The age-herald., 1900-04-08
OUR BIGGEST DRY DOCK
tis Being Built at Bay Ridge and Will
 be Completed in December

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 From the New York Herald
 The biggest dry dock in America will soon be completed at Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
 The Oceanic Is .72O feet long. By Decem- Der of this year the new dock is to be fin- ished. Then the Oceanic may enter Il ana have eighty feet of room to spare. The biggest of the American war ships can be accommodated in this dock.
 The capitalization of the Morse Dry Dock company, which is building the dock at Ray Ridge, which has recently been re-organ- ized, is $550,0O0, all of which is paid in, but that entire sum would be insufficient to meet the first cost of the new enterprise. The expenditure includes s320,000 for eight pontoons, $100000 for a repair shop and ma- chinery, $7500O for pier work and $2O000 for tramways. making $S15.OOO in all.
 The new plans contemplate a basin, or wet dock, and a dry dock. Entering from First avenue, the visitor will be confronted by brick repair shop, two stories high, eighty feet wide and GOO feet long. To the left. on the south of the repair shop, will be the basin, reaching to within 100 yards of First avenue. It will be l. ,f00 feet long, extending to the edge of the new channel. For about half the distance from the en- trance it will be 35 feet deep, and inside that point 25 feet deep. It will be inclosed by two piers, p and 30 feet respectively in width. The latter pier will divide 1t from the basin of the dry dock. which will be 1000 feet long and 120 feet widc and will be bounded on its north side by pier 30 feet wide. The depth of water at the en- trance will be 8 feet, and it will deepen to 45 feet at the inner end.
 In the basin will be the eight immense pontoons used for lifting damaged vessels out of the water; each will cost S3o 900. They will measure 800 feet in length and 120 feet across. When ready for business, includ- ing the space between the pontoons, and the overhang of the ship at either end, they will lift a vessel 800 feet long-if one such should ever be built.
 When not in use these pontoons will float on the surface like eight lbig, clumsy ships. When an ocean greyhound comes to be docked, men will ascend to the top of each pontoon and will operate certain serews. These will throw open number of gates in the side of each pontoon. Then the water will rush in. and the pontoons, weighted down with stone ballast, will sink like ves- sells which have sprung a lealI When they have sunk to the necessary depth the ship will be floated in over them.
 Then man in 0 coming tower will push number of electric buttons and instantly forty-eight pumps will proceed to empty the pontoons.
 Instead of a jerking rod and sucker they are each fitted with screws like an electric fan or a screw propeller, which revolve with tremendous rapidity and throw out 5000 gallons of water every minute. The forty eight pumps will, therefore, remove more than one-quarter million gallons every minute.
 The pontoons will contain nearly thirteen million gallons of water, and 1t will take these pumps just three-quarters of an hour to pump them dry. As this is being done the pontoons slowly rise until the big ship Is completely out of water. Then the re-