Some questions:Maritime Terminology

Is the above true? At least for battleships I am being told that gun pits are the main bottlenecks. ANyone feel like explaining this and how they get from shore onto the battleships?

No, they aren't.

Bottlenecks are :

Slipways (if you don't have one big enough free, you cant start).
Engines, or more precisely the large very expensive reduction gearing.
Armour plating
Gun pits - or rather the specialised equipment they needed
Main Guns around 3 times the number on each ship, they wear out
Electronics - FCC systems and such.


In roughly that order.
 
I'll be sure to remember those points, when next I revisit my 'dreadnought thread'. Thanks for the info.

For this thread, though, can you give me some pointers on things to bring up and not overlook? One particular thing that I want to get right, is the workings of ports and cargo handling. Any advice would be most welcome.
 
Not that I'm aware of.

Does AH.com have it's own wiki? That could be useful for this info, the logistics thread you posted, Sealion stuff to get newbies to chill, and other useful information for AH writers.

I'll be sure to remember those points, when next I revisit my 'dreadnought thread'. Thanks for the info.

For this thread, though, can you give me some pointers on things to bring up and not overlook? One particular thing that I want to get right, is the workings of ports and cargo handling. Any advice would be most welcome.

The short version is there's two kinds of ways ports work: pre-container and post-container.

Before containerization, which is the process where shipping was increasingly handled through standardized steel containers that could be packed onto trains or trucks by removing from the ship and putting them on the truck, unloading ships was a massively manpower intensive line of work. Longshoremen worked in huge numbers in every dock as it was necessary for people to go in and unpack every single container by hand one at a time.

A good way to visualize this is to think of the last time you moved or helped someone move. Think about how much labor and time it takes for four or five people to unload a moving van and multiply that by the size of the ship and quantity of cargo and you've got a good idea of what is involved. This was often assisted by cranes, nets, and other measures to make the labor easier but it never really got around the basic problem of the massive amount of labor needed to make a shipping port work. That's before going into all the workers with the various trains, trucks, carts, and whatnot who are loading and unloading goods and warehouse workers who move the goods into and out of warehouses.

Post-container the amount of labor needed fell through the floor. All that was necessary were crane operators to unload the containers with smaller numbers of dockside personnel supervising the placement of vehicles, the port operations, and other stuff besides the older status quo of unloading ships. It also greatly reduced the number of maritime warehousing facilities as it became much easier to ship the goods directly to inland distribution centers instead of depending on maritime warehouses to store them prior to transport. This also greatly reduced the number of major shipping ports operating in the world to those capable of handling large container ships. The shift from San Francisco to Oakland is one example as is the decline of the many ports of New York in favor of the massive New York-Newark complex. Container ports need to be close to road and rail networks and have deep enough water for container ships to operate in.
 
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SLIPWAY is a shallow ramp that allows freshly-built ships to slide into the water. Initially, slipways were just logs laid in the mud, but later they evolved into concrete, then steel rails. Steel rail slipways often have cradles, to keep the ship uprights as it slides into the water.
Early slipways launched ships length-wise into the water, but during WW2, they started launching ships sideways down shorter slipways.

BAYS are any indentation in the shoreline. The deeper the bay, the less ocean storms toss moored ships about. The best bays are deep, with deep, narrow inlets connecting them to the sea.

PORTS have a huge variety of support services: banks, auction houses, ware houses, customs houses, brokerage houses, whorehouses, embassies, consulates, roads, hotels, bars, dentists, roads, refineries, coal yards, freight-yards, stock-yards, fish-packing plants, fruit-packing plants, railroads and often connect to rivers than allow trans-shipment of goods far inland.
Because they are the center of business transactions, many ports become the wealthiest and most powerful cities in their entire countries, ergo they become the capital cities. A few nation-states (e.g. Togo and Singapore) are little more than support structures for international ports.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
No matter how wide the bay, or how suitable on the surface, there may be a problem with DRAFT.

DRAFT is how deep the ship's KEEL (the lowest point on a ship, the main spine of the body) goes into the water, and depends partly on how heavily loaded the ship is. A ship cannot enter water deeper than its keel, and even when there are several feet of water under the keel suction effects reduce maneuverability - just one reason ships rarely charge out of harbour at full speed!

This has also led to situations where ships which have taken in water need to offload unneeded equipment (such as main gun shells) in order to make it back to harbour over a shallow sill. This was important also in the War of 1812, where a number of ships hid in a harbour that was too shallow at the entrance for large ships unless they took their guns off.

With a large harbour, there may also be a SHIPPING CHANNEL. This is a route of deeper water which allows deeper draft ships than might otherwise make it, and is usually clearly marked. Many modern shipping channels require dredging regularly to keep them open.

Sinking a BLOCKSHIP (a ship full of rocks or concrete or other bulky obstruction) is one of the quickest ways to temporarily render a port useless.

Shipping channels are also important in terms of defending a port - if the open mouth of a river is 25 miles across, but the shipping channel passes within two miles of shore, there's an obvious place for a fort to be placed to protect the river!
 
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Delta Force

Banned
Also, what in the heck is an 'atoll' compared to an island? I have found a few on bing maps, but they look like just a semicircular bit of land enclosing a patch of water. Also, what is a 'Bay', and do they have any thing about they that would need to be covered from the point of geographical or infrastructual? And after catching up on others posts, what is a 'Lagoon', and how is it different?

For political reasons, the United States referred to some atolls as islands.
 
