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East Boston Dry Dock Company

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In 1847, the East Boston Dry Dock Company was formed, and Burgess moved to Boston to oversee construction of a dry dock facility for the new company. The facility, "one of the most capacious and substantial in the country", was completed in 1853. It included a sectional dock with six sections, capable of lifting a ship of up to 3,300 tons in 45 minutes; a smaller, steam-operated floating dock, with a capacity of 500 tons, and a marine railway with the capacity to haul vessels of up to 1,000 tons in 30 minutes. The sectional dock, built at a cost of $110,000, was patented by Burgess, who sold the patent to the company for an additional $10,000. By this time, Burgess had built "all the docks of this construction in the country", his reputation "honorably earned by the acknowledged excellence of his works." In the year ending February 1858, the East Boston facility serviced 120 vessels. After completing the dock, Burgess moved back to New York.

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In the early 1840s, the U.S. Navy tendered for the construction of dry dock facilities at a number of naval shipyards around the country. Phineas Burgess and his business partner Daniel Dodge joined forces with a New York firm, Dakin & Moody, to submit bids for four of the proposed facilities, at Pensacola, Portsmouth, Philadelphia and Mare Island. Due to a difference of opinion in the Navy, two of the contracts—for Pensacola and Portsmouth—went to another firm which proposed to build conventional floating docks, while the Dakin & Moody bids were accepted for the Philadelphia and Mare Island yards. The facilities subsequently built at Southwark, Philadelphia and Mare Island, California by Dakin & Moody in partnership with Burgess were to prove of considerable importance, transforming the Philadelphia yard into a major naval shipbuilding yard in the leadup to the American Civil War, while the Mare Island yard in California was to remain for some years the only drydock on the United States' West Coast and a vital facility both for warships and commercial vessels. Burgess would later build two smaller sectional docks, for the Philadelphia and Brooklyn naval shipyards, in 1864–65.

Philadelphia Naval Shipyard

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Dakin & Moody's plan for the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard's new drydock facility incorporated a sectional floating dock integrated with a rectangular stone basin from which radiated a number of marine railways. The facility was designed to allow the floating dock to be positioned in the basin in alignment with any of the marine railways, so that a ship on a cradle could be winched directly from the dock onto a railway or vice versa, thus allowing for several ships to be serviced or built on the railways simultaneously, while one or two additional vessels could be serviced or built on the dock itself. The original plan called for up to 11 marine railways, but the Navy decided upon five, with only two built immediately and the other three to be constructed later. The integration of the three elements of the facility—the floating dock, basin and marine railway—was a concept patented by Dakin & Moody, while the floating dock was based on the proven Dodge-Burgess patent used to design the docks of the New York Floating Dry Dock Company.

Three engineers were engaged on the project: a naval engineer, William P. S. Sanger, selected the location of the basin and ways; Burgess was selected as Dakin & Moody's engineer; and a civil engineer, Colonel Ward B. Burnett, superintended the project as a whole. Construction began in 1847 and was completed by 1851; however, an accident which led to the sinking of one section of the sectional dock delayed the opening of the facility until 1853.

The sectional dock built for the facility had a total of nine sections, six with a width of 32 feet and the remaining three with a width of 30 feet.[1] With all nine sections combined, the floor or deck of the dock was 105 feet wide by 300-plus feet long,[2] while its total lifting power was calculated at 5,892 displacement tons.[3] The dock could be divided into two smaller docks of six and three sections respectively, the larger dock with two 20-horsepower beam engines for operating the machinery and the smaller with two 12-horsepower engines.[4] The stone basin built to accommodate the floating dock was 355 feet long by 236 wide; its walls and floor were built of blocks of dressed granite "averaging two feet by five", laid in hydraulic cement.[5] The sectional dock alone cost $363,822.69, while the facility in total cost $813,742.[6] The sectional dock was tested in October 1853 with the lifting of USS Fulton.

The addition of the drydock facility represented a substantial upgrade to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, allowing it to play a "major role" in naval shipbuilding prior to and during the American Civil War. Warships built by the yard before the war included the steam frigate USS Wabash (1855) and the screw sloops USS Lancaster (1858), USS Wyoming and USS Pawnee (1859), while others including the steam sloop USS Saranac, the sloop-of-war USS Vandalia and the frigate USS Congress received substantial overhauls. A further nine warships were built by the yard during the war. The facility remained in operation until about 1875, when the Philadelphia yard was relocated from Southwark to League Island.

References

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  1. ^ Stuart, p. 16.
  2. ^ Stuart, p. 18.
  3. ^ Stuart, p. 72.
  4. ^ Stuart, p. 17.
  5. ^ Stuart, p. 15.
  6. ^ Stuart, pp. 20-21.

refs

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  • Philadelphia dock meant "major role in naval shipbuilding" - gbook P. 76: d&m propose basin and railway, gilbert following year. d&m plan adopted 1846. p. 78: "the dry dock assured Southwark a major role in naval shipbuilding and overhaul in the years before the Civil War." Ships built: wabash, lancaster, martin's industry (lighthouse tender), propeller arctic rescued kane arctic expedition, later cable ship, screw sloops wyoming, pawnee, overhauled coast survey ship bibb, sloop vandalia, steamer saranac, old frigate congress. P. 77: dock launched july 1851, p. 78, accident delayed first test with Fulton to october 1853. Problems 1846 obtaining property from residents for dock. amazon link:[1]
  • 1875 pensacola yard bid - htrust
  • comanche contracts - htrust
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