Dock

same length, and 166 yards in width, its area being little short of thirty acres; and the two together will contain with ease at least 500 vessels of from 250 to 500 tons. The whole are surrounded with a high wall, and, as a security against fire, the moment that a ship enters the dock the crews are discharged, and no person whatever is allowed to remain on board, or within the premises, the gates of which are closed at a certain hour. They are surrounded by immense warehouses, which are estimated to contain nearly 10,000 hogsheads of sugar, and an immense quantity of rum. The sum authorized by parliament to be raised for completing these docks and warehouses was £1,200,000, and the total expense was probably not far short of one million and a half; yet on this capital the subscribers have been receiving from a very short period after their opening ten per cent., which, by the terms of the act, is not to be exceeded, and the term granted is limited to twenty-one years: but, like most other property, these docks have been greatly depreciated in value, and at present barely pay eight per cent.

The next set of docks that were undertaken for the advantage of the trade of the capital was the London Docks. These docks are situated in Wapping, and are appropriated for the reception of all ships arriving in the port of London with wine, spirits, tobacco, and rice on board, but not exclusively, ships having on board other cargoes being admitted, on the payment of certain fees. The act of parliament for incorporating the dock company was passed in 1800, authorizing them to raise a capital of £1,200,000; but such was the number of houses to be purchased (we believe not less than twelve hundred) occupying the site of the dock, that this capital, by subsequent acts, was extended to £2,200,000, the dividends on which are limited, as in the West India Docks, to ten per cent. The great dock is 420 yards in length, and 230 yards in width, covering an area of twenty acres. A basin of three acres nearly connects it with the river. The warehouses are very magnificent; and the tobacco warehouse is the grandest and most spacious building of its kind in the world, being capable of containing five and twenty thousand hogsheads of tobacco, and the vaults underneath as many pipes of wine. This single building, under one roof, is said to occupy upwards of four acres of ground. These docks were opened in February 1805.

The East India Docks, for the exclusive reception and accommodation of the East India ships, were the last in succession. The act for the incorporation of the company was passed in July 1803, authorizing them to raise a capital of £200,000, which was afterwards increased to £600,000, the dividend, as in the case of the two others, to be limited to ten per cent. These docks are situated at Blackwall. That for the reception of homeward bound ships is 470 yards in length by 187 in width, containing a surface of rather more than eighteen acres; the outward-bound dock is 260 by 173 yards, and is consequently something more than nine acres. An entrance basin of three acres nearly, and a spacious lock, connect them with the Thames.

Dry docks. A dry dock, requiring to be perfectly water-tight, demands the greatest care in its construction. It is sometimes lined all round with wood, but more generally with masonry, mostly of hewn granite. The expense is very considerable, as the foundation, by means of piles or otherwise, must be well secured, all leakage prevented, and the culvers or drains properly constructed, to let in and carry off the water without its undermining the quays or piers. The cost of a complete dry dock will vary probably from £20,000 to £100,000, according to the size of the ships it is intended to admit, and the nature of the ground on

which it is to be constructed. A dry dock may be single, or made to contain only one ship; or double, to contain two ships; but the former is the most common, because most convenient.

As it is of the utmost importance to preserve the water in a wet dock, and to keep it out of a dry dock, it may be proper to describe the different kinds of gates which are in use for this purpose.

The most common, and on the whole, perhaps, the best and most convenient, are swinging gates, which open in the middle, and lie flat, one part against each wharf or side-wall of the passage leading into the dock or basin. The elevation of this kind of gate is represented in Plate CCIII. fig. 3. This kind of dock gate requires to be made of great strength, with sound timber and good iron, and the gudgeons on which the hinges turn to be well secured into the stone abutments. Care also must be taken to make the bottom of the passage and the bottom of the gates perfectly plane and parallel, to prevent leakage, and give facility to their opening and shutting, which is usually assisted by rollers fixed in a groove, and performed by means of a small capstern on each pier. Attached to the top of the gates is usually a foot bridge with railing, which, separating in the middle, opens and shuts with the gates.

The most simple, but by no means the most effective contrivance for keeping out the water, is the wicket-gate, of which the plan and elevation are represented in Plate CCIII. fig. 5 and 6. It consists of three parts, which, when opened, are removed separately. This gate is rarely made use of unless where the abutments are not sufficiently strong, or their foundation sufficiently secure, to bear the weight of a pair of swinging gates.

