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23-633: The Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (MDHC), formerly the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board (MDHB), owns and administers the dock facilities of the Port of Liverpool , on the River Mersey , England. These include the operation of the enclosed northern dock system that runs from Prince's Dock to Seaforth Dock , in the city of Liverpool and the dock facilities built around the Great Float of

46-568: A shipyard ) where 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

69-518: 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

92-532: A group of human-made structures that are involved in the handling of boats or ships (usually on or near a shore ). In British English , the term is not used the same way as in American English; it is used to mean the area of water that is next to or around a wharf or quay. The exact meaning varies among different variants of the English language . "Dock" may also refer to a dockyard (also known as

115-604: A new public body was as a result of pressure from Parliament, dock merchants and some rival port operators. At one point the MDHB railway totalled 104 miles (166 km) of line, with connections to many other railways. A section of the line ran, unsegregated from other road traffic, along the dock road. Today only the Canada Dock Branch is used. In 1972, the MDHB was reconstituted as a company to allow it to raise money for new building initiatives and projects, including

138-458: A structure includes one or more berths ( mooring locations), and may also include piers , warehouses , or other facilities necessary for handling the ships. Wharves are often considered to be a series of docks at which boats are stationed. A marginal wharf is connected to the shore along its full length. A wharf commonly comprises a fixed platform, often on pilings . Commercial ports may have warehouses that serve as interim storage: where it

161-467: 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

184-599: Is speculated that Lothal engineers studied tidal movements and their effects on brick-built structures, since 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 ,

207-527: Is sufficient a single wharf with a single berth constructed along the land adjacent to the water is normally used; where there is a need for more capacity multiple wharves, or perhaps a single large wharf with multiple berths, will instead be constructed, sometimes projecting over the water. A pier, raised over the water rather than within it, is commonly used for cases where the weight or volume of cargos will be low. Smaller and more modern wharves are sometimes built on flotation devices ( pontoons ) to keep them at

230-460: 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

253-826: The Cammell Laird shipyard at the turn of the 20th century by enclosing what was once Tranmere Pool. Following the closure of the original Cammell Laird shipyard in 1993, the dock and the four remaining dry docks at the site are owned by the MDHC. All were subsequently leased, firstly to the A&;P Group and then to Northwestern Shiprepairers & Shipbuilders , which officially renamed itself Cammell Laird Shiprepairers and Shipbuilders Ltd on 17 November 2008. Dock (maritime) The word dock (from Dutch dok ) in American English refers to one or

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276-642: The Old Dock , which was the world's first commercial wet dock . By 1750, the old Dock Committee was replaced by the Liverpool Dock Trustees . In order to provide stone for the construction of the expanded dock system, from 1830 the trustees (and later the MDHB) operated large quarries at Creetown , Scotland. The MDHB took over running of Liverpool's docks from the trustees in 1858. The need for Liverpool Corporation to divest its dock interests to

299-547: The Wirral Peninsula , located on the west side of the river. Peel Ports , the MDHC's parent company, owns other maritime facilities in the area, including the Cammell Laird shipyard, Tranmere Oil Terminal and the Manchester Ship Canal . Liverpool Common Council's Dock Committee was the original port authority. In 1709, it had been authorised to construct Liverpool's first enclosed ship basin,

322-584: The new container dock at Seaforth . Four lightvessels in the approaches to the River Mersey were maintained by the MDHB until 1973. The UK Government had retained a 14% shareholding in MDHC which was sold on 30 March 1998. The company operated a private lifeboat station that was involved in a number of incidents over the years. The MDHC was accused of "macho management" by the Financial Times regarding its treatment of some of its staff in

345-597: The staith spelling as a distinction from simple wharves: for example, Dunston Staiths in Gateshead and Brancaster Staithe in Norfolk . However, the term staith may also be used to refer only to loading chutes or ramps used for bulk commodities like coal in loading ships and barges. Quay , on the other hand, has its origin in the Proto-Celtic language . Before it changed to its current form under influence of

368-615: The 1990s, which resulted in the Liverpool dockers' strike . On 22 September 2005, the MDHC was acquired by Peel Ports, part of the property and transport group Peel Group , which owns a minority stake in Liverpool John Lennon Airport . Cammell Laird Dock is a dock at Birkenhead , on the Wirral Peninsula. It exits directly onto the River Mersey . The dock was built as part of an expansion of

391-530: The United States. In some contexts wharf and quay may be used to mean pier , berth , or jetty . In old ports such as London (which once had around 1700 wharves ) many old wharves have been converted to residential or office use. Certain early railways in England referred to goods loading points as "wharves". The term was carried over from marine usage. The person who was resident in charge of

414-465: The main current to avoid deposition of silt . Modern oceanographers have observed that 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

437-793: The northeast and east of England the term staith or staithe (from the Norse for landing stage) is also used. The two terms have historically had a geographical distinction: those to the north in the Kingdom of Northumbria used the Old English spelling staith , southern sites of the Danelaw took the Danish spelling staithe . Both originally referred to jetties or wharves. In time, the northern coalfields of Northumbria developed coal staiths specifically for loading coal onto ships and these would adopt

460-574: The same level as the ship, even during changing tides. In everyday parlance the term quay (pronounced 'key') is common in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and many other Commonwealth countries, and the Republic of Ireland, and may also refer to neighbourhoods and roadways running along the wayside (for example, Queen's Quay in Toronto and Belfast ). The term wharf is more common in

483-405: The shore. The platform is used for the boarding and offloading of small boats. Wharf A wharf ( pl.   wharves or wharfs ), quay ( / k iː / kee , also / k eɪ , k w eɪ / k(w)ay ), staith , or staithe is a structure on the shore of a harbour or on the bank of a river or canal where ships may dock to load and unload cargo or passengers. Such

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506-642: The wharf was referred to as a "wharfinger". The word wharf comes from the Old English hwearf , cognate to the Old Dutch word werf , which both evolved to mean "yard", an outdoor place where work is done, like a shipyard ( Dutch : scheepswerf ) or a lumberyard (Dutch: houtwerf ). Originally, werf or werva in Old Dutch ( werf , wer in Old Frisian ) simply referred to inhabited ground that

529-461: Was not yet built on (similar to " yard " in modern English), or alternatively to a terp . This could explain the name Ministry Wharf located at Saunderton, just outside High Wycombe, which is nowhere near any body of water. In support of this explanation is the fact that many places in England with "wharf" in their names are in areas with a high Dutch influence, for example the Norfolk broads. In

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