Admiralty Concrete floating docks

Series

Series Name: Britain Can Make It

Issue

Issue No.

Date Released

1945

Trade show

16 Jan 1945

Length of issue (in feet)

966

Stories in this Issue:

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 3

Summary

NoS synopsis: Two men roll out a strip of Crown paper on a flat surface and soak it well all over. Steel bars are laid over this, criss-cross fashion, and secured with wires. The whole is surrounded with wooden strips and filled with ready mixed concrete. The mixture is smoothed over till quite flat and it is left to dry. When dry, the moulds are taken away and the paper stripped off, making it ready for use. These concrete slabs weigh seven tons each, and are only four inches thick. They have been cast in this simple way, and are now being used for form the whole structure of an Admiralty floating dock. Some experts said that it would take eighteen months to build floating docks of this type. But repairs to small naval craft were urgent. New methods of building floating docks had to be found. Casting these pre-fabricated slabs and joining them together was the solution, and building time was cut to four weeks. Over fifty of these Admiralty floating docks have been built in Britain during the war. The slab is lifted up by crane and placed on a lorry to take it to where they construct the Admiralty floating dock. The dockside where they join the pre-fabricated slabs together. When the slabs are in place, the decks are laid. Joints in the structure are shuttered with wood and filled with concrete. Even the fittings on the top deck are secured by the use of concrete. Admiralty floating docks of this type have been designed to take vessels up to eight hundred tons. When they are completed they are floated away and made ready for their tests., Here a minesweeper is being used to put one through its trials. This type of dock did great work during invasion operations in Europe and the Far East. They will continue to do great work until the ports and shipyards destroyed by war have been put in working order again.

Researcher Comments

This story was filmed at Gravesend and King George V Docks. It was commissioned for a maximum price of £212 2s 8d.

Keywords

Ships and boats; Industry and manufacture; Navy

Written sources

The National Archives INF 6 /592
Central Film Library Catalogue 1948, p83.
British Film Institute Databases
Documentary News Letter Vol.6 No.52 1946, p24.
D. Gifford, ‘The British Film Catalogue Vol.2’ (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001) No.09151

COI Reference

MI 360/1

Credits:

Production Co.: Basic Films
Sponsor: Board Of Trade
Producer: Duncan Ross
Production Co.: Films of Fact
Director: Francis Gysin
Support services: Francis Gysin
Producer: Francis Gysin
Camera: James Ritchie
Commentator: Lionel James Gamlin
Sponsor: Ministry of Information
Producer: Paul Rotha

Length of story (in feet)

236

This series is held by:

Film Archive

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Record Stats