A third kind of gate consists of a floating dam or caisson, first introduced into this country by General Bentham, and first applied to the great new basin in Portsmouth dock-yard. They are built somewhat in the shape of a Greenland fishing-boat, sharp at the two ends, narrow, and deep in proportion to the depth of water at the entrance of the dock. The keel fits into a groove at the bottom of the passage, and the two slanting ends rise and fall in corresponding grooves cut into the two abutments. Of this kind of gate, fig. 1 and 2, Plate CCIII. represent the plan and elevation. By letting in the water, the caisson sinks in the grooves, and acts as a closed gate; and by pumping out the water, or letting it out to a certain depth, the dam floats as the tide rises, and the narrow part, rising to the top, is readily disengaged from the grooves, and easily floated away as a boat. The advantages of these floating dams, as stated by General Bentham, are, that they are cheaper of construction than the gates heretofore in use for closing docks or basins; that they occupy less space, are more easily repaired, and one and the same dam is capable of being used, as need may require, in different places at different times. These caissons have also the advantage of serving as bridges of communication for loaded carriages across the entrances they close, and they require much less labour than gates in opening or shutting up passages into docks or basins, since their occasional buoyancy may be obtained without pumping water or unloading ballast.

Fig. 7 represents a plan, and fig. 4 a sectional elevation, of a dry or graving dock, into which ships are taken to have their defects examined and repaired, coppered, &c. and in which, if necessary, as already observed, ships may be built.

When a ship is brought into a dry or graving dock, she gradually subsides as the water flows out, till her keel rests upon the line of square blocks which are placed to receive it along the middle for the whole length; and on

these blocks she is kept steady and upright by a number of shores or poles on each side, one of their ends being placed on the altars or steps of the dock, the other under the ship's bends and bottom. As a ship under repair generally requires something to be done to the main or false keel, or at any rate these parts require to be inspected, sometimes to shift the main keel, or to add to the whole length of the false keel, it was always found necessary in such cases to remove the blocks in order to get at the bottom of the ship; but this operation could not be performed without the more serious one of first lifting bodily the ship clear of all the blocks, and suspending her as it were in the air. This process was performed by driving wedges simultaneously under the ends of all the shores that supported the ship; an operation that required from four to five hundred men to enable them to suspend a ship of the first rate. When the San Josef, a large three-decker, required her bottom to be examined in 1800, the assistance of almost every artificer in the dock-yard was found necessary to perform this process of lifting her; nor was this the only inconvenience; the ship, thus suspended, suffered very material injury by the pressure of her own enormous weight against the ends of the shores that supported her, such as forcing in her sides, straining the knees and all her fastenings, breaking the treenails, &c.

To remedy these glaring inconveniences and very serious injuries that ships thus placed were apt to sustain, and to effect a saving of time and expense in the operation, Mr (now Sir Robert) Seppings, then master shipwright, and afterwards surveyor of the navy, contrived, sixteen or eighteen years ago, an improvement, as ingenious as it is simple, by which twenty men will suspend the largest ship in the navy, or rather, which amounts to the same thing, will disengage any one block that may be required, in the space of two or three minutes, without the necessity of suspending her at all; and, as a first rate in dock sits upon about fifty blocks, these twenty men will clear her of the whole of these blocks in about two hours; and as the saving of a day in completing the repairs of a ship is frequently the saving of a whole spring tide, the docking and undocking of a ship may make, and frequently has made, by this new method, the difference of a fortnight in the time of equipping her for sea.

The block of Mr Seppings, instead of being one solid piece, consists of three wedges, or, more properly speaking, of one obtuse wedge and two inclined planes, which, when put together and placed under the ship's keel, appear as under, when viewed in the direction or line of the keel,

where G is the wedge on which the keel rests, having its obtuse angle equal to $170^\backslash circ$, and HH are the two inclined planes, each having an acute angle of $5^\backslash circ$. The wedge is of hard wood, having its two sides lined with iron; the two inclined planes are of cast iron. When one of these blocks is to be disengaged from under a ship's bottom, nothing more is required than a few smart blows alternately on the two sides of the two inclined planes, when they fly out, and the middle part or wedge drops; and the facility of thus disengaging any of the blocks is in proportion to the quantity of pressure upon that block. The strokes are usually given by a kind of catapult or battering-ram, being a thick spar or pole moving on a pair of wheels, as KK.

