Learning on ScreenAdmiralty Concrete floating docks
Series
- Series Name
- Britain Can Make It
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
- Support services
- Francis Gysin
- Producer
- Francis Gysin
- Director
- 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
- Name
- British Film Institute (BFI)
- For BFI National Archive enquiries:
nonfictioncurators@bfi.org.uk
For commercial/footage reuse enquiries:
footage.films@bfi.org.uk - Web
- http://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web
- Phone
- 020 7255 1444
- Fax
- 020 7580 7503
- Address
- 21 Stephen Street
London W1T 1LN - Notes
- The BFI National Archive also preserves the original nitrate film copies of British Movietone News, British Paramount News, Empire News Bulletin, Gaumont British News, Gaumont Graphic, Gaumont Sound News and Universal News (the World War II years are covered by the Imperial War Museum).
- Series held
- View all series held by British Film Institute (BFI)
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