AT THE DOCK-SIDE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 80, 6 April 1910, Page 8

AT THE DOCK-SIDE.

AN EXPERTS VIEW 3. This morning theie was a monumental Mlenco in tho dock basin. The gicat concrete mixer, which has mado very little stir lately, exhibited sadly a still wheel, tlighty rusting from disuse. In all the great open space only two men were- working — fishing, one for sprats in an oily pool, and the other for soundings with a lead, and an assistant was marking down the depth in a book. In the blacksmith's, forge two or three men were bu«y, but everywhere elfe a wonderful quiet reigned. The only things that spoke were the numbered failures on tho brink of the basin, the indexed slabs, of <toncrete which failed to set on the dock floor, forty foet below low-water mark. They lie about in pitiable profusion, very plainly disfigured by the "laitance" which wasted them down in the ealt water. That ttiU water to-day rested lazily on tome new concrete — the last experiment — which many eyes are eager to sco in a few days. "Success" or "failure" will the divers announce when they como up from the testing? Thoee remains of the concrete blocks have been Been by Mr. George Duke, a visitor from Melbourne, one of the heads of a firm which built three docks by the Yarra. Mr. Duke is to pay another \isit to the dock site, and will give his opinion to the harbour authorities. Conversing to-day with a Post representative, Mr. Duke said that he had no close knowledge of any dock constructed by the deposition of wet concrete in a great depth of water. The docks which his linn had built on the banks of the Yarra were, of coime, a very different proposi lion from the Wellington problem. Excavations were made in the solid clay, and timber was put in. after a coffer dam had been built and the basin pumped out. The general practice in dockbuilding; throughout the world was to have a coffer dam to enable the concrete to bo put down in the dry. He had heard of a dock made in Japan in accordance with plans similar to thof=e which the Wellington Harbour Board had adopted, but he had no definite information about tho depths of the deposition in the Japanese work, the water, the. local conditions, and other important factors. Hb understood that the Welling ton plan was first make a fort of shell ; then the water would be pumped out, and the building work completed. Ho believed it would have been cheaper if a coffer dam had been included in the plans at the outset. By the present method, he declared, "the work was all in the dark ; it was like a pig in a poke." The deposition was out of the engineer's «ight, and they had to rely on divers for their information about the genera' "lay" of the woik. He could not sco how tho authorities could hope for satisfactory work by the wet method.