This simple contrivance to get at any part of a ship's bottom by removing in succession all the blocks, without the necessity of lifting the ship, which the removal of any one block required to be done by the old method, is now universally adopted in all the dock-yards; and the lords of the admiralty marked their sense of the great utility of the improvement, by bestowing on Mr Seppings a reward of £1000 for the invention.

Another very material improvement, recently introduced into his majesty's dock-yards, is that of covering the dry docks and building slips with roofs. The rapid decay of our ships of war by that species of disease known by the name of the dry rot, attracted very general attention; its effects were well known, but a variety of opinions were entertained as to its causes and its cure. It was quite obvious, however, that exclusion of air and moisture were the two great operating causes in giving activity to the progress of the disease (see DRY ROT); and that a ship in dock, stripped of her planking, and open to the weather in every part, alternately exposed to frost, rain, wind, and sunshine, must at least have her timbers differently affected, some swelled and water-soaked, others shrunk with heat, and others rifted with the wind and frost; and, if closed up with planking in this state, might be expected, at no great distance of time, to exhibit symptoms of decay. The workmen, too, in the open docks or slips, suffered from the vicissitudes of the weather no less than the ships, and their labour was frequently suspended, to the great detriment of the naval service. The measure of roofing over the docks and slips had long and repeatedly been suggested, but, either from prejudice or a false economy, it was only very recently carried into practice, but is now almost universal in all the yards. These roofs are generally constructed so as to be capable of having the sides and ends occasionally closed, according to the quarter from which the wind may blow; and by this contrivance the timber is prevented from rifting, as it is liable to do, by the action of a thorough draught of wind, and the health of the artificer is prevented from injury. The light is admitted through numerous windows placed in the roof. These roofs are in general supported on a row of wooden pillars, and covered with slate, some with plates of iron, and others with shingle. Plate CCIII. fig. 8, exhibits the transverse section of a roof thrown over the head of the dock at Plymouth, in which the Foudroyant is repairing; its span, from A to A, being 95 feet 4 inches, and the extreme width, from B to B, 125 feet 4 inches, supported, on the principle of trussing, without a single beam. Another of the same kind was built over the Prince Regent at Chatham, whose span was 100 feet, and the extreme width 150 feet. These immense roofs were constructed after a plan of Mr Seppings. The cost of one of the dimensions above mentioned was from £6000 to £7000, which, great as it may appear, must be amply repaid by the superior quality and durability of the ships built under it; but the same roof, with little or no repair, will, in all probability, serve as a covering for eight or ten different ships in succession. General Bentham, who, in his statement of Services rendered in the Civil Department of the

Navy, seems to claim to himself all the inventions and improvements which have been introduced into the dock-yards for the last twenty years, carries his invention beyond a mere covering, and proposes to house over the docks and slips so completely as to afford "means of heating, warming, ventilating, and artificially lighting the interior at pleasure; the introduction of boilers or steam-kilns for bending the planks within the inclosure; the introduction of machinery for assisting in various operations, particularly the more laborious ones; the providing room for carrying on all the shipwright's work within the building; besides a variety of lesser works, such as it is found very inconvenient during the building or repairing of a ship to have executed, for example, in a smith's or carpenter's shop at a distance." Such buildings would not only be enormously expensive, but, in the present crowded state of the dock-yards, utterly impracticable. With regard to the invention of covered docks and slips, they have been used in Venice from time immemorial; and it appeared, from the evidence given by Mr Strange, the consul at that port in the year 1792, before the commissioners of land revenue, that two-and-twenty large ships had been under covered slips, some of them for sixty years nearly. At Carlsrora, also, there are several covered docks, and both Mr Nicholls and Mr Snodgrass strongly recommended the building of ships under cover nearly thirty years ago.

Among other experiments which have recently been making in the dock-yards for facilitating and expediting the repairs of ships, one may be mentioned, of which many persons are sanguine enough to think that the successful result is likely to be attended with most important benefits to the naval service. It is that of hauling up ships of war, of any dimensions, on building slips, instead of taking them into docks. It is no uncommon practice, at various ports of this kingdom, where there are neither artificial basins nor natural harbours, to haul vessels of the burden of fifty to two hundred tons, or probably larger, upon the beach, by means of capstans, to give them repairs; in like manner, most of the large fishing smacks are hauled up for security in tempestuous weather; but the practicability of hauling up ships of war, especially of the larger classes, was a matter of some doubt. Several frigates had, at various times, been hauled upon slips, when the docks were all occupied; and the ease with which the operation was performed induced the officers of the dock-yard to propose the hauling up of a line-of-battle ship. The Kent, of 74 guns, was selected for this purpose. It was necessary, in the first place, to take her into a dock, to have proper bilgeways prepared, and to be stripped, so as to be made as light as possible, her weight being, according to a calculation made from the water she displaced when afloat, about fourteen hundred tons. To heave up this weight fourteen capstans were employed, and the number of men to work these were as under:

Total of men employed.....2116

The time occupied in hauling her up, after all the purchases were brought to bear, was forty minutes. The expense of preparing her, and the loss and wear and tear of the materials, was estimated at somewhere about L.2000.

