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14-752: Alfred Dock is a dock at Birkenhead , Merseyside , England . The dock covers an area of 8 acres (32,000 m) and provides access to the Great Float from the River Mersey . In 1856, J. B. Hartley produced plans for alternative river access to the Great Float, as the Great Low Water Basin proved to be insufficient. Completed in 1866, the dock was named after Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh , second son of Queen Victoria , and opened by him on 21 June 1866. Designed to replace

28-403: A designated location where a vessel may be moored, usually for the purposes of loading and unloading. Berths are designated by the management of a facility (e.g., port authority, harbor master). Vessels are assigned to berths by these authorities. Most berths are alongside a quay or a jetty (large ports) or a floating dock (small harbors and marinas). Berths are either general or specific to

42-518: A dock is an enclosed area of water used for loading, unloading, building or repairing ships . Such a dock may be created by building enclosing harbour walls into an existing natural water space, or by excavation within what would otherwise be dry land. There are specific types of dock structures where the water level is controlled: Where the water level is not controlled berths may be: A dockyard (or shipyard) consists of one or more docks, usually with other structures. In American English , dock

56-467: Is also commonly used to refer to wooden or metal structures that extend into the ocean from beaches and are used, for the most part, to accommodate fishing in the ocean without using a boat. In American English , the term for the water area between piers is slip . In the cottage country of Canada and the United States , a dock is a wooden platform built over water, with one end secured to

70-460: Is technically synonymous with pier or wharf —any human-made structure in the water intended for people to be on. However, in modern use, pier is generally used to refer to structures originally intended for industrial use, such as seafood processing or shipping , and more recently for cruise ships , and dock is used for almost everything else, often with a qualifier, such as ferry dock , swimming dock, ore dock and others. However, pier

84-416: The 30 ft (9.1 m) and 50 ft (15 m) lock entrances and passages were combined into an 80 ft (24 m) system and deepened, between 1926-9. This meant the removal of a river lock entrance and an access channel to the Great Float, in order to reconstruct the remaining facilities. At the same time, a bascule bridge and a swing bridge were constructed over two remaining passages. The dock

98-476: The Great Low Water Basin, the dock was originally constructed with three lock entrances from the river of 30 ft (9.1 m), 50 ft (15 m) and 100 ft (30 m), and three passages onwards to the Great Float. This provided much expanded access to the Birkenhead dock system, which was also served by an entrance channel further south via Morpeth Dock . In order to accommodate larger vessels,

112-482: The ancient Harappans must have possessed great knowledge relating to tides in order to build such a dock on the ever-shifting course of the Sabarmati , as well as exemplary hydrography and maritime engineering . This is the earliest known dock found in the world equipped to berth and service ships. It is speculated that Lothal engineers studied tidal movements and their effects on brick-built structures, since

126-463: The existing two river entrances, only the north locks remain operational. Tower Road, which links Birkenhead with the Seacombe area of Wallasey , divides Alfred Dock from the Great Float via a bascule bridge . This bridge is the last remaining of the former Four Bridges which crossed the dock system at this point. Dock "Dock" may also refer to a dockyard (also known as a shipyard ) where

140-642: The loading, unloading, building, or repairing of ships occurs. The earliest known docks were those discovered in Wadi al-Jarf , an ancient Egyptian harbor , of Pharaoh Khufu , dating from c.2500 BC located on the Red Sea coast. Archaeologists also discovered anchors and storage jars near the site. A dock from Lothal in India dates from 2400 BC and was located away from the main current to avoid deposition of silt . Modern oceanographers have observed that

154-427: The shore. The platform is used for the boarding and offloading of small boats. Berth (moorings) A berth is a designated location in a port or harbour used for mooring vessels when they are not at sea. Berths provide a vertical front which allows safe and secure mooring that can then facilitate the unloading or loading of cargo or people from vessels. Berth is the term used in ports and harbors for

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168-453: The types of vessel that use them. The size of the berths varies from 5–10 m (16–33 ft) for a small boat in a marina to over 400 m (1,300 ft) for the largest tankers. The rule of thumb is that the length of a berth should be roughly 10% longer than the longest vessel to be moored at the berth. The following is a list of berth types based on the method of construction: Berths can be classified by whether they are attached to

182-488: The walls are of kiln -burnt bricks. This knowledge also enabled them to select Lothal's location in the first place, as the Gulf of Khambhat has the highest tidal amplitude and ships can be sluiced through flow tides in the river estuary . The engineers built a trapezoidal structure, with north–south arms of average 21.8 metres (71.5 ft), and east–west arms of 37 metres (121 ft). In British English ,

196-411: Was arranged so that the whole dock could be used as a lock . By the beginning of the 1980s, the remaining southern lock entrance had closed and was partly filled in. The redevelopment of Tower Road over a decade later precipitated in the removal of the swing bridge and the sealing up of the southern passage. The north quayside of Alfred Dock was an open quay. The southern quayside was unallocated. Of

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