Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

Fig. 1.—TRINIDAD FLOATING DOCK BEING TOWED FROM HULL TO THE WEST INDIES BY DUTCH TUGS. (Photo, 8. Cribb.) BY ALBERT G. HOOD, Editor of “ The Shipbuilder.” THE necessity for providing means of dry-docking a ship, in order to ex- amine or effect repairs to the under- water portions, became apparent very early in the history of the world’s shipping. It is known that, long before the Christian era, the Phoenicians used to float their dam- Origin of the Floating Dock. aged galleys into a natural creek or inlet, and, by damming up the entrance and bailing out the water, form a crude kind of dry dock in which to carry out the necessary repairs. This was in all probability the origin of the modern excavated stone-lined graving-dock, which has been described in a previous article. The earliest floating docks belong to a much later period. It is said that in the latter part of the sixteenth century an English vessel sus- tained such damage in the Baltic that it became necessary to take her out of the water. No graving dock or slipway being available, and it being impossible to beach the ship and effect repairs when the tide was down, on account of the absence of tides in the Baltic, the cap- tain employed an old hulk. Removing the beams, the deck, First and the stern of the hulk, and loatin£ Dock, admitting the water, he floated his vessel inside, closed up the end of the hulk by a kind of gate, bailed out the water, and thus con- structed what may be termed the first float- ing dock. It was not, however, until the use of iron as a shipbuilding material became general that floating docks of types approaching the present form came into vogue. Between the years 1860 and 1870 several iron floating docks were built, and some of these still exist, and are capable of docking ships. During the last twelve or fifteen years the size of steel float- ing docks has increased greatly. The largest floating dock in use in 1896, for example, was