The advantages which slips are supposed to possess over dry docks are many and important. They can be constructed at one twentieth part of the expense; they oc-

cupy less space; they can be constructed on a steep or a shelving shore; and ships can be hauled upon them either in spring or neap tides; whereas a dry dock can only be made in particular situations, and, when made, ships can only be docked and undocked in certain states of the tides; from which circumstance a considerable delay and inconvenience are frequently experienced. It should be recollected, however, that a large ship must necessarily go into a dock preparatory to her being hauled up on a slip.

It has been considered as not at all impossible, as was suggested some time ago by Mr Perring, the ingenious clerk of the check in Plymouth dock-yard, that the whole ordinary may hereafter be laid up on slips, which, if housed over, would unquestionably be the best means of increasing their durability, and preserving them from partial decay. Nor is it certain that in the end it would not be the most economical mode of preserving them. The expense, as appears from the Estimates of the Ordinary of the Navy for the year 1817, is L.187,000 for harbour victuals, harbour moorings and riggings, &c. besides L.135,000 for wages; the chief part of both which sums is on account of ships of war laid up in ordinary, none of which would be required by placing them on slips. It would indeed form a singular revolution in naval management, if ships hereafter should be laid up in ordinary on dry land, whilst the timber of which they are built is now considered to be the best preserved under salt water; a process which, from some experiments recently made, promises fair to be the most effectual prevention of, and a probable cure for, the dry rot. (See DRY ROT). This method of preserving timber has long been practised at Brest, Carthage, and several other places on the Continent; and the only objection to it in some of our ports appears to be the attack of the worm known to naturalists by the name of teredo navalis, whose bite is almost as destructive as the dry rot.

On the other hand, there are very many and serious objections, even were the measure practicable, of hauling up ships of the line in particular, to be laid in ordinary on slips. In the first place, the length of sea-beach which would be required is greater than probably all the dock-yards in the kingdom could furnish. Secondly, the three warrant-officers who are now employed in each ship, and who are the best men in the service, being no longer necessary, would be turned adrift, and, in all probability, utterly lost to the navy. Thirdly, no large ship could be hauled on the slips without being previously taken into a dock to have her bilgeways fitted, and her bottom prepared for placing her on the slip. The time taken for this purpose must necessarily interfere with the other works of the yard; and after taking her out, the preparations for heaving her up, the capstans, blocks, purchase-falls, chains, and a variety of other articles, amount to a very large expense, not less, with the expense of the roof to cover the ship, than L.10,000 for each slip so hauled up.

Dock-Yards.

Previously to the reign of Henry VIII. the kings of England had neither naval arsenals nor dock-yards, nor any regular establishment of civil or naval officers to provide ships of war, or to fight them. They had admirals, however, possessing a high jurisdiction and very great power. (See the article ADMIRAL). And it would appear, from a very curious poem in Hackluyt's Collection, called The Policy of Keeping the Sea, that Henry V. had both ships, officers, and men exclusively appropriated to his service, and independently of those which the Cinque Ports were bound, and the other ports were occasionally called upon, to furnish, on any emergency. By this poem it also appears that Little Hampton, unfit as it now is, was the port at which Henry built

.....his great Dromions
Which passed other great shippes of the commons.

But what these dromions were no one can now tell; nor is it easy to conceive how the building and repairing of the Great Harry, which in the reign of Henry VII. was launched at Portsmouth, and cost £15,000, was managed, considering the very rapid strides made at once from the small Cinque Port vessels, manned with twenty-one men and a boy, to this enormous floating castle. At that time it is well known that they had no docks, nor even substitutes for them.

The foundation of a regular navy, by the establishment of dock-yards, and the formation of a board, consisting of certain commissioners for the management of its affairs, was first laid by Henry VIII., and the first dock-yard erected under his reign was that of Woolwich. Those of Portsmouth, Deptford, Chatham, and Sheerness, followed in succession; and the last, excepting the new and unfinished yard of Pembroke, was Plymouth, which was founded by William III.

