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

Sir John Coode cont'd :

A slipway was excellent for a young growing port, and for vessels of a limited size, but for vessels of 4,000, 5,000, or 6,000 tons, a dry dock was the only safe and proper thing that an engineer could recommend. Looking at the matter all round, it might be said that a repairing slip was good, but that a dry dock was better. He should be glad to know if the wire rope was an endless one.

Mr. T. Summers.

Mr. T. Summers replied that one end of the rope was fastened to the cradle, and the other to the drum. A light vessel, say up to 1,500 tons weight, could be hauled up without stopping, but when a much heavier vessel was hauled up part of her length, the rope would be passed round a sheave at the end of the cradle, making the second part. There was no sheave at the bottom of the slipway. The diameter of the drum, for the 12-inch wire rope, was 9 feet. Their own rope was 9 inches ; the pitch of the crown-wheel, working the drum, was 4 inches ; the diameter was 10 feet, being twice the diameter of the drum.

Mr. T. B. Lightfoot.

Mr. T. B. Lightfoot, in reply upon the discussion, said that Mr. Bruce Bell’s remarks consisted chiefly of extracts from a paper read by him before the Institution of Engineers in Scotland in December 1858, and related more to questions of priority of design than to any criticism on the Paper. No doubt Mr. Miller was the inventor of the hydraulic hauling-apparatus described as having been introduced by Mr. Morton, though it generally went by the name of Morton’s gear. He was not aware that the method of relieving with hydraulic cylinders was used so long ago as the year 1850 ; but in that also Mr. Bell was doubtless correct.

With regard to the time in fleeting on the old system, where the rods had to be disconnected and removed, he could only say that the times given had been taken from actual work at a slipway erected by Messrs. Morton in 1874, and he believed they correctly represented the average, though of course, in some cases, the vessel was more quickly placed than in others, while, if the weight was small, the hauling up took less time than if the full power of the machinery was being exerted.