not easy to hit on a satisfactory term for it-is 545 feet long, with an inside width of 100 feet. The two side-walls, each carrying a powerful electrically worked travelling crane on what we may call the parapet, are 13 feet wide at the top. The height of the walls is 53 feet, enabling a vessel to be docked drawing 32 feet of water. The dock can take the Campania, and, in case of war and the commissioning of this leviathan, may have to do so. The Campania is, it is true, longer than the dock, but not on her keel-line, which is just the length of the dock. But with vessels now built, as they are, of steel, it is not necessary to support the whole length of the vessel in dock. It is stated, for example, that the Empress of China, which was placed on the floating dock at Barrow, exceeded the length of the dock by 213 feet, the excess being divided between the two ends as overhang.

The Bermuda Dock was launched in February, 1902, and towed, viâ Chatham, to Bermuda in the spring, her value being set at about £227,000, the insurance risk to cease on acceptance of the dock by the Admiralty authorities at her destination. The operation of launching was in itself no small undertaking. Somebody well said that it was 'like launching Milan Cathedral.' The guidebooks refer to this wonderful edifice as a 'huge

structure, having an interior length of 486 feet and a façade width of 219 feet,' or thereabouts. But huge as the sacred structure undoubtedly is, the Bermuda Dock, so far as mere length is concerned, could put it in her capacious pocket, and the Campania carry it on her steel back, in each case with a great deal to spare. I am conscious that in these pages I have more than once or twice done violence to my pen in the use of adjectives expressing superlative size and power, but by the light of comparisons such as the foregoing, I think the offence is not without excuse, especially when we remember that docks, locks, and dredgers have all to be on a scale corresponding with the size of the ships.

The Bermuda floating graving dock was, after launching, towed to the Medway to be tested by a battleship. I am indebted to Messrs. Swan and Hunter, the builders, for the remarkable photograph (which is reproduced as the frontispiece to this book) of H.M.S. Sanspareil giving the dock a first trial.

But why 'graving dock'? In the answer we find ourselves confronted with an interesting family relationship-a blood brotherhood-between the dry-dock, the dripping-pan, and the tallow candle. In early days, as at the present time, the ship which returned from a long and tedious

voyage had to have the marine grass and weeds removed from her bottom. This was done by a process of burning or breaming'-a word sometimes written 'beaming,' now extinct-when the ship was left dry at low-water. No doubt some specially convenient spot or so-called dock was commonly resorted to for the purpose. When the ship had been 'breamed' she was 'graved '-i.e., smeared over with tallow. So that the spot set aside for these operations got to be known as the 'graving dock.'

The use of tallow passed away on the discovery or adoption of the cheaper and more plentiful pitch or tar, which again, in these days of steel and iron ships, has given place to anti-corrosive paints. But still, why 'graving'? Well, we must go yet further back: 'graves' or 'greaves' was the old word for the sediment or lowest quality of melted fat. We still trace the word in 'gravy.' I remember once reading, but have failed to trace the reference, that tallow 'graves' were so called from the pits or moulds into which the melted fat was run: German graben, to dig or excavate; and it may be-I do not know-that in the very early days, when roasting was afoot, the fat which dripped from the meat was caught in a dug-out or 'engraved' stone receptacle, and thus,

whether hot and fluid or cold and solid, took its name from the receptacle, just in the same way, for example, as we now use the word 'cast' to express either the mould itself or that which it has modelled; or the word 'boring' to describe either the hole drilled in the rock or the core drilled from it; or, indeed, just as a print or 'engraving' takes its name from the stone or plate engraved. At any rate, there are plenty of accepted etymologies as remote. But whatever the etymology of 'gravy' or of 'graves'—in its tallowy sense-this much is certain: that in old times to 'grave' a ship was to coat her bottom with tallow; and whether the modern graving dock cost £80,000 afloat or £480,000 on dry land, the humble origin of its title remains beyond question.

CHAPTER VI

THE CREATION OF THE PORT OF MANCHESTER

H

AVING now passed under review the history

and development of seaports, and glanced at their methods of construction and the incidents of their working, let us look at that great modern undertaking the Manchester Ship Canal. This remarkable enterprise has been termed 'the climax of a historical development.' So far back as 1720 an Act was passed to make the Mersey and Irwell navigable for barges to Manchester. In 1829 this route had become very popular for passenger traffic. In 1776 was opened the Bridgewater Canal, with further advantage to the inland town. In 1824, and at various times subsequently, proposals were put forward for further water routes, including a design to connect with the river Dee. The manufacturers had long hankered for improved water communication, and the development of the 'little trickling Clyde' into a valuable waterway, with