Volume Ten - Pre-Victorian to the present day - even more aspects - The Patent for the Penarth Slipway - 1881 . . .

Mr. G. W. Rendel.

Mr. G. W. Rendel said he had considered the subject of slip-ways for gunboats and other small ships of war, and he certainly thought he saw advantages in the proposals of the Authors as regarded some of the mechanical arrangements, especially those to enable the removal of the links to be dispensed with.

He had not considered the use of slipways for very large vessels, but he thought there must be great difficulty in finding any site adapted for the very long incline to be made under water, especially where there was no rise and fall of tide. For large ironclads he should say that it would be quite out of the question to compare a slip of that description with a stone dry-dock, or some of the other well-known systems of floating dock.

For such purposes as storing gunboats, slipways were evidently well adapted, especially if arranged so that, after drawing up one vessel, they could deposit it and proceed to draw up another. Such small vessels, which were not wanted except at long intervals, could be kept in a better state of repair, with their bottoms always clean, on shore than afloat.

Mr. G. Wells Owen.

Mr. G. Wells Owen observed that reference had been made to the fact that Mr. Brunel had launched the “ Great Eastern ” sideways instead of lengthways. Mr. Owen wished to add that in 1860 he was engaged in constructing the gridiron on which the “ Great Eastern ” was laid up after her first voyage. It was laid on the shores of Milford Haven, and consisted of balks of timber laid transversely, and fastened down by short piles of timber, or in places where the timber could not be driven, of iron, into the rocky shore at low water. The ship was brought up broadside on, and laid on the gridiron in that way. He had no doubt that Mr. Brunel, in so designing the gridiron, acted on the same principle as in launching the ship.

Sir Charles Hartley.

Sir Charles Hartley said that towards the conclusion of the Paper the Authors had stated that they did not advocate the indiscriminate adoption of slipways in every case where it was desired to set up a ship-building or a ship-repairing establishment, but considered