page_title: Morse Dry Dock and Repair Company
section_title: World's largest floating dry dock
hierarchical_section_title: Morse Dry Dock and Repair Company / World War I and postwar period / Plant and equipment, 1918-19 / World's largest floating dry dock
caption_attribution_description: English: Two steamships in the large sectional floating dry dock of the Morse Dry Dock and Repair Company of Brooklyn, New York, circa late 1919-early 1920. At the time this photo was taken, the Morse dock was the largest floating dock in the world, capable of lifting a 725-foot long, 30,000 gross ton steamship, or two smaller ships simultaneously. The second ship is difficult to see due to the poor quality of the image.
context_page_description: The Morse Dry Dock and Repair Company was a major late 19th/early 20th century ship repair and conversion facility located in New York City. Begun in the 1880s as a small shipsmithing business known as the Morse Iron Works, the company grew to be one of America's largest ship repair and refit facilities, at one time owning the world's largest floating dry dock.
  In addition to servicing some of the finest steamships of the era, the company maintained many of the yachts of New York's elite business community, and also occasionally built small watercraft such as tugboats. During World War I, the company was heavily engaged in work for the U.S. government and military.
  In 1929, the company merged with five other major New York ship repair facilities to become United Dry Docks, Inc.—the largest company of its type in the world—with the former head of Morse Dry Dock, Edward P. Morse, as chairman of the board. United Dry Docks later changed its name to United Shipyards, Inc.
  In 1938, United Shipyards was purchased by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation, which renamed the former Morse yard Bethlehem Brooklyn 56th Street.
context_section_description: In late 1918, the Morse Dry Dock company began work on a new sectional floating dry dock. Constructed from at least three million board feet of timber, and said to be a far more complex and difficult task than the building of a ship, the $1,000,000 dock was six years in the planning and took more than twelve months to build. It was constructed section by section at an ancillary yard of the company at the foot of 63rd St., Brooklyn. By March 1919, the first three sections were ready and were put to use for the first time in lifting the steamer Black Arrow out of the water, at the rate of one foot per minute.
  When completed in late 1919, the six-section dock was the largest floating dry dock in the world, capable of lifting a ship 725 feet (221 m) long and weighing 30,000 tons. Alternatively, the dock could lift two smaller ships simultaneously. Three sections alone could lift a ship of 15,000 tons and 475 feet (145 m), four sections a vessel of 20,000 tons and 550 feet (170 m), and five, a ship of 25,000 tons and 625 feet (191 m). In February 1920, all six sections of the dock were used to lift a single ship for the first time, the 30,000-ton SS Minnesota, an operation that took 25 minutes.
caption: Two steamers in the Morse dry dock, circa 1919-1920
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