Harbours can be both natural,(example Poole Harbour, England) or artifiacial (example Portland Harbour, England). Most Harbours are built by adding Breakwaters to improve a natural Anchorage. Breakwaters can be 'anchored to the shore' ie, one end is connected to dry land or they can be 'Flying' where niether end contacts the shore. In Plymouth sound (England) the natural anchorage was improved in the 19th centuary by providing the protection of a flying Breakwater. A breakwater attached to the shore at one end can be called a Mole ( this tends to be applied when it is used to protect a river mouth/entance such as Dunkirk). A jetty in the UK tends to referer to a smaller pier (ie a structures jutting out into deep water supported upon legs driven into the sea bed) rather than a solid structure made of rock/stone or other convienent material as in the case of a breakwater or Mole. Where there are tides a harbour will probably have a 'wet dock' this is a basin seperated from the sea or river isolated by a set of locks and gates where a constant water level is maintained. Most large shipyards or Naval dockyards had a 'fitting out' basin or at least a fitting out quay. This was used for working on a vessel whilst it was afloat, rather than 'on the ways' (on the building slip) or in a 'Dry Dock' ( basicaly a retangular hole in the ground closed by either a set of lock gates or a caison, so that it could be pumped out and the ship left 'high and dry' tof compartments designed to flood down and when pumped out physicaly lift the ship clear of the water for hull work to take place).
 

Driftless

Donor
Some Docks can float... i.e. Docks that are on rivers that rise and fall considerably(seasons of flood or drought), or tidal areas with significant rise & fall. You could convert an old boat, barge or ship hull to serve the purpose; or use other means of floatation (sealed empty oil drums, purpose built pontoons, polystyrene logs. I've seen all of the above used along the length of the Mississippi River, and I'd expect there are many more variants around the world.

*edit* Doh, there are also floating dry docks of sometimes considerable size.
 
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Some Docks can float... i.e. Docks that are on rivers that rise and fall considerably(seasons of flood or drought), or tidal areas with significant rise & fall. You could convert an old boat, barge or ship hull to serve the purpose; or use other means of floatation (sealed empty oil drums, purpose built pontoons, polystyrene logs. I've seen all of the above used along the length of the Mississippi River, and I'd expect there are many more variants around the world.

*edit* Doh, there are also floating dry docks of sometimes considerable size.

The United States Navy had, at one point. floating dry docks capable of handling even an IOWA class battleship or a pre-Nimitz class aircraft carrier. Sadly, they have all been retired or put into reserve.
 
Here is an example http://www.markchirnside.co.uk/majesticgallery8.htm of a very large floating dock used at Southampton. It was evetualy replaced by a purpose built Graving Dock (the King George the 5th drydock) designed to be large enough to take the Cunnard queens. This http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/Southampton-Docks.html gives an overview of the facilities at Southampton from the Mid 1930's up to the introduction of containers in the mid to late 1970's.

And what, pray tell is a ''graving dock''? My admittedly limited understanding is that it is a dry dock lined with stone. Is that understanding correct?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
And what, pray tell is a ''graving dock''? My admittedly limited understanding is that it is a dry dock lined with stone. Is that understanding correct?
Routine use of dry docks is for the "graving" i.e. the cleaning, removal of barnacles and rust, and re-painting of ships' hulls.

(yay wiki!)
 
Lots of good info here, and my thanks to everyone! I am going to start a collection of pictures, and the first ones will be for the different terms to be made clear, so some of Anchorages, some of Docks, etc...

I will post most everything here, and ask questions about what to write better, and suggestions for what I (inevitably) will miss/overlook, so that once I can get a good idea of what the illustrated thread should have, I can go ahead and get started.

I have been busy with a job search for the last 2 weeks, and have a meeting this afternoon (crosses fingers).:) Either way, I'll get some basics up this evening or this weekend.
 
And what, pray tell is a ''graving dock''? My admittedly limited understanding is that it is a dry dock lined with stone. Is that understanding correct?

Sorry should have put in a an explanation! Some dry docks were built specifically for, or princeply for the cleaning and painting of a ships hull (this has the old term of graving a ship0. these therefore were not generally associated with big ship yards, or heavey engineering facilities for carrying out major work or reconstruction and were therefore given this name as a type to indicate their principle purpose.
 

Driftless

Donor
Also, what in the heck is an 'atoll' compared to an island? I have found a few on bing maps, but they look like just a semicircular bit of land enclosing a patch of water. Also, what is a 'Bay', and do they have any thing about they that would need to be covered from the point of geographical or infrastructual? And after catching up on others posts, what is a 'Lagoon', and how is it different?

An atoll is a deeply eroded volcanic cone, where the central lagoon was once the crater of the volcano. Often, the rim of the crater has eroded over eons down to near sealevel.

Also, there is often a perimeter coral reef off-shore around those atolls which can be considerable navigation hazards.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
An atoll is a deeply eroded volcanic cone, where the central lagoon was once the crater of the volcano. Often, the rim of the crater has eroded over eons down to near sealevel.

Also, there is often a perimeter coral reef off-shore around those atolls which can be considerable navigation hazards.
Sorry, not quite right. The atoll is the reef.

You're thinking of a situation called a fringing reef, where the atoll has an island stump left within.

I don't want to flash my Geologist credentials too hard, but...
 

Driftless

Donor
Depending on era, or type of craft; a protected area of a harbor could be used for careening - to purposefully tip the craft on its side to do minor hull repairs, or scraping of the hull.

A%20Fair%20%26%20Good%20Bay%20finalcopy.jpg
 
Or you can have a Port, with no Harbor

Port of Lewiston, in Idaho is such an example.

A seaport, over 450 miles from the Pacific Ocean


http://billingsgazette.com/business...cle_8ae2daa0-978a-11df-a49a-001cc4c002e0.html

Another example is Deal in Kent - although more pre 1900 - it was at one point one of the busiest 'ports' in Britain in terms of ships and people - mainly due to its position and the shelter it offered to vessels by the Goodwin sands - Commonly known as "The Downs".
 
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