From the first establishment of the king's dock-yards to the present time, most of them have gradually been enlarged and improved by a succession of expedients and make-shifts, which answered the purposes of the moment; but the best of them possess not those conveniences and advantages which might be obtained from a dock-yard systematically laid out on a uniform and consistent plan, with its wharfs, basins, docks, slips, magazines, and workshops, arranged according to certain fixed principles, calculated to produce convenience, economy, and dispatch.

Neither at the time when our dock-yards were first established, nor at any subsequent periods of their enlargement as the necessities of the service demanded, could it have been foreseen what incalculable advantages would one day be derived from the substitution of machinery for human labour; and without a reference to this vast improvement in all mechanical operations, it could not be expected that any provision would be made for its future introduction; on the contrary, the docks and slips, the workshops and store-houses, were successively built at random, and placed wherever a vacant space would most conveniently admit them, and in such a manner as in most cases to render the subsequent introduction of machinery and iron railways, and those various contrivances found in the large manufacturing establishments of private individuals, quite impossible, even in the most commodious and roomy of his majesty's dock-yards.

The want of a systematic arrangement in our dock-yards, independently of machinery, and the enormous expenditure of money laid out on expedients, were questions of frequent discussion among naval men connected with the various administrations of the navy, and it was thought by many that it would be more desirable to construct an entire new dock-yard in some eligible situation, on an extensive scale, than to continue the improvements in the old ones. For this purpose, so early as the year 1765, the attention of the naval administration appears to have been turned to the Isle of Grain in the river Medway, along the shore of which is a fine expansive sheet of deep water. A dock-yard thus placed, on a systematic plan, would supersede that of Chatham on one side and Sheerness on the other; but it was discovered on boring that the substratum was so loose and sandy as not to admit of a solid foundation. General Bentham, however, revived the project in the year 1800, which he seems to claim as his own, and painted the situation in such glowing colours, and as affording so many advantages for a grand naval arsenal, that the lords of the admiralty were induced to order a fresh set of borings to be taken. These were carried to the depth of sixty feet, and were everywhere found to

consist of sand and mud, and totally unfit for the construction of basins, docks, and such solid buildings as are required for naval purposes.

The imperfection of the naval yards to the eastward, On the peninsula of Northfleet. the extension of the boundaries of France towards that quarter, the occupation of the great naval port of Antwerp, and the uninterrupted command of the Scheldt and the ports of Holland by that power, rendered an enlargement of the means of naval equipment in the eastern dock-yards of England, or a new naval arsenal, indispensable. For the latter purpose the banks of the Thames were considered, in every point of view, as preferable to those of the Medway, the entrance into the latter being narrow, and having a bar across it, on which, at low water of spring tides, there is only fourteen or fifteen feet of water; whereas the navigation of the Thames is at all times uninterrupted, excepting by the badness of the weather. It communicates directly with the great market-town of London, in which every description of stores, foreign and domestic, is accumulated; and the trade of the Thames is the great source from which the fleet is supplied with seamen. The marshy peninsula of Northfleet was considered by naval men, who had turned their attention to the subject, to possess every possible requisite for the establishment of a royal dock-yard on an extensive scale. It was sufficiently removed from the mouth of the river to be completely sheltered, yet near enough for ships to proceed to sea with one wind. In the river between Northfleet and the sea there is plenty of water for the largest three-deckers to proceed with all their guns, ammunition, stores, and provisions on board, and almost with any wind, if moderate. A copious stream of good fresh water runs across the peninsula. The soil afforded plenty of earth suitable for bricks; the foundation was excellent for docks, slips, wharfs, and buildings of all kinds. It was sufficiently near the metropolis for speedy communication with the naval departments, and to receive stores in barges and the river craft. It was capable of being defended both on the land and river side; and when the whole was raised to the height of twelve feet with a dry gravelly soil, from the excavations of the docks and basins, there could be no doubt of the healthiness of the situation. By the direction, therefore, of the lords of the admiralty, a complete survey was made by Messrs Rennie and Whidbey, who furnished a plan and estimate of a naval arsenal on a magnificent scale, within which all kinds of machinery were proposed to be employed for the making of anchors, sawing of timber, rope-making, block-making, &c.; iron railways to be laid from the timber wharfs to the timber fields, from thence to the mills and pits, and from them to the docks, slips, and workshops. The estimate, it appears, was about six millions sterling, which Mr Rose, in his letter to the late Lord Melville, calculates, with the fortifications and unforeseen expenses, to amount actually to ten millions; an expense which the minister did not venture to propose, though there can be little doubt that, when the case was fairly stated to the public, and the necessity of increasing our naval establishments to the eastward had been made apparent, no violent opposition would have been made to a measure which tended to keep up our naval superiority, and which was the less objectionable, as none of the money would have been taken out of the country, but circulated within it, to the encouragement of the arts, trades, and manufactures of the kingdom.

