Refurbished dock gates enhance Shoreham facility

They were installed in 1934 and had very little work done on them since. Over that time the steel skin got very thin and marine worms damaged the hardwood timber seals.

The dry dock is a valuable asset to the Port, so chief executive Rodney Lunn gave the green light for the complete refurbishment to be undertaken by the in-house engineering team. The gates were lifted out on a foggy day at the end of March and since then have been completely stripped back to the bare frames and rebuilt.

Over seven tons of new steel has been replaced or added, and over 5 cu/m of hardwood timber has been replaced or repaired by local contractors and the in-house engineering team, restoring the gates to their former glory and actually improving their performance over the original design.

The gates were successfully put back in position in August using Southern Cranes’ 220 ton mobile crane, which made the task look effortless despite the gates weighing nearly 15 tons each and having to be lifted nearly 30m away from the crane itself. The Port’s divers were in attendance to make sure everything went back in the right place and to check for a good fit.

The whole operation has been overseen by assistant port engineer Keith Wadey, who has worked with the dry dock over the whole of his 31 years at the Port. He said, ‘Restoring the gates took a huge amount of effort by the entire engineering team, but the greatly improved performance of the restored gates makes all the hard work worthwhile.’

Shoreham Port offers one of the few remaining dry dock facilities on the South Coast of England. These include access to the dock areas for cranes up to 80 tons as well as water, power and workshop facilities. Shoreham Port can accommodate vessels up to 50.5m in length, 10m in breadth and 5.2m draft .