it was deemed to be a national priority project in 2014.

This was partly due to work starting before the project had been fully scoped, in order to meet government deadlines for flood defence targets.

[29] In 1607, The Haven, between Boston and the sea (TF 361 402), was the scene of the first, abortive, attempt of the Scrooby Pilgrims, to leave England.