The board of revision made a detailed report on the merits of the plan, which, however, as the execution of it was delayed, was not printed; but the real reason was supposed to be, the very gloomy view taken by the commissioners of the disadvantages and imperfections of the present dock-yards, which Mr Rose seems to think,

and indeed it is generally thought, is by no means warranted, and that those disadvantages in that report are greatly exaggerated, perhaps to enhance the value of the Northfleet plan, of which they seem to have been much enamoured. Imperfect as the old dock-yards are, chiefly from their having risen, as before observed, to their present state, by a succession of expedients and make-shifts, they are nevertheless far superior to any similar establishments on the Continent of Europe, if we except the unfinished arsenal of Cherbourg, whose magnificent basins (see BREAKWATER) are certainly unequalled, and the space surrounding them capable of being turned to every possible advantage. M. Charles Dupin, a French officer, who examined all our dock-yards with a skillful eye, pronounces them as by far superior to any on the Continent. We have heard much of the magnificent basins and the covered docks of Carlsrorna, but the one has been greatly overrated, and the others are merely covered over with shed-like roofs; nor is there the least likelihood that the plan will ever be finished. We have been told likewise of the superior advantages of the naval arsenal of Copenhagen, where every ship has its appropriate storehouse. This plan has been adopted at Brest, and is reprobated there by every naval officer, and the officers of the yard, as most inconvenient, and a great waste of room, by having the most bulky and the most trifling articles stowed together in the same room. A better arrangement is that of having certain magazines appropriated to certain kinds of stores, and arranged according to the class or rate of ship for which they are intended, and, if appropriated or returned stores, the name of the ship to which they belong painted in front of the birth in which they are deposited. This is the system generally followed in our dock-yards.

The great point in which our naval arsenals are most defective is the want of wet docks or basins; which, however, are to a certain extent compensated at the two principal dock-yards of Portsmouth and Plymouth, by two magnificent harbours, in which the whole navy of England, when dismantled, may be moored and laid up in ordinary, in perfect security. The want of basins, however, in our dock-yards is most severely felt in time of war, when the expeditious fitting out of the fleet becomes so very desirable. One at Portsmouth on a small scale has been found of incalculable advantage to that yard; and a larger one, now constructed at Sheerness, will probably make that yard of sufficient capacity to supersede the necessity of a new establishment at Northfleet, or in any other situation to the eastward.

The perfection of a dock-yard, then, independently of the advantages of machinery, which are but contingent, may be considered to depend upon one or more extensive basins, surrounded by spacious wharfs or quays. By means of these a prodigious saving of time, labour, and expense may be saved, in every stage of the progress of fitting out a ship for sea, from the moment she is launched from the slip, or taken out of a dock, as well as in dismantling a ship on returning to port to be paid off and repaired, or laid up in ordinary. For this purpose the docks and slips should occupy one of the sides of the basin, with working sheds for carpenters and joiners, smiths' shops, saw-pits, and seasoning-sheds between them. The ship, when completed on the slip and launched into the basin, may then be taken immediately into the adjoining dock to be coppered. From this she proceeds to the second side of the basin, in the corner of which is the ballast-wharf; the remainder of the side will probably be occupied by the victualling department, with appropriate stores in the rear for various kinds of provisions, and behind these the bakery, brewery, and slaughter-houses; on the wharf

