User:Gatoclass/SB/NY dry dock co

Background

By the early 1820s, New York was one of the world's major ports, but due to the low rise of tide, conventional dry docks were impractical and the port's dry dock facilities as a result were practically nonexistent. At this time, the underside of a ship's hull could only be serviced at the city by the traditional but awkward process of heaving down, while for more extensive repairs, ship owners were obliged to despatch their ships to European ports.

The first attempt to address the problem was the construction of a marine railway by shipbuilders Henry Steers and John Thomas, which went into operation in 1826. It soon became apparent, however, that this technology could not be adapted to the servicing of the ever larger merchant vessels being built at this time. In September 1827, a new company founded by shipbuilder Jesse Hurd, the New York Screw Dock Company, completed New York's first substantial dry dock. The dock built by this company was elevated and depressed by turning a set of sixteen 4 1/2 inch diameter screws connected to a wooden platform beneath the ship. Construction of this new dry dock was "hailed with joy" by New York shipowners, and within a few years, the company added a second, more sophisticated hydraulic drydock capable of lifting a ship of up to 800 tons burden; however, it was clear that more drydock facilities were required to meet the port's growing needs.

Facilities

In 1838, engineer Phineas Burgess and a business associate, Daniel Dodge, began work on a new dry dock for the port of New York. A new company, the New York Sectional Dock Company, was formed for the purpose, and the company's first dock, a sectional floating dock patented, designed and built by Burgess and Dodge, was completed by 1839. In 1843, the company was formally incorporated as the New York Floating Dry Dock Company, with a capital of $100,000. Burgess was made the new company's superintendent.

The original dock built for the company in 1839 consisted of seven wooden sections in total, each section being 92 feet across with an internal working area of 64 feet, and 23 feet wide, the total length of the seven sections—and thus the maximum length of a serviceable ship—being 165 feet. A platform at both ends of each section, rising 28 feet above the internal deck, or 36 feet high externally, each contained a water tank and pontoon for setting the depth of the section, worked by machinery contained in an engine house atop the platform. The engine house in the central section of the dock on each side contained a steam engine and boiler from which power was transmitted to all the sections along the same side of the dock, to raise and lower the pontoons as well as fill or empty the water tanks. The sections were connected to each other by double tie beams which could be "readily slipped out" when required.

As a sectional floating dock, the new dock had a number of advantages over its chief competitors, the hydraulic dock and the marine railway. It was not fixed in one place, so could be floated out when necessary to a ship needing repair; for example, it could be taken to a salvage site and floated directly under the salvaged ship when raised. The dock could be split into subsections, of, for example, one dock of three sections and one of four, to service two smaller ships simultaneously rather than one larger ship. The dock could also be used to readily service and maintain itself, by simply detaching the section needing service, floating the rest of the dock beneath it and raising it as with a ship. When completed, the dock was the most powerful in New York, capable of lifting a ship of 2000 tons burden, or essentially any merchant ship then afloat. In its first two years of operation, the dock raised more than 500 vessels.

In 1850, Burgess built a second sectional dock for the company. The new dock had a total of eight 35 × 85-foot sections, with each section having a reported lifting capacity of 600 tons, or 4,800 tons for the dock as a whole. A later, more reliable report estimates the lifting capacity of this dock at 3,000 tons. At this time, the Floating Dry Dock Company had three docks in total including the new eight-section dock, the others being a five-section and three-section dock both with 24 × 65-foot sections, for lifting ships of up to 1,500 and 800 tons respectively. The importance of these facilities to the New York waterfront is illustrated by the fact that in the year to March 1851, the company's three docks lifted a combined total of 450 ships, with an aggregate tonnage of 131,594 tons—roughly twice the tonnage of either of its two closest competitors. The company's newest dock was capable of lifting the largest class of steamships, including the steamships of the Collins and Havre lines.

By 1860, Burgess had built a third, still larger dock for the company. This dock had eleven 30 × 100-foot sections and could lift a ship of 3,500 tons and 350 feet in length. By 1861, the company's three docks had raised more than 8,000 ships in twenty years of operation, reportedly without a single accident. Leading shipbuilders such as Jacob Westervelt and Roosevelt & Joyce made regular use of the company's facilities.

In 1867, the company built an "immense" sectional dock at Hoboken, New Jersey, described as "the largest in the United States ... perhaps the world." The dock was 92 feet wide and 360 feet long, but could be lengthened an additional 40 feet when necessary, and was reportedly capable of raising a vessel of 8,000 tons, or "any vessel afloat, except the Great Eastern".

The two docks built by Burgess for the New York Floating Dry Dock Company between 1850 and 1860 were still in operation in New York as late as 1907, though their retirement at that time was said to be imminent. According to a 1905 engineer's report, these two docks remained the largest in the United States for approximately fifty years, during which period no significant improvement in sectional dock design in the U.S. was achieved. A similar report in 1907 stated: "[w]hile this [type of] dock has much more mechanism than any other type that has been developed, the general plan and theory was most ably worked out by the originators, and the best evidence of this should be the fact that these two docks have held almost the first place in the commercial dry docking of the Port of New York for about half a century and their record would probably show more vessels docked than any similar structure in the world."

History

References

refs

Philadelphia dock meant "major role in naval shipbuilding" - gbook P. 76: d&m propose basin and railway, gilbert following year. d&m plan adopted 1846. p. 78: "the dry dock assured Southwark a major role in naval shipbuilding and overhaul in the years before the Civil War." Ships built: wabash, lancaster, martin's industry (lighthouse tender), propeller arctic rescued kane arctic expedition, later cable ship, screw sloops wyoming, pawnee, overhauled coast survey ship bibb, sloop vandalia, steamer saranac, old frigate congress. P. 77: dock launched july 1851, p. 78, accident delayed first test with Fulton to october 1853. Problems 1846 obtaining property from residents for dock. amazon link:[1]
1875 pensacola yard bid - htrust
comanche contracts - htrust