HUGE DOCK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 204, 30 August 1933, Page 9

HUGE DOCK.

. OPENED BY KING. . EXPENDITURE OF £2,000,000. SOUTHAMPTON'S FACILITIES. 0 Built at a cost of £2,000,000, the huge !- new graving dock at Southampton, which t was opened last month by His Majesty s the King, is the largest dock in "the •. world. The first vessel to float within h the mammoth structure was the atately * Royal yacht Victoria and Albert, with s the King and Queen on board. e j The dock has been constructed at the '. west end of the docke extension area, ' and was designed primarily to house the , new 72,000-ton Cunard liner, although i it is big enough to accommodate vessels 3 up to 100,000 if ehips of such a size 3 are ever built. The dock is 1200 ft long, * 135 ft wide at the entrance and 59ft from 1 cope to floor, •. j Although it contains when filled - ! 260,000 tons of water, the dock can be '! emptied in four hours by means of four large centrifugal pumps. The site is [ enclosed by an embankment made of i gravel dredged from the channel and 1 supplemented with chalk, the whole 1 being made watertight by the driving .' along its centre line of a continuous row > of interlocking steel sheet piling. Underl lying the dock site was found a bed of I sand containing artesian water at considerable pressure. That was overlaid by . a bed of clay, but ae the pressure in the I eand was such that there was a possi- ' bility that the clay might be lifted while the excavation of the dock site was in ■ progress, tube wells, equipped with i pumps, were sunk to the sand bed to i remove the water and relieve the presjeure without disturbing the sand.