the iron tanks for holding water, now universally used for the ground tier, in lieu of wooden casks. These are taken on board next after the ballast, and, together with the superincumbent casks, would be filled in the ship's hold by means of flexible pipes to convey the water into them. The provisions would at the same time be taken on board at the same wharf, in front of the victualling stores. The third side might be appropriated to the ordnance department, with the gun-wharf extending along the whole side, and the gun-carriage storehouses, magazines, &c. in the rear. The fourth side would be occupied as the anchor wharf, with the cable storehouses, the sail lofts and stores, rigging loft, and magazines for various stores, in the rear. Behind these, again, on the first side, containing the dry docks and building slips, the ground would be appropriated to the reception, birthing, and converting of timber, from whence iron railways would lead to the saw-mills, saw-pits, and work-shops, all of which would be placed on that side. On the second side a pond or basin for the victualling lighters and craft, with wharfs communicating with the manufactories and storehouses; the same on the ordnance or third side; and on the fourth side might be placed the ropery, hemp storehouses, tar-houses, with a basin for hemp-vessels, lighters, and the like. Communicating with the great basin on the building side, and also with the river or harbour, on the shore of which the dock-yard is to be formed, should be a mast-pond, with a lock for the storing of spars; in front the mast-houses, top-houses, capstan-houses, and a slip to launch the masts into the pond. Here also might be placed the boat-houses and boat-pond.

A peninsular situation like that of Northfleet, having at least three fourths of its shore surrounded with deep tages of water, is peculiarly favourable for some such arrangement as is here mentioned; as any number of locks and canals might be made to communicate with the river, so that ships coming into the basin might not interfere with those going out, nor the lighters and other craft bringing their several species of stores, with either or with one another. By such an arrangement a ship would be equipped for sea at half the present expense, and within half the usual time. A ship fitting out for an anchorage distant from the dock-yard, as at the Nore and Spithead, is liable to every inconvenience and delay, as all her guns, stores, provisions, and water, must be carried to her in dock-yard lighters and other craft, into which and out of which they must be hoisted and rehoisted; liable to delay from bad weather and contrary winds; to be stove alongside the ship, to the total loss or damaging of their cargoes; added to which is the loss of time in going backwards and forwards, especially to the artificers; the desertion of the men; the accidents from the upsetting of boats; and many other evils of a magnitude not easily to be calculated, and exceeded only by the disappointment and vexation that unavoidably occur when ships are preparing for some particular and pressing service; all of which, when ships are fitted out in a basin for sea, are avoided. Here no delay, no embezzlement, no desertion, can take place. A ship in returning from sea may be docked and undocked into the basin with all her stores on board; and if to be paid off, instead of keeping the crew on board for weeks, till all the stores have been delivered into the dock-yard, the ship, by the proposed plan of basins, would remain securely in the basin, to be stripped at leisure by the riggers and labourers of the yard, and the crew become immediately available for other ships. Of the many superior advantages of wet docks for laying up ships to discharge, over the practice of exposing them in rivers or harbours, the shipping interest of the ports of London, Liverpool, Bristol, and Hull, can best testify, more espe-

Dock-Yards. cially that of London, which has taken the precaution to surround the docks with high inclosing walls, by means of which all access is debarred, and all possibility of embazlement prevented.

Dock-Yards. From a brief description of the royal dock-yards as they now stand, a general idea may be formed of their several capacities, advantages, and defects. Taking them in succession, according to their vicinity to the capital, the first is

Deptford.—The front or wharf wall of this dock-yard, facing the Thames, is about 1700 feet in length, and the mean breadth of the yard 650 feet; the superficial content about thirty acres. It has three slips for ships of the line on the face next the river, and two for smaller vessels, which launch into a basin or wet dock, 260 by 220 feet. There are also three dry docks; one of them a double dock, communicating with the Thames, and the other a smaller one, opening into the basin. With these restricted means, even with an adequate number of workmen, its capacity for building ships, or for large repairs, must be very limited; but in the occasional repair of fourth-rates and frigates, and in the fitting out of sloops and smaller vessels, a great deal of work was performed at Deptford in the course of the war. The proximity of Deptford dock-yard to the capital is, however, of great importance, in the convenience it affords of receiving from this great mart all the home manufactures and products which may be purchased by contract for the use of the navy. It is, in fact, the general magazine of stores and necessaries for the fleet, from whence they are shipped off, as occasion requires, to the home yards, the out-ports, and the foreign stations, in store-ships, transports, coasting sloops, lighters, and launches, according to the distance to which they must be sent, to the amount, in time of war, of more than 30,000 tons a year.

The principal stores deposited in Deptford dock-yard are small cordage, canvass, and ships' sails, to an immense amount; beds, hair for beds, hammocks, slops, and marine clothing; anchors under the weight of about seventy-five hundred, which are generally made by contract, all above that size being manufactured in the king's dock-yards.

