The harbour wall was finished in 1878, built from local sandstone by men whose names survive only in the ledger of wages. It has been breached three times, repaired three times, and it is failing again — not dramatically, but grain by grain, in the way that stone gives up.
The engineers' report gives it thirty years without major intervention. The intervention costs more than the town's annual budget. The sea, as ever, is not party to the negotiation.
This essay walks the wall end to end with the last stonemason who worked on it, and asks what a town owes to the structure that made it possible — and what it does when it can no longer pay.
