Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Vol. 115: With Other Selected and Abstracted Papers
Owing to the increased size of ocean steamships, the old estab lished docks are quite incapable of accommodating them, and there are therefore sundry new docks built and in course of construction to meet this want, notably at London, Tilbury, Liverpool, Glasgow, Hull, Cardiff, Barry and Southampton. At the latter port, when the first dock was designed, nearly sixty years ago, the lock-entrance was built only 46 feet wide. It was, however, widened to 60 feet more than forty-three years ago, and two or three years later a graving-dock with 80-foot gates was constructed for the Dock Company while I was their engineer; but since that Company was bought up, last year, by the London and south-western Railway Company, there have been commenced an extension of deep-water quays, the largest dry dock in the world, and a channel 30 feet in depth at low-water of spring tides right up from the sea to the new works. The outcome of these improvements has been to encourage and develop a large and increasing trade between America and Southampton; and the ample resources of the London and south-western Railway Company have enabled them to provide all the most modern appliances to facilitate the rapid loading and discharging of vessels.
The heavy capital cost of large steamships renders it absolutely necessary that, if they are to be made to pay, they should be kept as short a time as possible in dock; and for this purpose every facility should be given for getting into dock (independently of tides), and for berthing, loading, and discharging. In the matter of berthing, I am of opinion that docks should be planned so as to avoid the necessity of having to swing ships round at right-angles, and for this purpose the Empress Dock at Southampton was designed in the shape of a diamond, so that vessels could berth themselves without having to turn, and to enable railway lines to be laid round the obtuse angles of the dock without the introduction of turntables, leaving the acute angle at the end of the diamond for the connection with outside railways.
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