The great magazines for the reception of these stores consist of a large quadrangular building, with a square in the middle, of three stories in height, with cellars underneath, in which are contained pitch, tar, rosin, and turpentine. The length of each side of these storehouses is nearly the same, differing from a square only by some eighteen feet: this length is about 210 feet, but they vary in width from forty-six to twenty-four feet.

Parallel to the west front of this quadrangle is the rigging-house and sail-loft, 240 feet, and nearly fifty feet wide, in which all the rigging is fitted for ships and stowed away, the sails cut out, made, and placed in proper births for their reception, as well as for various other stores of a smaller kind.

On the eastern extremity of the yard is a long range of building, called the pavilion, in which the beds, hammocks, and slop-clothing are kept, and in which also are the housecarpenters', the joiners', and wheelwrights' shops. This building is about 580 feet long by twenty-six feet wide.

The remaining buildings usually appropriated to the different services of a dock-yard are all to be found at Deptford; a good blacksmith's shop, a plumber, glazier, painter-shops, seasoning-sheds, store-cabins, saw-pits, mast-house, and pond, boat-houses, mould-loft, timber-births, besides good houses and gardens for the principal officers, with several coach-houses and stables, so that the whole space is completely filled up in every part.

The number of men employed in this yard, in time of war, may have been about fifteen hundred, of whom about one half were shipwrights and other artificers, and the

other half labourers. There were, besides, in constant employ, eighteen or twenty teams of four each, of horses, to drag timber and heavy stores. Deptford dock-yard has recently been put down.

Adjoining to the dock-yard is the victualling-yard, the Deptford completest establishment of the kind, perhaps, in this or victualling any other kingdom, though still capable of much improvement in the arrangement. Its frontage to the Thames is about 1060 feet, and mean depth 1000 feet, containing about nineteen acres. This space is laid out in a more convenient manner than any of the dock-yards, for answering all the purposes which were intended. The general storehouses in front of the wharf wall, the cooperage, the brewery, the butchery, and the bakery, are all separate and complete in themselves. A mill has recently been erected, of such capacity as to grind corn to be made into biscuit sufficient for supplying the whole navy. Besides all the requisite offices for keeping the accounts, there are houses and gardens for eight of the principal officers of the yard; and when the old wharf wall shall have been repaired, and carried out a little farther into the river, for which a sum of £27,000 appears on the estimate of 1817, the victualling-yard will be complete in all respects, according to the present arrangement. (Navy Estimates for 1817.)

The cooperage is spacious and well laid out. The staves are all sawed by hand, and this operation employs about 100 sawyers in time of war. Mr Brown of Fulham has succeeded, it seems, in making casks by machinery, by which seventeen men in nine hours are stated to be able to complete 300 casks, whereas, by the ordinary method, the same number could only complete about eighty. The brewery is well arranged, so is the bakery; and the butchery, consisting of a yard for keeping the cattle, with pens for sheep and hogs, two spacious slaughtering-houses, cutting and salting-houses, by the abundant supply of water and constant washing, are kept in the cleanest order, and free from any disagreeable smell.

In the salting season 260 carcasses have been slaughtered in each of the two days in the week appropriated to killing, and the hog hanging-house is capable of containing 650 carcasses.

The total number of coopers, sawyers, bakers, and labourers employed during war, in the victualling-yard at Deptford, amounted probably to twelve or thirteen hundred.

Woolwich Dock-Yard.—This first and most ancient of the dock-yards presents a frontage to the river of 3300 feet; the breadth is very irregular, being from 250 to 750 feet; and it contains an area of about thirty-six acres. It has five slips, which open into the river, three of which are for ships of the line, one for frigates, and one for vessels of a smaller class. It has three dry docks, one a double and one single dock, all of them capable of receiving ships of the line. With all its imperfections, Woolwich yard, with a complete establishment of artificers, has been of great service both in the building and repairing of ships of all classes. Some of the largest and finest ships in the navy have been launched from Woolwich yard, among which may be mentioned the Nelson and the Ocean. In fact, it is chiefly a building yard that Woolwich ought to be considered as of much importance; and even in this respect it has of late years much deteriorated, owing to the increasing shallowness of the river, and the immense accumulation of mud, which is found in a very few weeks completely to block up all the entrances into the docks and slips, and along the whole length of the wharf wall. It is stated in the Eighth Report of the Select Committee on Finance (1818), that "the wharf wall at Woolwich, owing to the action of the tide on the foundation, is in a falling